The administration, the press, and the state of our union
There is a widely held belief that the discrediting of virtually all of the reasons offered by the Bush administration in the lead up to the war in Iraq is really unimportant because the war, for whatever reasons it was putatively waged, still brought about the greater good of removing Saddam from power. I can't argue that removing Saddam from power was not a worthy goal, or a worthy outcome. It remains to be seen if the Iraqi people and the mideast as a whole will be safer and better off with whatever government eventually fills the current void, but it is likely that they will not be worse off than they were under Saddam.
Of greater concern to the American people is the effect that this administration's campaign had and will continue to have on our political discourse. Most of what they told us now seems to be untrue. It may be that the Administration believed it to be true and, relying on good faith but bad intelligence or judgment (or both), told America and the world what it believed to be true. It seems more likely, however, that the administration knew there was at best weak proof of what it was alleging but sold this reason, that Iraq had advance chemical and nuclear weapons programs and the ability to either transfer such weapons to terrorists or launch them at us, because, particularly in the wake of 9/11, preying on our fears is a pretty effective marketing tool. 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" is a darned good line, even if it isn't based on reality. It is awfully hard to conjure up similar images and draft lines as catchy if you are trying to appeal to our humanitarian concern for people living a half a world away. It is also an approach and a motivation that this particular crowd, those currently holding the reins of power in this Administration, has historically rejected. Jimmy Carter was famously derided when he made concern for the human rights records of other countries the hub of his foreign policy. Typically, human rights in foreign countries have been a concern of the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney only when those countries have been communist controlled. Appealing to that motive and trying to sell it to the American people goes against their grain. It most probably is also not their real motivation, anyway.
What we end up with, then, is a government leading its people to war under false pretenses. Not a fresh idea; Jackson Browne sang about it 20 years ago, the Johnson Administration did it 40 years ago. But perhaps never before, in this country, at least, has the selling of a war been so carefully orchestrated, with every significant administration spokesman, from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Fleischer on down on the same page (usually). When contrary facts popped up to undermine the message, these facts were not commented on; the message was just repeated louder, with more vociferousness. Those who questioned the message were called unpatriotic and cowardly. And many people, most significantly and disappointingly the mainstream press, were cowed. Despite our recent history, despite the lies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations about Viet Nam, despite Watergate, despite the Iran-Contra scandal, despite all the inconsistencies between the words coming out of the White House and the observable facts, the press was mostly quiescent. Even now, as they leap on the Plame scandal, in the wake of the "16 words" brouhaha, the press is slow to sniff out the story. Indeed, they have to be led to it, and, as with the horse led to water, are still reluctant to drink. The instincts of most journalists covering the White House, or maybe of their editors, is to not get out ahead of the pack. Don't say or write anything that will bring the focus of the White House or the right wing pundits upon yourself. Wait until somebody else (thank you David Corn of the Nation and Paul Krugman of the Times) breaks a story, lay low awhile to see which way the wind is blowing, then leap on it if there is enough cover.
The result of this is that we have a "national discourse" on matters of ultimate concern to all of us that is fraught with poor information from its sources that is not questioned by the conduits that provide it to the people. It may be that the press feels it is being "unbiased" when it doesn't tell us that the words coming out of the mouth of the president or a presidential candidate do not match the observable facts. In fact, it is probably more a symptom of timidity, ignorance and laziness. They are afraid to rise out of the pack lest they be slapped back down, they are too often too ignorant of the facts and their implications to call them to our attention and they are too lazy to do the leg work to gain the sophistication to understand what they are reporting on. So we are left with lies from the source, amplified by the pundits and talk radio hosts and those of us on the ground, the news consumers, the voters, either get distorted information or have to work darn hard to get any kind of balance, let alone truth.
This is no way to run a democracy.
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