Bush's Betrayal of History

Bush's Betrayal of History
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com



Thursday 17 November 2005
Defiant of rising political blowback on Iraq, Bush blasts his truth-
telling critics as traitors to the cause.

One year ago, after his reelection, President Bush brashly
asserted, "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and
now I intend to spend it. It is my style." Twelve months later,
Republicans were thrashed in elections for the governorships of
Virginia and New Jersey. In St. Paul, Minn., the Democratic mayor
who endorsed Bush for reelection a year ago was defeated by another
Democrat by a margin of 70 to 30 percent. Then Republicans in
Congress split into rancorous factions and failed to pass Bush's
budget. That was followed by the Senate's rejection of Bush's
torture and detainee policy and by overwhelming passage of a
resolution stipulating that the president must submit a strategy on
withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

The turn in public opinion against Bush has been slowly considered
and is therefore also firm. Now a majority believes his
administration manipulated prewar intelligence to lead the country
into the Iraq war, and nearly two-thirds disapprove of how he has
handled the war. His political capital appears spent with more than
three years left in his term. He has retreated from the ruins of his
grandiose agenda into a defense of his past.

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, Bush was the man
of action who never looked back, openly dismissive of history. When
asked shortly afterward by Bob Woodward how he would be judged on
Iraq, Bush replied, "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead." But
his obsessive interest in the subject is not posthumous. The
Senate's decision last week to launch an investigation into the
administration's role in prewar disinformation, after the Democrats
forced the issue in a rare secret session, has provoked a furious
presidential reaction.

On Veterans' Day, Nov. 11, Bush addressed troops at an Army
base: "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that
war began." He charged that "some Democrats and antiwar critics are
now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American
people," even though they knew "a bipartisan Senate investigation
found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence
community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs." In fact,
the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was not authorized to look
into that question, but only whether the intelligence community was
correct in its analysis. Moreover, the Senate Intelligence Committee
under Republican leadership connived with the White House to prevent
a promised investigation into the administration's involvement in
prewar intelligence. Its revival by Democrats is precisely the
proximate cause that has triggered Bush's paroxysm of revenge.

Several days later, Bush spoke before troops at Elmendorf Air Force
Base in Alaska, where he stated that "some Democrats who voted to
authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past," and
are "sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy." U.S.
soldiers "deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to
send them into war continue to stand behind them," Bush admonished.
His essential thrust was that as "a ruthless enemy determined to
destroy our way of life" besieges us from without, the most
insidious undermining comes from within. Thus an American president
updated the "stab in the back" theory first articulated in February
1919 by Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who stated that "the political
leadership disarmed the unconquered army and delivered over Germany
to the destructive will of the enemy."

The former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a member
of the Defense Policy Board, always notable for his visions, has
compared George W. Bush in his travails to Abraham Lincoln before
Gettysburg. Gingrich, who has recently written a series of
counterfactual novels depicting a Southern triumph in the Civil War,
communicated his latest flight of fancy to a longtime former
diplomat who has served under Republican and Democratic
administrations alike. The diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous,
recounted their conversation to me. "We are at war," insisted
Gingrich. "With whom?" the diplomat asked. "The Democrats," Gingrich
replied without hesitation. For Gingrich, ever the Republican guru,
history is a plaything of the partisan present.

In Rome last week, a leading Italian political figure of the center-
left told me he was opposed to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Iraq - contrary to the public stance of the left coalition.
According to his reasoning, Iraq has become a magnet and training
center for terrorists, and if the U.S. withdraws the terrorists
might come to Europe. I later learned that this was a common
analysis of European intelligence agencies as well.

Bush's adoption of the Ludendorff strategy of blaming weak
politicians for military failure and exalting "will" sets him at
odds with liberal democracy. His understanding of history also
clashes with the conservative tradition that acknowledges human
fallibility and respects the past. Bush's presidency is an effort to
defy history, not only in America, writing on the world as a blank
slate. The New Deal can be abolished without consequences, Arab
states can be transformed into democracies if only they will it. Now
he wants to erase memory of his actual record on the war,
substituting a counterfactual history. "Fellow citizens, we cannot
escape history," said Lincoln. Never mind.



===========