Bush’s Lame Tongue

April 13, 2004

A year ago, when we were hearing that the Iraqi people were joyously hailing the conquering American troops in Baghdad,

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a friend of mine remarked, “We’re hearing from the happy ones now. We’ll hear from the others later.”

That was a fine laconic observation. The other day it occurred to me that later is now, and we’re hearing from the others.

Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 commission last week was at least an adroit performance, in contrast to President Bush’s lame interview with NBC’s Tim Russert a few weeks ago. She spent three hours fielding tough, even hostile questions, whereas her boss had been unable to give plausible answers to soft, polite questions for a single hour.

Is the Iraq war turning into another Vietnam? Not in the scale of American casualties; that’s unlikely to happen again. Nobody thinks even Bush will waste 50,000 more American lives. For all his talk of “resolve” and “sacrifice,” he’s chiefly resolved not to sacrifice his second term to a military disaster.

But in a psychological sense, the Iraq war is already another Vietnam. The daily reports are monotonously bad and demoralizing. The official happy-talk rings false. And there is every sign of confusion of purpose at the top.

The fulsome comparisons between Bush and Franklin Roosevelt (or Winston Churchill) are ludicrous. The World War II leaders were at least silver-tongued masters of stirring propaganda who seemed to be fighting deadly enemies for a clear purpose. Even Lyndon Johnson was articulate enough to sound as if he sometimes knew what he was doing. George W. makes Lyndon B. sound like Henry V.

[Breaker quote: Endless bad news, and getting worse]

[Breaker quote: Endless bad news, and getting worse]

In politics, someone has said, you’ve got to give the voters “a tune they can whistle” — a simple, catchy, compelling theme. Abstruse or confusing themes drive them away.

This is where Bush’s inability to speak coherently matters, and matters greatly. He calls himself a “war president,” but he is an uninspiring war leader. He needn’t have a blazing Shakespearean verbal genius; homely, earthy metaphors would suffice. But all he can do is to repeat his stale slogans and empty superlatives.

Rhetorically, Bush shot his wad before the war. He demonized Saddam Hussein and the “threat” of his imaginary arsenal. He conjured up a whole “axis of evil” that somehow warranted a huge “war on terror.” He won a quick military triumph and toppled Saddam. And he was getting very favorable opinion polls at home.

With Saddam in American custody, the war continues, and Bush can’t even identify the enemy now, much less explain how crushing Iraqi resistance, if he could figure out how to do it, would make Americans safer from terrorism. How has Muqtada al-Sadr so suddenly replaced Saddam as the devil du jour? Is he too a “gathering threat” to the United States? Why?

It’s hard to imagine any news from Iraq now that would make us feel that we’ve gained a thing by conquering Iraq. What can we expect but more bad tidings, more new enemies, more death and horror?

Saddam’s capture was the last event that gave some Americans a momentary illusion of progress. But by then it was clear that he had posed no threat, had no connection to the 9/11 attacks that started it all, and had only a phantom arsenal.

In short, the Iraq war has become a huge downer, even for the hawks who hungered for it. No good results have come of it and none are being promised anymore. As with Vietnam, the only question has become how to extricate ourselves from it.

Does Bush still think he can win reelection on his record as a war president? We are already sick of hearing about this pointless and increasingly grim adventure. By November we won’t want to be reminded of it. Brainy analysts are baffled by the problem of how to get out of this Sunni-Shi’ite-Kurdish maze; is Bush going to win votes by boasting that he got us into it?

Maybe some new distraction will save Bush’s bacon by November. As long as John Kerry is his opponent, all is not lost. Same-sex marriage, economic boom, or the dread of higher taxes may make Bush seem worth putting up with for four more years.

But the struggle with militant Islamism has ceased being a political asset for him. The peppy tune he was whistling now sounds like a dirge.

Joseph Sobran

Copyright © 2004 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
a division of Griffin Communications
This column may not be reprinted in print or
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