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Roving too far Saturday, Oct 14, 2006 By Doug Thompson Listening to Karl Rove talk about the Iraq war was like listening to a good malpractice lawyer. He can be as impassioned and loyal as he wants. His client's still a quack who cut out the wrong kidney. Rove is the president's most trusted political adviser. He came to Fayetteville on Tuesday to help cheer up the state GOP base and raise some money. They'd need no cheering up and could raise a lot more money if the Iraq war wasn't "drifting sideways" and in need of a "change of course." Those are the words of the hitherto faithful Sen. John Warner, R-Va. Warner's chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Secretary of the Navy. The gap between the reluctant realism of Warner and the rhetoric of Rove is plain by now. The question boggling me Tuesday was why Rove is still saying it. Political necessity, I suppose, but that just raises another question. How did an operator like Rove get this cornered? George W. Bush is the first U.S. president whose party gained seats in Congress during a midterm election, back in 2002. Then Dub was re-elected in 2004, after the Iraq occupation was clearly adrift: No weapons of mass destruction, no democracy and no peace. The GOP gained four seats in the Senate and three in the House in 2004 anyway. Republicans did all that by following Rove's advice. Call everybody who criticizes or opposes the president a coward, a fool or a traitor. Use all three insults if you can. Rove's flawless campaigning killed thoughtful debate of the war except in insulated, academic circles. This cut off the president from vital challenges to very bad assumptions. Iraq went seriously sour before facts raised their own challenges. The fault's not all Rove's or the president's, or even the Republican majority in Congress. Democrats should have fought back. They should know more about war and human nature than they do. They should be able to debate the subject of war coldly. They should know that fear, anger or patriotic passion trump humanitarian ideals too reliably to depend on those ideals in matters of life and death. "The Emperor's New Clothes" is not a fairy tale. It's political satire. The Iraq war's been drifting for years. Too few of our leaders had the courage to tell the naked king. Letting the president wander around nude hasn't been a favor to him, either. Karl Rove was chief tailor. The moment that Bush, Rove and the rest could have freed this country from Iraq was after the president's victory in 2004. Bush had the votes, the majority and prestige to survive a change of course. Instead, he went on a forlorn quest to privatize Social Security, wasting much political capital. Hurricane Katrina later wiped out most of the capital that remained. Now the president's drained of power and out of options. For instance, there was a dysfunctional government in South Vietnam 43 years ago. The administration of John F. Kennedy gave assurances to Republic of Vietnam army generals that a coup would be all right. Bush can't even do that because he disbanded the Iraqi army. Jim Baker, the elder President Bush's secretary of state and righthand man, appeared on ABC two days before Rove came to Fayetteville. Baker said, according to news accounts: "I think it's fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run.'" Baker co-chairs the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan bunch of Wise Men. They will tell us we need a major change of course in Iraq. The announcement will come soon after the election ends. Expect the "change of course" to be either a strong-man government in Iraq or breaking the country into a loosely aligned set of three strong-man governments. George W. Bush: 60 years old, leader of the free world, and still being bailed out of tight spots by his daddy's lawyer. ------ Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Morning New. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
