- Bush's terrorism justification not only deals in deliberate
confusion, it also misrepresents the facts.
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- Every retailer in the United States knows that Americans
become sentimental and careless during the holidays. Sappy sales pitches
cause us to buy what we wouldn"t buy at any other time of the year
and we are disinclined to read the fine print on contracts. That politicians
also understand that vulnerability helps to explain the content of the
speech that George W. Bush delivered during his 2 hour (http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2003/11/27/51516.html
)Thanksgiving tour of duty in Baghdad. Wrapped in the inevitable invocations
of divine blessing and military patriotism his speech summarized the second
Bush administration's current policy justification for its war in Iraq.
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- Unsurprisingly, Bush did not mention Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction. The primary pretext for the war in Iraq at the start
of the war, discussion of that non-existent threat appears to have been
tabooed by the administration. Terrorism and freedom remain the revised
explanations for the war.
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- According to Bush, the U.S. military is defeat terrorists
in Iraq, "so that we don't have to face to face them in our own country."
In the next breath, he said that they were, "defeating Saddam's henchmen."
Conflating the al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with the supporters of Saddam Hussein
appears an all too obvious effort to exploit the American public's weak
grasp of international affairs. Baathist Iraq was not home to al Qaeda
terrorists. If al Qaeda is now operating in Iraq, it is because a chaotic
U.S. occupation made the country a suitable environment.
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- What seems more likely is that most of the insurgents
in Iraq are Iraqi nationalists, people who hardly need to carry their fight
to the U.S. homeland. Why should they? The second Bush administration has
provided them with plenty of targets within easy driving distance of a
donkey cart.
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- Bush's terrorism justification not only deals in deliberate
confusion, it also misrepresents the facts. The U.S. military does not
appear to be winning. Iraqi insurgents are elusive and operations against
them further alienate the Iraqi civilian population. They have demonstrated
the ability to kill an average of one U.S. soldier every day, and that
attrition may be a winning strategy. Not only does it undermine support
for the war in the U.S., but it also forces the U.S. military to focus
its efforts on limiting casualties.
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- When Bush uses previous U.S sacrifices to justify future
U.S. sacrifices, he compounds confusion and factual misrepresentation with
illogic. "We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq,
pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate
only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins," he says. (Imagine
for a moment the howls of conservatives had Bill Clinton dared make statements
that appeared to place himself, even figuratively, among military personnel
in active combat.) Bush's appeal here is an obvious "sunk costs"
argument.
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- Familiar to economists, "sunk costs" is an
emotional appeal not to abandon a losing effort because losses are so large
already. For example, investors might be urged not to sell off a losing
investment but instead to invest more in the hope of recouping previous
losses. Confidence artists often exploit sunk costs thinking to cheat the
same victims repeatedly. Americans should expect to hear versions of the
sunk costs argument from the administration and its conservative supporters
whenever the war news from Iraq takes a new turn for the worse.
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- Freedom is the other justification for the war in Iraq.
The word 'freedom' appears 8 times in Bush"s speech, yet it is unclear
what he meant by the word. As used in the speech, one can live in freedom,
believe in freedom, spread freedom, defend freedom, pay the ultimate price
for freedom, or rebuild Iraq based on freedom. Presumably anything but
define freedom. More tellingly, Bush uses the word 'democracy' only once
and then not in connection with the promise to, "stay until the job
is done." Whatever the second Bush administration means by freedom
or by staying until the job is done, it does not appear to require establishing
a real democracy.
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- Reluctance to promise a democratic government is hardly
surprising. The administration bungled the occupation of Iraq so badly
that it effectively aborted any realistic hope of establishing democracy.
Any Iraqi government installed by the U.S. is likely too illegitimate to
survive as anything other than a police state. Rather than establishing
a democracy, the administration is likely to be content with an authoritarian
regime capable of maintaining itself in power, protecting new U.S. economic
interests in Iraq, and making sure that Iraqi crude flows without interruption.
With respect to foreign policy, freedom may be conservative code for nothing
more than authoritarian capitalism.
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- Traditionally, Americans mark the end the Holiday Season
by making lighthearted, self-mocking New Years Resolutions to avoid the
kinds of unhealthy indulgence that peaked during the holidays. Perhaps
we ought to begin 2004 with a more serious individual commitment--resolving
to reject rank nonsense whenever we hear it from politicians.
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- http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/11414_BushInIraq.html
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