Mugger: Measuring Saddam's Coffin

A problem common to political bloggers is that they often scoot to the keyboards without adequate time for reflection. Andrew Sullivan is, on the whole, a sensible and smart writer, but his paragraph on President Bush’s press conference last Thursday night, posted just hours after it was completed, was way off the mark. While it’s true that newspaper reporters filed their stories in a similar amount of time, at least they have editors (and factcheckers), for better or worse, to offer a second opinion.

Sullivan lamented that Bush "looked and sounded exhausted," "wiped" and almost "seemed catatonic with fatigue." Obviously, the president and his advisers have a more taxing job than journalists, but surely Sullivan isn’t naive enough to believe that Bush would be in pep-rally mode. He’s about to declare war on Iraq, against a blizzard of domestic and international protest, and it would’ve been weird if his mood was upbeat. The instant analysis concluded: "This press conference struck me as a mistake. He looked drained, wan, exhausted from this interminable diplomatic process. He seemed defeated to me—and the U.N. has effectively defeated him and protected Saddam. But not for too much longer."

In reality, Bush’s decision to take questions from a mostly skeptical press corps, eager to trip him up, was a necessity ahead of Hans Blix’s selective report to the United Nations the following day. (Why did the Swedish bureaucrat bury evidence, as reported by James Bone in London’s Times, that Iraq possesses an undeclared drone that’s equipped to spray regional neighbors with chemical and biological weapons?)

And if the president’s answers were repetitious and subdued (which caused Maureen Dowd and Washington Post tv critic Tom Shales to speculate he was medicated), he hardly gave the impression of a "defeated" man. Rather, by insisting that the U.N. Security Council muster the guts to declare their intentions on yet another resolution—and let history record the vote—Bush explicitly said the United States would proceed with its invasion plans regardless of France’s grandstanding. Calling Saddam Hussein a "cancer," the most compelling argument Bush made was that unlike European nations, the U.S. is, post-9/11, now a battlefield.

What’s more galling than Sullivan’s well-intentioned, if egregiously incorrect opinion, is the mainstream media’s nearly unanimous declaration that Bush is "rushing" to war and has made a hash of foreign diplomacy. It’s the middle of March, more than a year after the president made his prophetic "Axis of Evil" speech. He went to the U.N. to present his case, sought and received congressional approval and has allowed the charade of Blix’s inspections to continue for far too long.

A compelling argument can be advanced that Bush made too many concessions last fall to appease squeamish "allies" and Democrats. Had Saddam been deposed already, North Korea wouldn’t have had the opportunity to threaten nuclear blackmail. Yet Bush accommodated the State Dept. and the U.N. in an effort to gain as much international support as possible. That the unanimous Security Council decision in 2002 to enforce Resolution 1441 has fallen apart says more about the gross negligence of the U.N., an antiquated institution that long ago lost its relevance, as Bill Clinton found out (but won’t admit today) during the Kosovo intervention in 1999. That Colin Powell and Dominique de Villepin are courting Guinea as if she were a prom queen demonstrates just how pathetic the body is. And don’t even get me started about Kofi Annan or the Pope.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, writing on March 7, was typical in his dismissal of Bush’s strategy, criticizing the president’s insistence that war is his last choice in resolving the Iraqi question. He writes: "Sounds good, but it simply wasn’t believable. Everyone knows that war has been the president’s first choice not his last since at least the summer of 2002. In trying to play the reluctant sheriff, Bush cast himself in a role that rang false. He has, for months, been the eager sheriff. Imagine if instead of cowboyspeak about regime change and other name-calling last year, Bush had offered Saddam a timetable for disarmament. Then, after the dictator failed several tests, Bush’s anger would not have seemed so personal, as was suggested in one of last night’s questions he didn’t answer."

A few points here. If indeed, war was Bush’s first choice, the Iraqi invasion would now be complete. Second, it’s interesting to see how liberal journalists have substituted slurs for Bush: An eon ago, it seems, the Texan was lampooned as a dumb, spoiled frat-boy who couldn’t read. Now, he’s portrayed as a dumb, Marlboro Man cowboy who isn’t as convincing as Gary Cooper in High Noon. Finally, Alter alludes to the belief of many critics that Bush is merely avenging Saddam’s assassination attempt against his father. Who’s the dumb one? Apparently, the "no blood for oil" crowd is convinced that Bush has motives for toppling the splendid democracy of Iraq other than protecting American citizens.

Then there’s the religious angle, which Newsday’s Les Payne slipped into print on March 9. He wrote: "The 43rd president of the United States does not like questions. He avoids them as he avoids the thesaurus. And for good reason. George W. Bush is perhaps the least articulate president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most uninformed since Gerald Ford and the most provincial since, say, Warren G. Harding."

It goes without saying that Payne would prefer Jimmy Carter occupied the White House today, since the brainy Annapolis graduate demonstrated such military cunning in rescuing the hostages captured by Iran more than two decades ago.

Payne continues: "The problem with middle-aged drunks turned Christian is that they can’t sleep without yakking about Jesus, and they won’t let anyone else sleep, either... The drunk-gone-zealot may be reassuring to the troubled family. But it is not altogether reassuring to a modern world facing such a fanatic on the trigger of weapons of mass destruction that are capable of destroying the Earth several times over."

Ignoring that Bush hasn’t proselytized, and has the support of people of various faiths across the nation, Payne shows he’s the most uninformed pundit since, say, Mary McGrory or Paul Krugman. Provincial newspapermen like Payne must delight Saddam, whose state-run Al-Thawra editorialized on Sunday: "The world has changed, and there is a historic awakening that makes it cling to law and justice and reject and resist the law of the jungle. What the fascist ruling gang in Washington does not know yet is that the world—even those countries America considers friends—has changed and does not accept the fascist logic that justifies war and belittles its possible effects."

At least William Safire, the Times’ lone op-ed columnist of substance, gets it right, even if his employers are willing to ignore the possibility that a Saddam-ordered truck bomb could level Penn Station or Times Square. On March 6, Safire succinctly summed up the crisis. He wrote: "Either we will allow [Saddam] to become capable of inflicting horrendous casualties in our cities tomorrow—or we must inflict and accept far fewer casualties in his cities today... Nor should we waste more precious time trying to beg or buy moral approval from France or Russia, their U.N. veto threats largely driven by economic interests in Saddam’s continuance in power. Nor should we indulge in placing second thoughts first: How much will it cost? How many will be killed? How long will it take? Will it kill the snake of terror or only poke it? Will everybody thank us afterward? Where’s the guarantee of total success? Too cautious to oppose, these questioners delay action by demanding to know what they know is unknowable."

An entertaining, if minor, diversion in the Democrats’ stampede to condemn Bush—even though they enthusiastically backed Clinton’s "bellicose" call to arms against Iraq in 1998—is the Kennedy vs. Kennedy sideshow in Congress. Ted Kennedy, who’s at least been consistent in his opposition to Bush’s war plans (unlike the spineless Tom Daschle), said last Wednesday: "This is a shoot-from-the-hip administration, particularly with regard to Iraq. I have strong reservations about the rush to war which this administration is involved in for the principle reasons (that) we’ll squander all the goodwill that we have built up after 9/11 and we’re in real danger of inflaming the Middle East."

Kennedy supports the ethnically confused Sen. John Kerry for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who’s backing his colleague Richard Gephardt against Kerry, said in Davenport, IA, last Saturday that Saddam must go. In contrast to his father, the younger Kennedy insisted: "Hussein is an international outlaw. Should we wait for him to get the weapons? Then what would we do? If Iraq had the nuclear weapons like North Korea, I promise you it would change the nature of the ballgame dramatically."

Let’s not forget the political conspiracists, who think that Karl Rove is dictating the moves of not only Bush, but Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, Condi Rice and Powell as well, in order to achieve maximum advantage for next year’s presidential election. I’ll step into that Abbie Hoffman orbit just to say that if indeed that’s Rove’s master plan, it’s about as skillful as the strategy of Oval Office losers Dole, Dukakis, Mondale and McGovern. Bush understands he’s walking on a high wire, politically, with far more downside than up by pursuing such an ambitious international and domestic agenda this year.

Bush is an honest man who believes in his policies, whether it’s regime change in Iraq, stabilizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once Arafat takes a powder, privatizing Social Security, tort and Medicare reform, cutting taxes and one day liberalizing immigration laws. There’s probably an even chance these views will cost Bush his presidency. Yet, unlike Clinton, who began working on his historical legacy the day he was elected, if Bush is defeated by a Democrat in 2004, he’ll return to Texas disappointed but resolute that he acted in the interests of his fellow countrymen.

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