Posted on 11/04/2003 5:37:01 AM PST by aculeus
[ Editor's Note: In what follows, TNR Senior Editor Andrew Sullivan deconstructs Andy Rooney's commentary from Sunday's edition of "60 Minutes." ]
Andy Rooney's latest "60 Minutes" commentary attacks George W. Bush by way of a mea culpa Rooney has graciously volunteered to write:
Rooney: Years ago, I was asked to write a speech for President Nixon.
I didn't do that, but I wish President Bush would ask me to write a speech for him now.
Nice little subliminal connection right there--Bush and Nixon. Not exactly subtle, of course, but this is Andy Rooney.
Rooney: Here's what I'd write if he asked me to--which is unlikely:
My fellow Americans--(the word "fellow" includes women in political speeches):
Classic Rooney. The word "fellow" here is an adjective, not a noun. It has no gender connotations whatsoever. But the parenthesis adds a touch of folksiness, as if Rooney were pointing out something that is right beneath our noses, but we'd never thought about it before--until Rooney pointed it out. In fact, of course, it's completely meaningless.
Rooney: My fellow Americans. One of the reasons we invaded Iraq was because I suggested Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. No evidence that's so, I wish I hadn't said it.
When did president Bush actually say such a thing? The answer is never. The only thing that Bush has said about this alleged direct connection 9/11 between Saddam and is that it isn't true, so far as we know. So Rooney reverses what the president has said, then gets Bush to regret having said what he didn't say. He gets paid for this?
Rooney: I said we were going to get Saddam Hussein. To be honest, we don't know whether we got him or not. Probably not.
He said that we were going to disarm the Saddam regime and depose its leader. The president was never foolish enough to pin the entire war on capturing one man. Again, Rooney just made that up.
Rooney: I said we'd get Osama bin Laden and wipe out al Qaeda. We haven't been able to do that, either. I'm as disappointed as you are.
If the criterion was to "wipe out" Al Qaeda, then Rooney is correct. We haven't eliminated every trace of a shadowy, dispersed, criminal enterprise--no more than busting a particular mob family wipes out "the mafia." But Al Qaeda's base of operations in Afghanistan has been wiped out; its leadership has been decimated; its funding has been crippled. No one serious believes we haven't made real progress here. Rooney: I probably shouldn't have said Iraq had nuclear weapons. Our guys and the U.N. have looked under every bed in Iraq and can't find one.
In one speech, I told you Saddam Hussein tried to buy the makings of nuclear bombs from Africa. That was a mistake and I wish I hadn't said that. I get bad information sometimes just like you do.
Nuclear weapons were never the main case against Saddam in the last year. And if we had seriously believed that Saddam had an actual ready-to-go nuclear weapon, as Rooney argues, we would never have invaded. Will Rooney provide a source for his assertion that Bush claimed Saddam had nukes ready to go? I doubt it. Since we had grotesquely underestimated Saddam's progress in nuclear research in the late 1980s, we were naturally concerned about what we didn't know in 2002. Again, Rooney is ludicrously exaggerating the administration's case in order to make it seem debunked beyond a shadow of a doubt. That's sheer manipulation. As for Saddam's searching for nuclear materials in Africa, the Brits still stand by their intelligence.
Rooney: On May 1, I declared major combat was over and gave you the impression the war was over. I shouldn't have declared that. Since then, 215 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. As the person who sent them there, how terrible do you think that makes me feel?
That's a fair point. Bush did screw up by giving a false impression that the war was over. But in that speech, the president also said the following:
We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done.
Does that sound like telling the American people that everything is finished, that there's no remaining threat? Even before the war, the president was clear about the risks of the post-war:
The work ahead is demanding. It will be difficult to help freedom take hold in a country that has known three decades of dictatorship, secret police, internal divisions, and war. It will be difficult to cultivate liberty and peace in the Middle East, after so many generations of strife. Yet, the security of our nation and the hope of millions depend on us, and Americans do not turn away from duties because they are hard. We have met great tests in other times, and we will meet the tests of our time. Again, Rooney is blowing smoke.
Rooney: When I landed on the deck of the carrier, I wish they hadn't put up the sign saying MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. It isn't accomplished.
Maybe it should have been MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.
Why is it impossible that people can be freed from a vicious tyranny? Hasn't that already occurred? Why is it impossible that we can achieve a transition to democracy in Iraq? Difficult? Sure. Risky? Absolutely. But impossible? For a country as powerful and wealthy as this one? Pure defeatism.
Rooney: I've made some mistakes and I regret it. Let me just read you excerpts from something my father wrote five years ago in his book, A World Transformed.
"I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ... To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero ..."
This is my father writing this.
"...assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war."
We should all take our father's advice.
Thanks to that advice, thousands of people were massacred by "the broken tyrant" in the following months; the entire landscape of the Marsh Arabs was destroyed; Iraqi civilians were gassed; hundreds of thousands of children and adults died because of the U.N. sanctions that were a necessary adjunct to the first Bush's decision. And our caution and timidity emboldened extremists in the Arab world to press their murderous cause to higher and higher levels of destructiveness and hate. I'd like to see Rooney visit the mass graves of Shia and Kurds and say the same thing. But there is no moral seriousness in these remarks, just the usual cheap rhetoric from someone happy to bail on a policy the moment its costs become more tangible. And what is Rooney's actual recommendation? Leave? Now? What good would that do? And what good do these half-baked recriminations achieve, except make Rooney look wise and the administration hapless? Nada.
Rooney: That's the speech I'd write for President Bush. No charge.
Don't worry, Andy. The only people dumb enough to pay for this drivel are your employers at CBS.
Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at TNR.
Copyright 2003, The New Republic
I like that!
BUMP
Best one I've seen all day! Still laughing! :-D
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