- George Bush, the Democrats, and Revisionist History
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- by Gregory R. Weiher
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- OpEdNews.Com
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It was in June that President Bush first began talking about
“revisionist history”, a gambit that took some of us a little by
surprise since he showed no previous signs of having read any
history, revisionist or otherwise.
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- This was a little after he delayed the
homecoming of several hundred American sailors by using their
aircraft carrier to proclaim that the war was over.
But if the war was over, and the point was to be rid of
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, why were no weapons of mass
destruction found, not even at the sites the U.S. said it had
identified? It was those who were impertinent enough to raise this
question that the president accused of revisionist history.
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There’s been a lot of revisionist history around lately,
from the president, and from the Democrats who are trying to
distance themselves from a war that they couldn’t support strongly
enough less than a year ago.
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- The president himself was a lusty
reviser. Rationales for
attacking Iraq were paraded across American television screens. As each was deflated, the administration cycled to the next,
apparently in the belief that fast rotation would keep the public
distracted and keep critics on the defensive.
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Of the revisionists that Bush had in mind, those who focused
on the lack of WsMD, a fair number are prominent Democrats and,
coincidentally, presidential candidates.
But how can this be, since most of these same prominent
Democrats – Kerry, Lieberman, Gephart, Edwards – wrapped
themselves in red, white, and blue in October and voted for the
resolution that gave Bush the go-ahead to attack Iraq?
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“Easy”, say the prominent Democrats.
“We was lied to.” Candidates
Gephart, Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards lament the terrible deception
that President Bush worked on them.
They was befuddled by his powers.
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- In October, Congressman Gephart couldn’t line up behind the
president fast enough, but in July his vision had improved to 20/20
– “President Bush’s factual lapse in his State of the Union
address cannot be simply dismissed . . . This president has a
pattern of using excessive language . . . This continued
recklessness represents a failure of presidential leadership.”
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John Edwards echoed Gephart’s indignation.
“The president when he speaks, has to take responsibility
for what he said . . . And those 16 words were spoken by the
president and he has to take responsibility for them.”
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But what about the prominent Democrats?
Were they not responsible for thinking independently about
the claims that were made by the Bush administration in the run-up
to war? Here are the things that were known about Bush’s case prior
to the bombing:
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- The evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Niger was
fabricated
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- Colin Powell’s speech to the Security Council included
plagiarized and dated material
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- The imported aluminum tubes touted by the administration were
inappropriate to the production of fissile material
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- Reports of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda were found
not to be credible
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fact, twenty-three senators and 133 representatives voted against
the war resolution. How
is this possible, given the president’s loquacity? In the words of Senator Kennedy, “He did not make a
persuasive case that the [Iraqi] threat is imminent and that war is
the only alternative.”
- What’s
at stake here is more than just setting the record straight.
Those concerned for the viability of democracy must be a
little shaken by the path to war in Iraq.
Democracy in America, as Jefferson dreamed it and Madison
designed it, relies upon free discourse and the well-worn system of
checks and balances. It
is hard in a pluralist, federalist democracy to get anything done
because power is widely distributed among groups that have, a
priori, no reason to cooperate.
When something does get done, in theory, it is after a long
process of vetting in which likely consequences are weighed and
disparate voices are heard. The
system is imperfect. But
it is in the interstices between factions and interests and parties
and bureaus and agencies that rights have meaning and there is
latitude for the people to freely pursue their aspirations.
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- In
this system, the loyal opposition plays an extremely important role.
It is up to the opposition to ask questions and to keep the
heat on those in power. The
loyal opposition is at the heart of the pluralist vetting process.
- Let’s face it – the Democrats just didn’t rise to their
calling. They were
cowed by the administration’s media blitz.
(Unfortunately, as Christiane Amanpour, senior correspondent
for CNN, has admitted, the “free press” was just as
pusillanimous.) The
resulting failure is exactly the kind that the founding fathers most
feared – a “democratic excess”.
The administration, using scare tactics rather than
information, waved the flag, cowed the opposition and the press, and
pursued a policy that, if the polls are correct, a majority of
Americans now recognize as ill-advised.
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- If the prominent Democrats can pull this off, they can portray
themselves as clear-eyed defenders of the nation’s integrity (the
better to run for president). Of
course, such defenders are most needed when the fat’s in the fire.
That’s why the resignation of Robin Cook from Tony
Blair’s cabinet is so impressive.
It happened precisely at the time when it might actually have
made some difference, and when it required real courage.
Democracy in Britain is stronger for it. Try as they may to revise it, the true history is this –
when you look at the prominent Democrats, those who were in a
position of power, who had the chance to influence decisions, and
who now want to be president, there wasn’t a Robin Cook among ‘em.
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- Gregory R. Weiher gweiher@uh.edu
Department of Political Science, University of Houston
713-743-3924
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