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10/16/04 In a column appearing on Oct. 13, 2004 in The Boston Globe, Ellen Goodman has stepped in it again. The core argument of her piece, that President George W. Bush is taking a risk by refusing to admit to having made mistakes, is based on liberal myths that persist despite the fact that they have been refuted by the facts in every case. I will disassemble and demonstrate the falsehood of her claims (in italics) here: We were led into war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an imminent danger. This is a classic liberal distortion: impute something clearly false to someone, and then criticize them for speaking a falsehood. The administration never claimed Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States. They argued that he was clearly a threat, and that the threat was growing and would someday become imminent if we didn't do something to prevent it. That is the Bush Doctrine: we don't wait for our enemies to pose an imminent threat. We stop them before they do so. And since at the time Bush said Saddam was a threat everyone who wasn't being paid off by Saddam Hussein (and some who were!) agreed that he was a threat, it cannot be said that Bush deceived anyone intentionally. He was deceived along with everyone else about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), but there is ample and irrefutable evidence that Hussein was on the road to becoming an imminent threat. Therefore Bush in fact deceived no one and his decisions were correct. It would be the mark of insanity to admit to having made a mistake that was not a mistake. By continuing to go back to this empty refrain, liberals demonstrate their lack of wisdom and common sense, and their willingness to ignore or distort the truth to advance their utopian vision of the world. We were told we'd be greeted with flowers and candies. The administration said what it believed, that we would be greeted by the oppressed population as liberators, and we were. Does anyone remember the jubilation when the statue of Saddam came down? No one said that the Baathists would welcome us. The single admitted miscalculation was that we would have killed or captured most of the military and paramilitary forces by the end of the advance to Bagdad, and this was a miscalculation not by George W. Bush, who did not write the military plans, but by Gen. Tommy Franks, who wrote them and is more than willing to assume responsibility for that over which he was given primary authority. Neither the administration nor Gen. Franks said anything they didn't believe to be true. But since the only element of this prediction that was not correct has been admitted (as Ms. Goodman pointed out in her piece) as a miscalculation both by the General and the President, there is no evidence here that the President is unwilling to admit a mistake. The man who was developing nuclear weapons is now described as the man who wanted such a program. They did not present evidence that he had an active nuclear weapons program, but that he was attempting to accumulate or preserve the resources (physical, chemical, intellectual) to start up such a program. So they told us the truth. The reason for the war has morphed from a need to defend ourselves to a desire to liberate Iraqis. This is wrong on both counts. The liberation of Iraqis and creation of a peaceful, democratic Iraq was part of the justification for the war from the start, and the administration has never stopped claiming that we acted out of a need to defend ourselves. Perhaps she has convinced herself by revising her memories (or by remembering selectively) that this is how things have evolved. If so, a liberal has once again demonstrated her inability to distinguish fact from her own brand of self-congratulatory delusion. The front in the war on terror is now the breeding ground for more terrorists. This is another example of the special arrogance of liberalism. It may be true that our presence in Iraq has energized a pool of terrorists that would otherwise have remained untapped. It is virtually impossible to measure that effect. But it is also undeniably true that many terrorists who were already terrorists have turned their attention to Iraq and thus become distracted from their focus on our other interests. This effect may be enough to counterbalance the other, and may in fact be producing a net gain. At any rate, it cannot be said factually to be a loss. There are larger and more important questions that would trump this consideration in any event, so it is a canard and should be dismissed as idle and inconsequential speculation. [Sen. John F.] Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. This is laughable. The arguments Ms. Goodman is presenting are the arguments advanced by Kerry, and they are demonstrably based not on the evidence, but on distortions, half-truths, and lies. The evidence is this: we have not lost a single battle since the war in Iraq began. We have suffered casualties on the order of 2/3 of one percent of our troops in a very difficult conflict, while killing thousands upon thousands of the enemy. We are training Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security, and they continue to line up to sign up for service even after they've seen those lines blown up by barbaric subhuman monsters. Nearly 70% of our military, most of whom, as Kerry is fond of pointing out, have either served, will serve, or are serving in Iraq, believe we are doing the right thing in Iraq, according to a recent poll. And I trust that opinion held by those whose lives are on the line more than I will ever trust the anti-war and anti-American opinion of the dovish liberals who would have prolonged the cold war indefinitely if they had had their way (and this includes both Kerry and the likes of Ms. Goodman). Neither Kerry nor Ms. Goodman is interested in evidence, or they would be examining more of it before coming to their conclusions. They came to their conclusions first, and now they select or invent whatever evidence will justify those conclusions. Nothing makes me more confident that my core convictions must be correct than the fact that those who dispute my core convictions cannot make a logical argument in defense of their position. An idea that cannot be supported is wrong. And liberalism is about 90% wrong. Modified: 10/16/2004 |
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