A Man Who Never Misses A Photo-Op

Rhetoric over reality
Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/158985/


As long as two weeks ago, when the world was young, the favored story line
of your biased, anti-American, left-wing media was that President Bush was
“on a roll.” “ Spate of Good News Gives White House a Chance to Regroup” was
The Washington Post’s front-page headline. The Wall Street Journal asked if
the White House was “setting the stage for a political recovery.” “The GOP
was clearly on a rebound,” Newsweek opined. “It’s been the kind of week that
President Bush and the beleaguered White House have only dreamed about,”
gushed ABC News’ Claire Shipman. Under Shipman’s shining face, documented by
the invaluable mediamatters.org, the on-screen text read, “Best week ever?
Is Bush on a comeback?” Best week ever? The evidence for this putative surge
was the killing of criminal psychopath Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, Bush’s
secret 5-hour visit to Baghdad, the non-indictment of Karl Rove and what ABC
called “a triumphant Rose Garden news conference” celebrating all of the
above.

Sorry, but this last phrase strikes me as perfectly indicative of almost
everything that’s wrong with the Bush administration and the celebrity press
corps that chronicles its dubious progress. Rhetoric, symbolism and spin
take precedence over reality at every turn. To put it bluntly, this nation
is allegedly at war with an evil and implacable enemy. Don’t tell me about
no triumphant press conferences.

The entire episode played like a chapter out of Eric Boehlert’s incisive new
book, “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.” By any measure, the
killing of al-Zarqawi, Jordan’s answer to Timothy McVeigh, was unabashed
good news. So good that it appears fellow “insurgents” betrayed him. Even
al-Qa’ida objected to al-Zarqawi’s savage attacks against Shiite civilians
and holy places, although it called him a martyr after he was safely in his
grave.

The mystery is why, according to numerous reports, the White House turned
down several opportunities to capture or kill al-Zarqawi as long ago as
2001. The answer seems to be that it found his presence in the Kurdish part
of Iraq not under Saddam Hussein’s control useful for propaganda purposes.
Then things got out of hand.

Something similar could be said about Bush’s visit to Baghdad. Satirist
Stephen Colbert captured it perfectly during his standup routine at the
White House Correspondents’ Association dinner: “I stand by this man because
he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like
aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that
sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will
always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world.”

Yet even as Bush was en route to Iraq, The Washington Post obtained—and all
but buried—a cable from U. S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad portraying
increasing sectarian violence and sharply deteriorating security affecting
Iraqi employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Appearance not only trumps reality in the staging of photo-ops, it’s
beginning to look as if the Bush White House can no longer tell the
difference. It’s only natural for trendy TV pundits to think this way. What
Hollywood calls a rising story line means more “exclusive” interviews with
administration big shots, more face time on TV, invitations to more
exclusive dinner parties and better speaker’s fees.

But when policy-makers start thinking like screenwriters, things can get
dangerous. Consider last week’s Senate “debate” over two Democratic
proposals for setting a rational timetable for leaving Iraq. On cue, almost
every Republican in Washington began chanting, “Cut ’n’ run.”

Any and all proposals for withdrawing U. S. troops constitute evidence of
Democratic cowardice, if not treason. Except those subsequently revealed to
the press in a “classified briefing” (whatever that is) by Gen. George W.
Casey Jr., the top U. S. commander in Iraq, of course.

What nobody’s supposed to notice is that if the White House and Republicans
were truly serious, one option would be increasing troop levels to deal with
metastasizing sectarian violence among Iraqi factions. Military experts such
as Gen. George Shinseki, all but forced out of the Pentagon back in 2002 for
testifying to Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be
necessary to pacify a nation as large as Iraq, warned that the force Bush
was sending was inadequate to do the job.

So now American soldiers find themselves hostage to foolhardy decisions made
four years ago, essentially serving as referees and targets of opportunity
as a civil war breaks out around them. Bush can’t increase troop levels
because the public wouldn’t stand for it even if sufficient combat-ready
troops existed, which, with conditions in Afghanistan also deteriorating,
they do not. Hence “Cut ’n’ run,” a slogan more appropriate to the rollout
of an action/ adventure film than a grave matter of national security. What
the phrase really means, as political commentator Josh Marshall points out,
is “more of the same.”

Lily Tomlin said it best. "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep
up."