Posted on 08/25/2006 5:03:27 AM PDT by Tolik
Mr. Bush’s Communication Problem
It’s not him; it’s what he’s supposed to be communicating.
Just when former supporters of the Iraq invasion and the wider so-called war against terror are proclaiming doom and gloom, other commentators conclude that we have already defeated the jihadists! Nostalgia even abounds about returning to the 1990s, when the United States occasionally swatted bothersome terrorists with cruise missiles and indictments.
This unbalance in the media reflects — or has helped cause — a public unhappiness over Iraq that has brought the president’s poll ratings to less than 40-percent approval. Yet again, for all the efforts of the Left to demonize Mr. Bush as either incompetent or diabolical — or both — the American people hardly think we have lost — or won — the war, much less that the threat posed by Iraq, or the necessity of fighting Islamists abroad, was trumped up in Crawford, Texas.
The Germans (no supporters of the United States in Iraq) and the British recently were a bomb or two away from catastrophe. The jihadists won’t stop after such failure, nor can they be appeased by Spanish-style concessions. One successful strike will make those who proclaim that we aren’t any longer really in a war appear unhinged.
Only a reincarnated Chamberlain or Daladier could think that there is no Islamist commonality between the recent hostage-taking of Western telejournalists on the West Bank, Iranian threats to extinguish Israel and end the American presence in the Gulf, terrorist attacks on soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, plans of killing thousands in Britain and Germany, or plots to blow up American airliners in London — as if Japanese fascists, Italian fascists, and German fascists could not have made war in unison against the liberal democracies given their differing agendas and sects, and lack of coordination.
And even when the Islamists do not succeed, their threats and rhetoric cripple the West: when Mr. Ahmadinejihad rants about wiping Israel off the face of the map or sending gunboats into the Gulf, he garners a few billion extra in annual petrodollars due to the frenzy of oil speculators. A few foiled terrorists in London still managed to force millions of people into humiliating searches of their carry-on luggage, and cost the West untold millions in lost flights, delays, and inconvenience.
In fact, the current strategy of having removed the two most odious dictatorships — the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s — and fostering democracies in their places remains the only sensible course. Far from winning this war for the future of the Middle East, Syria, and Iran are increasingly isolated, desperate to thwart democratization that surrounds their borders in Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon, and facing world sanctions for their roguery. For all its messiness, the promotion of democratic reform infuriates the Islamists and paid-off Arab journalists and intellectual toadies alike, and ultimately works in our favor.
But right now the real problem has been the necessity of reversing the order of traditional postwar democratization. The old calculus was first the proverbial horse of defeating and vanquishing utterly the enemy; then the cart of showing magnanimity in rebuilding the country of a contrite loser. Only in that order would the Americans be willing to give millions to the former supporters of once murderous Nazis, Italian fascists, or imperial Japanese who had killed and maimed their sons.
In the Middle East, we reversed the sequence, on the idealistic — and I think correct — premise that the Afghan and Iraqi people were captive to their dictators, and that we wished to avoid an all-encompassing conflict along the lines of World War II. In other words, we trusted that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein explained the recent savagery of the Afghans and Iraqis, rather than the innate savagery of the Afghans and Iraqis themselves explaining the creation of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. The result of this confidence, despite the carnage of war, was that democracy was ushered in, the rogues were to be kept out, and peace was supposed to follow from a grateful, liberated people.
But why should it, when the hard hand of American war was not first completely felt — nor the jihadists utterly vanquished and discredited and any who supported them? Unless there is some element of fear, or at least the suggestion of consequences to come for recalcitrance, why should an Iraqi cease his easy support of Hezbollah, his anti-Semitism, or his cheap support for Islamist terrorists around the block? It would be as if we expected to end slavery outright in the Confederacy around 1862, or rid Germany of Nazis around 1943, or persuade the Japanese fascists to vote in 1944 — before such ideologies have been utterly defeated and the steep price for those who tolerated them paid in full.
So what Mr. Bush is faced with is this nearly impossible paradox of half war/half peace: at a time when most are getting fed up with abhorrent Middle Eastern jihadists who blow up, hijack, and behead in the name of their religion, he is attempting to convince the same American public and the Western world at large to spend their blood and treasure to help Muslim Afghans, Iraqis, and now Lebanese, who heretofore — whether out of shared anti-Americanism or psychological satisfaction in seeing the overdog take a hit — have not been much eager to separate themselves from the rhetoric of radical Islam.
In any case, the administration’s problem is not really its (sound) strategy, nor its increasingly improved implementation that we see in Baghdad, but simply an American public that so far understandably cannot easily differentiate millions of brave Iraqis and Afghans, who risk their lives daily to hunt terrorists and ensure reform, from the Islamists of the Muslim Street who broadcast their primordial hatred for Israel and the United States incessantly.
Remember the surreal Middle East: we freed Shiites from Saddam; so Shiite Iran in response tries to destroy Shiite democrats in Iraq, who, being constantly attacked by terrorists and militias, in turn sympathize with anti-democratic Hezbollah terrorists and militias in Lebanon. And at one point last month, the Lebanese, between slurs against America, were expecting the United States to send it cash, retrieve expatriates immediately, restrain Israel, do something about Hezbollah, and praise Lebanese critics — and all at once.
So how can one expect Americans to witness the barbarism of the jihadists, the creepy rhetoric of the imams and mullahs, the triangulation of Arab governments, and the puerility of the Muslim Street, pause, take a deep breath, and sigh, “Ah, they are frustrated because they are unfree and poor, and so in error blame us for their own autocracies’ failures. Therefore, we must be generous in our sacrifices to allow them the same opportunities for freedom that we enjoy.”
That contemplation and forbearance are both too complex and too much to ask of a post-September 11 public, and so end up as a piñata for political opportunists on both sides to smack to shreds.
On the Right the politicking works out with cynicism and disgust: “These ungrateful and hateful people aren’t worth the life of another American soldier or American dollar.”
Yet the Bush idealism wins no points from the Left either. Both for partisan purposes, and due to the wages of multiculturalism that oppose any Western effort to bring to the other the good life that they themselves so eagerly embrace, Leftists still harp about no blood for oil and assorted conspiracies in lieu of legitimate analysis and criticism.
What, then, is needed — aside from crushing the jihadists and securing Afghanistan and Iraq — is more articulation and explanation. The word “liberal” — as in promoting liberal values abroad, and reminding the world of the traditions of liberal tolerance — needs to be employed more often.
Some tough language is also helpful on occasion: any time the free democracies of Iraq or Afghanistan wish to vote to send American troops home, of course we will comply. Likewise, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon are under no compulsion to accept hated American aid or military help. And just as the American public needs reminding that millions of Middle Easterners are currently fighting jihadist terror in Afghanistan and Iraq — we wish we could say the same about our “allies” in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — so too the Iraqi and Afghan governments should convey to the American people that their support is appreciated, and its continuance deemed vital.
How odd that the president must explain the pathologies of the Middle East to such a degree as to warn Americans of our mortal danger, but not to the point of excess so that we feel that there is no hope for such people. He must somehow suggest that jihadism could not imperil us were it not for the “moderates” who tolerate and appease it — while this is the very same group that we feel duty-bound to offer an alternative other than theocracy or dictatorship. And he must offer a postwar plan of reconstruction to the citizens of the Middle East at a time when many of them do not feel that their romantic jihadists have ever really been defeated at all.
Even the eloquence of a Lincoln or Churchill would find all that difficult.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
This frustration by the American public about our situation in Iraq was conceived and fueled by the leftist media. In the Vietnam war, the likes of Cronkite and Rather spewed their drivel to the folks back home that gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
In this war, the lies and treason by our own seditious press will be fought here.
You think Bush is just "winging it?"
What is necessary is an immediate call for an analysis of Muhammad and Islam. Is there any difference between Islam and other cults other than the sheer number of Muslims? In an attempt to deconstruct or decentralize the influence of a cult, do we care if we offend the leaders or members? This discussion must begin in earnest and in a way big enough to make Muslims sit up and take notice. We can no longer spend our lives living in a state of fear and it is time to turn the tables NOW.
I just don't think he believes what he says. Not that he is "winging it," it looks as though he is just going through the motions.
Seriously, there are a good number of people on FR who can better articulate our policy in Iraq and our reasons for being there, better than Bush does.
How do you win the propaganda war with a free and hostile press which regularly and happily trades accuracy of the enemy's acts for access and personal security?
Look at the unique case of FOX's Steve Centanni.
Why is everyone so terminally dumb about all this? It is like asking how you are supposed to win WW II against Panzer divisions without only rifles. Duh, you make your own armor divisions.
Nobody is even trying. They instead sit around and hope that the left "gets it" and "sees" that we are all "really" on the same side. We aren't on the same side. The left wants to rule the world and will destroy western civilization to do so. When a million Algerians died they said "Bien, vous sufferiez". When a million Cambodians died they said it was Nixon's fault, when he was the only one who tried to save them. When thousands of Iraqis are killed, they blame those trying to stop it. They are not on our side, stop waiting around expecting them to get it, realize they are implacable and murderous cynical enemies every bit as much as Al Qaeda, and get on the bloody field already.
Your post makes a very good point.
There is an old Doonsbury cartoon where Duke asks somebody in the NRA whether they are very busy over some proposed bill or other. The guy says, "Not really. It's pretty much a given that the NRA is unbeatable so nobody really tries anymore." Duke says, "At last, the perfect lobby!"
I think it's sort of that way with the Pubbies and the media. They don't even bother trying to get their message out anymore because the MSM will just twist it.
Maybe if more people like us wrote more letters to the editer, and the papers published them...
On the other hand, I've done a fair job of slamming my imaginary opponents in an imaginary debate during an imaginary run for office using techniques such as...
Oh, and I suppose your great idea for stopping terrorism would have been to apologize to Al Quaeda and drop the embargo against Iraq so Saddam Hussein could have even more money to build torture chambers with. You're supposed to be the party of the oppressed. What do you say to the formerly oppressed people in Iraq, the ones who used to see their wives and daughters taken away to rape rooms, the ones who used to see their loved ones fed feet-first into meat shredders, the ones who can't even visit the graves of their loved ones because their whole town was gassed and the bodies dumped into mass graves? What do you say besides, "I'm sorry we invaded your country and deposed the monster who made your daily life a horror?"
<Add a little righteous indignation here.> When I was young I was taught right from wrong. Maybe we can debate about abortion, maybe we can debate about homosexual marriage, but I sure hope you would not debate with me that using wholesale rape and torture to subjugate the innocent Iraqi people was an evil that had to be stopped. And if you would, I hope the people watching this debate right now would know better than to ever let you hold public office. Shalom.
If he were more clear (and especially) succinct...it would be....
He's way to wordy to be effective.
OHFORPETESSAKE!!!!! GOLDANGIT!!!
"TOO"
The Iraqi liberation was absolutely the correct, and most courageous decision "W" has made.
If Saddam Hussein was still in power, Iraq no doubt would be filled with "harbored" terrorists, not to mention that we likely would have seen regional all out war due to Hussein's prediliction to send SCUDS into Israel. (Israel would have retaliated, as they should)
Lastly, the violence has begun to subside in the past few months as Iraqi and US soldiers increasingly put the squeeze on the Baghdad area.
85-percent of the Iraqi territory is relatively peaceful (the Kurds and the Bassra area) and is already prospering under their new found semi-democracy capitalism.
This man is brilliant.
As for your example, two problems. One, relentlessly negative scary does not work, people tune it out. You can't say we are doing everything because the enemy is so incredibly evil etc. You can refer to it, you can't harp on it. Two, American republican hawks are not the spokesmen for this stuff. Don't pretend to speak for Iraqis, put actual living breathing unhypothetical Iraqis in front of microphones.
It is easy as pie for a commie-lib to slander a republican hawk. It is another thing entirely to slander an Iraqi politician working for his country's freedom who explains how his sister was murdered by their friends last week because she tried to buy bread in the market one fine summer morning. Followed up with graditude to protectors and indignation at defeatists who want to turn him over to the murderers. Point blank, in their face, 24/7, "you want to kill me, you haven't the right to say these things" etc.
It's his historical perspective that makes reading him so important. History isn't a sound bite as I'm sure you know. I guess I like a history lesson with my analysis.
However, I like writers who make their points quickly. This guy is WAAAY verbose.
I think our side loses sometimes because of the verbosity.
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