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05/25/2005: Thought for the Day:
The war in Iraq is reaching its most critical stage, a stage that should be supported by civilized people and powers everywhere—Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern—regardless of their views about the war at the outset. Yet, just as President Bush should be recalibrating and refining a case for this support, both to the American people and to the rest of the world, he's rehashing canned clichés and shallow falsehoods, which will only deepen the disaffection.
On Monday, at a White House press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush was asked whether he thought the Iraqi insurgency was getting harder to defeat militarily.
"No, I don't think so," Bush replied. "I think they're being defeated. And that's why they continue to fight. The worst thing for them is to see democracy. … The worst problem that an ideologue that uses terror to try to get their way is to see a free society emerge. And I'm confident we're making great progress in Iraq."
Almost since the second phase of the war began, President Bush and his aides have been reciting this mantra—that the insurgents fight so dirty because they're so desperate. The claim had a whiff of self-deception back then; after 18 months of nonstop guerrilla warfare, with the insurgents still mounting 70 attacks a day, it borders on the pathological.
--Fred Kaplan
Len on 05.25.05 @ 06:23 AM CST
