Two Archetypes of Demagoguery: Bush and Lieberman

There are two kinds of people who cannot be counted on to lead us out of the wilderness of the Iraqi desert: George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman.

Lets take the first, more obvious demagogue, Bush:

By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people. Against this adversary, there is only one effective response: We will never back down. We will never give in. And we will never accept anything less than complete victory.

Bush gives this message to a captive audiencee, like a class of midshipmen at the Naval Academy. His overarching message was the same as it ever was: We'll stay in Iraq as long as we need to and not any longer - a message that really is a dodge.

This is totally noninformative. After all, nearly everyone wants to stay in Iraq as long as necessary - where people differ is in what constitutes "necessary."

The U.S. presence in Iraq is fueling a large part of the insurgency, and that withdrawing troops could actually help make that country more secure. Pragmatic considerations - elections (in Iraq and in this country), the economic costs of the war, and the increasing strains on the military - are also forcing all sides to think and talk about ways to leave Iraq, and signposts as to when.

The wild card in this picture, though, is Bush, the guy who got us there is the first place. Bush is the guy who risked the global war on terrorism (GWOT) in order to settle old scores with Saddam. Bush's goals in Iraq are "maximalist": The president doesn't just expect success in Iraq, he wants "complete victory," and to eradicate the insurgency and build a democratic state that's a beacon to its neighbors. Bush is, furthermore, immune to the political pressure that other leaders in Washington face: he doesn't have to run again. It's not a concern for him how thin the American military gets stretched or how depleted our treasury becomes. For Bush, this struggle is personal: "God [his 'real father'] put me here" to fight. And fight on is what he must do to redeem his presidential legacy of having laid to rest the notorious Vietnam Syndrome.

Don't count on Bush to measure continued occupation of Iraq against American national interests.

Secondly, we have Momentum Joe Lieberman:

History will judge us harshly if we do not stretch across the divide of distrust to join together to complete our mission successfully in Iraq. It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.

This viewpoint that we need to put behind us the lies, promises and deceptions that manipulated congress and the MSM to endorse Bush's invasion and occupation behind us is held by many GOP and Democratic office holders, or stakeholders. Some of these aspire to national elected office: they do not want to be ripped in the future for having been 'soft on terrorism'.

The first problem associated with this view is that the magnitude of the consequences from these 'lies, promises and deceptions' approaches that which constitute war crimes. A second problem is that the individual authors of these 'lies, promises and deceptions' have never been censored, fired, or indicted for their felonies. Some of the obvious suspects have been promoted or awarded by the president.

So, once fooled, are we now to believe the same people who tell us that 'progress is being made', that 'redeployments will begin in 2006, or that 'a democratic nation can be built in Iraq and become a beacon to its neighbors'?

So, Senators Lieberman, Clinton, and Biden are no more credible and Bush himself.

There is nothing transparent about this war party and its fellow travelers, other than the lies that got us into Iraq, and the lies by which they currently contrive to keep us there.