December 4, 2005
Bush Finally Responds to Irresponsible Attacks
By
Thomas Bray
Critics yelped that there was nothing new in President George
W. Bush’s “plan for victory” speech at the Naval
Academy last week. In the strict sense, they were right: the speech
was a reiteration of Bush’s longstanding position that the
exit strategy for Iraq is victory.
But at the very least the President’s speech served to
remind everybody that the critics have no plan of their own, beyond
Rep. Jack Murtha’s demand for an immediate withdrawal of
all American forces. That’s such a disastrous idea that
even most Democrats have distanced themselves from it.
The speech may also have marked a turning point in the administration’s
very belated response to some of the most shocking and irresponsible
attacks on a President since the isolationist fringe accused Franklin
Roosevelt of manipulating the United States into World War II.
It’s one thing to criticize the administration’s strategy
or the President’s “victory” rhetoric. But it’s
quite another to charge that the President and Vice President
Dick Cheney deliberately lied America into an unwinnable war.
The bipartisan commission investigating prewar intelligence
reported no evidence that the intelligence community was pressured
to skew its findings. Then there were all those embarrassing prewar
statements by Democrats themselves: In a nutshell, they voted
for it before they voted against it.
Thus Michigan’s Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the
Senate Armed Services Committee and the second-ranking Democrat
on the Intelligence Committee, recently accused the administration
of “deception” in the march to war. But before the
war he was saying on CNN that “the war against terrorism
will not be finished as long as (Saddam Hussein) is in power.”
True, Levin went on to say “that does not mean (Saddam)
is the next target.” But what we have there is a dispute
over timing and tactics, not the honesty of a President. Presidents,
unlike Senators, are always in the position of having to act on
ambiguous evidence – one reason, perhaps, that Bill Clinton
bombed what turned out to be an aspirin factory in the Sudan.
One speech won’t shake the media’s current story
line, which is that America is stuck in a quagmire. When moderate
Democrat Joe Lieberman last week made
the case for staying the course in Iraq, the press yawned
– unlike the fawning attention it gave to Jack Murtha. Lieberman’s
point of view didn’t fit the story line.
Is it any wonder that polls show such skepticism about the Iraq
venture? Few Americans are given any of the favorable news from
Iraq: the double-digit surge in the Iraqi economy over the last
year; the steady attrition of the terrorist leadership in the
Sunni triangle by brave American and, increasingly, Iraqi troops;
the impressive turnout for elections, another of which is scheduled
for next week; the relative peace and quiet that exists in 80
percent of the country.
President Bush took too long to focus public attention on some
of these things. But Democrats may be having second thoughts themselves.
In recent weeks their leaders lurched perilously close to linking
their fate to that of the “black box” left –
the Michael Moore Democrats for whom no conspiracy theory about
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is too wild. Sen. Lieberman’s
op-ed said nothing new either, but its timing clearly reflected
a desire to yank Democrats back to reality.
If the adults in the Democratic Party don’t stay focused
on legitimate debate about the war – what constitutes “victory,”
for example -- they could easily find their own credibility in
the tank.
Thomas
Bray is a Detroit News columnist.
