President Bush Fights the Strawmen

Originally posted: March 21, 2006
President Bush fights the strawmen
Posted by Frank James at 1:21 pm CST

More thoughts on the president's conference today.

The press conference once again showed the president's fondness for the old
debater's trick of setting up straw men and knocking them down, the result
being that you look like you've demolished your opponents' ridiculous
argument.

It's the rhetorical equivalent of fighting a battle on the ground of your
choosing. The president often turns to this tactic whenever his approach to
the war on terror is questioned.

Here's how it came up today.

REPORTER: I know you've said about your presidency that you don't pay that
much attention to the polls, but --

PRESIDENT BUSH: Correct.

REPORTER: -- there is a handful that have come back and they all say the
exact same thing, that a growing number of Americans are questioning the
trustworthiness of you and this White House. Does that concern you?

After saying he understands the concerns of Americans who see the daily Iraq
violence and that he would never endanger U.S. troops for a cause he thought
was lost, Bush said:

Now, some in this country don't -- I can understand -- that don't view the
enemy that way. I guess they kind of view it as an isolated group of people
that occasionally kill. I just don't see it that way. I see them bound by a
philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries.
The enemy has said that it's just a matter of time before the United States
loses its nerve and withdraws from Iraq. That's what they have said, and
their objective for driving us out of Iraq is to have a place from which to
launch their campaign to overthrow modern governments and moderate
governments in the Middle East as well as to continue attacking places like
the United States.

Now, maybe some discount those words as kind of meaningless propaganda. I
don't, Jim. I take them really seriously, and I think everybody in
government should take them seriously and respond accordingly. And so it's
-- I've got to continue to speak as clearly as I possibly can about the
consequences of success and the consequences of failure, and why I believe
we can succeed.

I've listened in Washington to many critics of the president's prosecution
of the war on terror for several years now. Not once have I heard any of
them minimize the threat represented by al Qaeda or its shadowy allies.

Serious critics ranging from Richard Clarke, the former White House
counterterror official to former (and future) Democratic presidential
candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) have all ascribed to al Qaeda the same
vast ambitions and strategic designs the president does.

Even Howard Dean, when he was running for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2003, said: "I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a
different path to protecting America's security: To focus on al Qaeda, which
is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen
the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with
the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein."

It's not an understanding of al Qaeda's aims that critics, including some
Republicans, differ with the president on but the correct response to those
"Islamofascist" ambitions, as the president would say.

So a follow-up question to ask the president is, does he really believe that
his critics have dismissed the threat from al Qaeda, in which case what
evidence has the White House staff found to support this? When have critics
said al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists "are an isolated group of people
that occasionally kill?"

The president's remark echoes comments by Deputy White House chief of staff
Karl Rove who in a New York speech last year said: "...Liberals saw the
savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer
therapy and understanding for our attackers." So it's obviously bouncing
around the White House and its allies. But that doesn't necessarily make it
true.

I don't think the White House staff will be able to find remarks by serious
critics of the administration's war-on-terror policy minimizing the al Qaeda
threat. If anything, the critics have often sounded more alarmist than the
administration.

Which is how we get back to the strawmen.