On September 16, 2007 in Baghdad, the private security firm Blackwater USA killed 10-20 people in a shooting spree. Details are on CNN.com and MSNBC.com. Many people have commented on the inevitable nature of these killings, which arise from the privatization of the military. Blackwater USA has been involved in many such killings, always writing them off as self-defense. They tried that again this time, but no one believes them. And many people are taking a second look at previous events with similar explanations.
As the truth about Walter Reed Medical Center and the rotten treatment of wounded soldiers and veterans emerges, it is hard to overstate the profound betrayal of the military perpetrated by the Bush administration. And yes, betrayal is the right word. America is graced to have a volunteer professional military that surpasses all armed forces in the world. Yet the root of that military is trust. The men and women who serve, their immediate spouses and children, and their extended families all place their trust in the American people as represented by the government. These true patriots have been betrayed by this administration, repeatedly and thoroughly, on the block of its own ideology. It is not too strong to say that this betrayal is a disgrace.
Many Americans were shocked to find out that the administration of Walter Reed Medical Center was outsourced to a Halliburton subsidiary led my a man whose record exudes corporate incompetence. Why was it outsourced? Because of the ideological belief that government cannot do anything right, and privatization is always better. And perhaps, to line the pockets of cronies. Hanging in the balance are the men and women of the Army who were wounded, many of them severely, in battle.
Let us recall that this was not the first time we were shocked by the impact of ideology. Secretary Rumsfeld sent over a hundred thousand American soldiers into Iraq without the proper equipment, despite funding levels for the war that now approach half a trillion dollars. When challenged by uniformed soldiers about the lack of appropriate armor, Rumsfeld said flippantly, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might wish to have.” He failed to remind us that the Iraq War was a war of choice.
President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld sent the troops into the war without proper armor on their vehicles, and without the helmets that could protect soldiers from the traumatic brain injuries that are rampant among our soldiers and Marines. In all the money to fund the war, they could not find a way to buy the helmets that would most help our men and women. Non-profit organizations had to be formed to raise money and buy the helmets one at a time to protect our soldiers. Is this not a profound betrayal of our trust? Don’t we—all of us—expect more from our civilian leadership in this government?
Perhaps the single most cynical act of all became evident this week through the Scooter Libby trial, and the guilty verdict. One juror said: “We felt sorry for him because he is clearly the fall guy.” It was not Libby who was the source of the cynicism, but Dick Cheney and George W. Bush themselves. They made a false case for war. They knew it was false. They even tried to take out a vendetta on those who called them on the lie by compromising national security by outing a CIA agent. They sent our men and women into a war that was not necessary, that had nothing at all to do with terrorism, and they knew it. The did it to serve an ideological goal that had no basis in fact.
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have demonstrated themselves to be dishonest enemies of the American military. They demonstrate the most profound contempt for the men and women who serve. When the families of soldiers killed in action are invited to visit the president, they may not show him pictures of their sons and daughters. He vacuously refers to them as “the loved one.” Never a name. Never a face. Nothing but contempt for the pain of others caused by their own cynicism. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have betrayed our military and the American people. There is no other way to say it. These men—Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush—are an American disgrace.
Anthony Signorelli is author of Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Consevatives
The past several weeks have provided the American people with a stunning look at the nature of our leadership and the source of our collective unease. The rhetoric emanating from the president, vice president, secretary of state, and secretary of defense answer the question that has vexed many: How did we get so divided?
From the president’s Iraq speech to the vice president’s interview last Wednesday with CNN, these officials consistently deny the truth that most Americans are coming to understand—our effort in Iraq is failing and we need a new strategy.
This denial of truth, the cited “facts” about Iraq, and the continued, deliberate association of Iraq with al Qaeda amount to a quintessential demonstration of the divide and conquer strategy. Division is created by the constant assertion of false facts, and by the association of real facts that have nothing to do with one another. These two tactics are the methods to implement the strategy.
The dialogue of the people becomes divisive because we cannot even agree on the facts. Vice President Cheney, in his interview on January 24, continued to assert an association between al Qaeda with Iraq, that weapons of mass destruction were imminently available to Saddam Hussein, and that the actions of the administration in Iraq have made us safer. The first two assertions are demonstrably false, and the last is an assessment that is highly speculative. When our leaders can speak such falsehoods, is it any wonder that a people predisposed to trusting their leaders becomes divided?
The legacy of this division is something we are likely to live with for a very long time.
Anthony Signorelli is the author of Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives (www.calltoliberty.org).
The doubt we feel about the President’s New Way Forward derives from a consistent pattern of being wrong on just about everything having to do with Iraq. The American people rightly wonder if they’ve been lied to or led by sheer incompetence. We are beginning to recognize the possibility that decisions are made with ideological blinders. Either way, it hardly matters. We are wary and skeptical of what the President and his people are saying.
The skepticism derives from a sense that they may be wrong or misleading again. Why does the President keep talking about 9/11 in reference to Iraq when everyone knows the two had nothing to do with each other except in the President’s mind? Why did he challenge Iran and Syria in a speech on Iraq? Is there another plan there? Why did he lecture the moderate Arab states in the region? Why does he think the Iraqi government can or will deliver now what it has repeatedly promised and failed in the past? Why does he believe that 21,500 additional troops will change the balance when the same troop levels failed before? Why can’t he provide clear objectives and milestones, as well as a –planned course of actions in case those milestones are not met? The American people have all these questions, and the President has no answers.
Because he has never provided good answers, the American people doubt the President has any answers. We wonder what the real agenda is. Why would he call his new plan the “New Way Forward” when the Iraq Study Group’s plan was called “The Way Forward”? Deliberate obfuscation? Americans are increrasingly tired of this shell game. We want a successful response, but we increasingly doubt that the President can get us there.
Anthony Signorelli is the author of Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives.
On New Year’s Day, I published an op-ed piece in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on the impact of the Iraq Study Group. At the time, Americans were looking hard for real answers to a tough problem in Iraq. We were looking for compelling ideas and engaged in serious dialogue with one another. We sought creativity, penetrating insight, and real solutions. We were willing to be led well.
Last Wednesday night, President Bush squandered the opportunity to lead America again. Much as he did in the wake of 9/11, the president did not choose a path of dynamic leadership based on thought, reason, and dialogue, but rather a path of ideological purity regardless of the facts. This was his choice, and it has been deeply disturbing at the very base of the American body politic.
Overnight, the dialogue that had emerged from the consensus that Iraq was a real and serious problem changed into a polarized argument for or against his plan. It did not need to be this way. The subtext to the whole debate is the subconscious sense Americans have of a President imprisoned by his own ideology. Rather than a creative strategy to solve the problem in Iraq, the president delivered what amounted to a declaration of his strategy to expand the war beyond Iraq. He threatened Iran and Syria. He lectured the moderate nations in the region, saying that they “must understand” what he wants them to understand. Most Americans don’t talk to our neighbors like that, whether we like them or not; the president’s rhetoric is disturbing.
The tragedy of this episode is that the American people really seek a new way forward. We seek solutions to the problem. We want to discuss new plans, new ideas, new solutions. The president gave us no reason to believe that his new plan is anything but more of the same. Same rhetoric. Same results. A stunning failure of leadership exceeded only by the decision to invade Iraq as part of a counter terror strategy in the wake of 9/11.
Anthony Signorelli is the author of Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives.
Like many Americans, I was stunned by the President’s speech last night. It was not his call for the additional 20,000 troops to go to Iraq, but all the other material around that call. The president did not unveil a new strategy, but rather reiterated his ideology driving foreign policy.
We had a right to expect a change in the rhetoric and the reasoning. A national election repudiated the President’s policy and performance in Iraq. He fired Rumsfeld and found a replacement who is said to be a realist, not a neoconservative. Generals are being replaced. We waited months for the input of the Iraq Study Group, which recommended a very different strategy going forward. But there was no change in rhetoric. There was no change in reasoning. There will be no change in result.
Instead, the President exhibited the same obfuscation of the last three years: Iraq-9/11, 9/11-Iraq. Because he can’t get over this, we are led to conclude he believes it. No one believes it. If is a false claim. The President seems detached from reality.
The President claimed the mission of American troops was clear, then identified it as an effort “to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.” “Helping” is not a clearly attainable mission; it has no milestones, no indicators of success or failure. It perpetuates an ongoing effort. He committed an additional 21,500 troops to this effort.
Beyond the escalation in Iraq, he escalated the confrontation that has been brewing with Iran and Syria in direct contradiction to the advice of many, including the Iraq Study Group. He said he is sending a naval battle group to be in position to interdict Iran’s support of Shiites in Iraq, and vilified both regimes again. He refuses to change course and consider negotiation toward the common interests we do share with those countries. Apparently, he is trying to prepare Americans for additional military confrontation with Iran, if not all out invasion.
The speech was essentially a statement and reiteration of neoconservative foreign policy, not the much ballyhooed “new way forward.” The President has removed all doubt: His presidency is driven by ideology. His policy has indeologicla blinders on. He cannot see what is in the best interests of America because those blinders tilt all the information in a certain direction. Seeng it displayed this way—so publicly, so directly, and so clearly—many Americans are deeply unsettled. We are inching toward an unavoidable conclusion we’d prefer not to face: The President is a dangerous man.
I say this with all the gravity such words demand. But the President’s speech and his policies all point toward more war, not less; his speech tied together all the pieces.
* Keep the Iraq War going and maintain the American presence there.
* Expand US Army to provide the ability for another fight in the same region.
* Provoke Iran and Syria into that fight.
These ideas are reckless and dangerous, and the President is leading us there.
Anthony Signorelli is the author of Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives
The Iraq Study Group (ISG), also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, issued its report two weeks ago. The President’s neoconservative policy leaders have incrementally rejected the report’s conclusions, some for ideological reasons, others on more practical grounds. These leaders include people in powerful positions, such as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. It appears unlikely that the report’s conclusions will be adopted.
The Iraq Study Group (ISG), also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, issued its report two weeks ago. The President’s neoconservative policy leaders have incrementally rejected the report’s conclusions. These leaders include Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Some neoconservative foreign policy “experts” reject the conclusions on ideological grounds, while others reject them on more practical grounds. For these reasons, it appears that the report’s conclusions are unlikely to be adopted.
But the ISG report has provided one significant accomplishment. It created an irrefutable fact set from which policy debates can occur. For the first time in three and a half years, Americans are united in their understanding of what’s going on in Iraq. Smokescreens issued by ideologues on all sides have drifted away and dissipated: Media underreporting “the good things” in Iraq, media acquiescence in not showing the dead and injured American soldiers returning home, Dick Cheney propaganda such as “the insurgency is in its last throes”—all these characterizations are debunked. Even the president has finally acknowledged that his project in Iraq is not going well.
The result is a palpable change in the kitchen table discussions across America (at least in homes where such conversation is still allowed). On the topic of Iraq, the facts can no longer be written off. There is a consensus that the situation is bad and we are losing the war. While most of the specific facts do not arise in the conversation, the consensus has changed the discussion from this argument over facts—is there a problem, are we winning or losing, is it bad or good—to a discussion of how we should solve it. In other words, the rhetorical debate over whether we are winning or not is over. Citizens cannot demonize each other for being stupid or uninformed anymore. The ISG report pushed America beyond its self-inflicted blindness and significantly altered this debate. This change is the report’s greatest and very valuable contribution.
