I just had a bit of a revelation upon hearing this NPR report about CIA missile strikes in Pakistan:
CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a “complete al-Qaida defeat” in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan….
The intelligence reports have been shared with President Barack Obama and underlie his decision to authorize the continued use of unmanned aircraft to launch missile and precision-guided bombs against suspected al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s border region….
The CIA has been using drone aircraft to carry out attacks on suspected al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Pakistan for several years, but such attacks were significantly expanded last summer under orders from President George W. Bush.
My epiphany relates to the attack of “Bush hatred” that’s frequently leveled against progressives, i.e., “you’re so blinded by irrational rage, you can’t acknowledge when he does something good.” And what I just realized was this: it wasn’t about rage, it was about trust.
Fact is, if I had heard this report 15 days ago, I would have immediately assumed it was bullshit. Even hearing it now, especially the claim that al-Qaeda is “defeated”, makes me wonder a bit about whether this is coming from the Obama military apparatus or holdovers. (NPR, all of your sources are anonymous. Stop it. You’re better than that.)
But today my first reaction is to think this is good news, whereas in December I would have needed a book of E-ticket passes to the newly-opened Peshawar Disneyland before I believed anything W said about the region.
So when this president says something good about what the last president did, well, props where props are due. It’s not that George couldn’t do anything right. It’s that he lied to us so often, we couldn’t believe him when he did.
I can’t believe you’re defending that incompetent, incoherent, lying, cheating, murdering warmonger! How DARE you!!!
Man, that felt good….
OK, so three things:
1) Now that you’ve had this epihpany, can we agree that whether or not you believe the news, the reality is that it’s either true or it’s not? And if it’s true, and everyone on God’s green earth was willing to call it bullshit 15 days ago, that our ability to learn about what’s going on in the country via the existing news media (online and otherwise) is so seriously warped around this reality-TV-show mentality of “our guy has to win and the other guy has to lose?”
2) Isn’t it absolutely amazing that George W. Bush didn’t climb to the top of the capitol dome with the world’s largest megaphone and announce to everyone simultaneously that we are kicking Al Qaeda’s ass, and that all these goddamn morons with their 24-hour TV talk shows who spend their days painting him as an incompetent boob can shove their cameras up their touch-screen enabled asses? I know that if I were having that kind of success and everyone was talking about me the way they talked about him, I’d strongly consider it.
3) Can we finally agree that for the past eight years, when I’d read something like this and point it out to you, that I wasn’t simply “leaning right,” but merely pointing out that it’s almost statistically impossible for 100% of everything a president tries to go completely and horribly wrong?
I can’t believe you’re defending that incompetent, incoherent, lying, cheating, murdering warmonger!
Oooo. The day I get you to say that without using <sarcasm> tags, I’ll do a Snoopy dance and post it to YouTube.
can we agree that whether or not you believe the news, the reality is that it’s either true or it’s not?
I think that this might be a tad simplistic for some topics. E.g., “complete al-Qaeda defeat” in Pakistan is probably up for a great deal of interpretation. Agreed, of course, that it’s best if our perceptions of the world match as closely as possible the Platonic state of the world as it actually is. If I remember correctly, this would be the exact reason why we were all horrified by the phrase “reality-based community”.
And if it’s true, and everyone on God’s green earth was willing to call it bullshit 15 days ago, that our ability to learn about what’s going on in the country via the existing news media (online and otherwise) is so seriously warped around this reality-TV-show mentality of “our guy has to win and the other guy has to lose?”
Again, some things are zero-sum, and some aren’t. I think we can and should agree on the Will Rogers idea, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president and I hope he does a good job.” I remind you that Bush had an approval rating through the roof in 2002, which included my side; he lost it because he didn’t do a good job. At some point, he did a bad enough job that it became expected of him; call me ahead of the curve in that I thought this started happening in January, 2001, and had that opinion exacerbated on 9/11, unlike most people.
Isn’t it absolutely amazing that George W. Bush didn’t climb to the top of the capitol dome with the world’s largest megaphone and announce to everyone simultaneously that we are kicking Al Qaeda’s ass
Yeah, you know what? That is amazing. In fact, it’s amazing enough that it really makes me doubt whether the report is true. I’m still waiting to hear if the people who released this information are Bush holdovers who burrowed their way into permanent civil service positions; that honestly strikes me as more credible than the idea that we were winning on 1/19 and W decided not to tell us.
On the other hand, the only reason I can think of why Bush wouldn’t tell us we won one of our wars, is if he was afraid that a win would cause America to say, “Okay, now let’s bring them home.” But to say that, I’d have to presume that Bush was literally a warmonger with a vested interest in fighting wars for their own sake. Again, I’m hoping to get more data before I’m drawing a conclusion.
I wasn’t simply “leaning right,” but merely pointing out that it’s almost statistically impossible for 100% of everything a president tries to go completely and horribly wrong?
I think the question of whether you leaned right is easily settled by most common definitions of “right”; really, the question in my mind is where you really stood in 2000 before some of these questions ever came up in the first place. That said, I’ve got nothing against an ideological lean, as a hard-left kind of guy myself — my goal is to call you on it when I don’t think you’re backing it up with the facts.
As for statistical likelihoods… I’d like to think that we should hold presidents to a slightly higher standard for getting things right, and I think the last guy was preternaturally good at screwing up. I’m also very grateful that his talents are now an academic issue.
I remind you that Bush had an approval rating through the roof in 2002, which included my side; he lost it because he didn’t do a good job. At some point, he did a bad enough job that it became expected of him
My point all along has been that the thing he was worst at was communicating how or what he was doing. My guess is that’s why we didn’t hear about successful drone missions – either the media didn’t consider it a credible story (or, more cynically, one that would sell papers) or the White House decided that putting it out there would start another shit storm about how awful we are, or how deluded Bush was, or both. Better to have silent victories than public debates that you always lose.
Actually, Brian, I have been hearing about successful drone missions; it’s actually a hot topic in the security community because it raises so many questions about the future of war. (I.e., what are the ethical implications if we develop the capacity to go to war without risking our own lives? What are the converse implications if we choose to continue risking our lives when we go to war?) What I haven’t heard is that we won, which strikes me as a little bit surprising.
Your theory that Bush was just bad at communicating is… well, I want to find a less insulting synonym for laughable. During his first six years, dissent was akin to treason in public discourse, and we all know now about how often the NYT and other media used his talking points to set the news agenda. Meanwhile, for the last two years it’s all been about “the surge is working!” and any other tidbits of victory he managed to feed us.
The reason no one believed him is because he lied so often, about so many things, and disparaged the need to show evidence. When he had any, it made headlines, and sometimes they were even true. I think your perception about his silence is coming from the last four months of his term, when he pretty much just gave up and waited to go home.
Well, as we constantly tell each other, we read different media, or at least filter the media we do read differently.
I can’t imagine how you’d call dissent laughable in the first six years of the Bush administration. Remember hundreds of thousands of people protesting the war in major cities? Remember Harry Reid declaring the war lost? Remember Murtha, Kennedy and others slamming the President daily? Remember the New York Times disclosing the wire-tapping program, the data mining program, the SWIFT message tracking program, and showing pictures of the call letters of military transport planes? Remember the indepth coverage of Abu Grahib and Guantanamo Bay? The highly inflated death tolls from Hurricane Katrina? The list goes on & on. Dissent was, and is, alive & well in America. If anything, George W. Bush got more people passionate enough to express it, causing it to rise.
As for his propensity to lie or avoid showing evidence, there I’ll agree with you more than you’d probably think. I’m just questioning cause and effect – at what point does the President decide that explaining himself only digs his hole deeper? At what point, when the news media is consistently irresponsible enough to skip over facts and favor sensationalism, and to put OpEd content on the front page at a whim, does the President decide that it’s better for the country to say nothing than to try and get his message out?
Note: I’m not making excuses for him here. As I said in my original post, I consider his inability to control this phenomenon one of his biggest failures (maybe even his biggest failure), and I give him no free pass for having given up. I’m just saying everyone has a breaking point, and shame on us for finding, and far surpassing, his.
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