At his prime-time press conference Thursday night–only his second since assuming the presidency more than two years ago–President Bush showed why he’s in this diplomatic vise. He’s got a good case but has made a hash out of it. His two key mistakes: a failure to build momentum and a failure to drill down to a deeper, more compelling logic for war.
Building the right momentum required a trait the late columnist Joseph Alsop found in Franklin Roosevelt: “longheadedness”–an ability to calculate how things will play out. During the past year, Bush didn’t do that. For instance, at one point in the news conference, Bush said: “That happens to be my last choice–the use of force.” Sounds good, but it simply wasn’t believable. Everyone knows that war has been the president’s first choice–not his last–since at least the summer of 2002. In trying to play the reluctant sheriff, Bush cast himself in a role that rang false. He has, for months, been the eager sheriff.
Imagine if instead of cowboyspeak about “regime change” and other name-calling last year, Bush had offered Saddam Hussein a timetable for disarmament. Then, after the dictator failed several tests, Bush’s anger would not have seemed so “personal,” as was suggested in one of last night’s questions he didn’t answer. That timetable could have even been independent of the United Nations–a second track alongside inspections to keep the pressure on. But if it had been offered in the spirit of a genuine desire for disarmament, Saddam’s unwillingness to comply would have been more glaring. Bush’s problem was that he started with a war cry and had nothing to escalate to. His anger has become a kind of monotone, which seriously depletes its effectiveness.
The same lack of long-term thinking applies to the U.N. It’s one thing for France or Russia to veto a Security Council resolution. That has happened before. But Bush seems determined to go ahead even if the U.S. is actually outvoted on the Council. He wants his opponents there to be on the record opposing the war. Why? To rub their faces in it after a big victory on the ground? Smart diplomacy is about preventing other countries from embarrassment, not causing it. Bush’s satisfaction in being the principled loser in the Council is outweighing his long-term interest in repairing relations with our allies.
The second big problem with the Bush sales job is one of simple logic. Bush was lucky that no reporter asked him about his administration’s most recent budget request for rebuilding Afghanistan–a big fat zero. (Congress added a couple of hundred million). He seems to think we can play 52-card pickup and then simply leave the room.
The same logical inconsistency applies to North Korea, which he described as a “regional problem.” Let’s get this straight: Saddam’s potential development of nuclear weapons five or 10 years from now constitutes an imminent threat to the United States, but North Korea’s possession of them five to 10 weeks from now does not? I personally favor taking out Saddam now so that he’s not Kim Jong Il in a few years. But it seems extremely unwise to ignore the threat of North Korea just because we have our heart set on hitting someone else.
The president’s deeper logical problem relates to the way he uses the bully pulpit to make an argument. His habit–on display again Thursday night–is to simply assert, assert, assert until the message sinks in. It’s as if war supporters believe that if they repeat the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection enough, people will eventually believe it.
Imagine if instead the president explained that terrorism–by Al Qaeda or anyone else–simply doesn’t work in the long term without state sponsorship. Terrorists can deploy weapons of mass destruction but they can’t make them. That requires a rogue state. Over time, no rogue states–no terrorism of mass destruction. This would have required Bush to move beyond platitudes to a more nuanced analysis of how Iraq’s potential to develop nukes is at the heart of the rationale for war. The fact that he didn’t offer the nuclear argument (in part out of fear of looking hypocritical on North Korea) explains in part why the larger case has been made so poorly. Instead, we get a scattershot “If it’s Tuesday this must be the 9-11 connection” style of selling the war.
My biggest concern is not that Bush has already decided to go to war (You could tell that from the past tense he used: “I wish Saddam Hussein had listened”). It’s that he made the decision not this week or last but many months ago, and he never seemed to refine it. Now the consequences of the decision are about to be out of his control. “Events are in the saddle and tend to ride mankind,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Soon enough, we’ll know which direction.
