The Planet of Unreality

[mylanta]

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; A17
Washington Ppost

This is not good. The people running this country sound convinced that reality is whatever they say it is. And if they've actually strayed into the realm of genuine self-delusion -- if they actually believe the fantasies they're spinning about the bloody mess they've made in Iraq over the past three years -- then things are even worse than I thought.

Here is reality: The Bush administration's handpicked interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, told the BBC on Sunday, "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. . . . We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Here is self-delusion: Dick Cheney went on "Face the Nation" a few hours later and said he disagreed with Allawi -- who, by the way, is a tad closer to the action than the quail-hunting veep. There's no civil war, Cheney insisted. Move along, nothing to see here, pay no attention to those suicide bombings and death-squad murders. As an aside, Cheney insisted that his earlier forays into the Twilight Zone -- U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, the insurgency is in its "last throes" -- were "basically accurate and reflect reality."

Maybe on his home planet.

Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, was busy on The Post's op-ed page, abusing history. Leaving Iraq now, he wrote, "would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis." The bizarre analogy was immediately disputed by foreign policy sages Henry Kissinger (who noted that there was "no significant resistance movement" in Germany after World War II) and Zbigniew Brzezinski (who just called the comparison "absolutely crazy'').

George W. Bush, who speaks as if he has ascended to an even higher plane of unreality, marked the third anniversary of the invasion Sunday by touting a "strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq." I know that "victory" is a word that focus groups love, but did anyone else hear an echo of Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam? Does anyone else remember that there was no "secret plan''?

It's reprehensible when our highest elected officials act cynically, as I believe this administration has done -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest knew the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was less than conclusive, but they hyped it anyway to build support for an invasion they were determined to launch. It's dangerous when our leaders act cluelessly, and the Bush White House has done plenty of that as well -- experts who called for a much bigger invasion force were silenced and shoved aside, assurances that Iraqi oil revenue would defray U.S. costs turned out to be a sick joke, and there was no effective plan to get the electricity turned on, much less deal with thousands of insurgents.

But cynicism and cluelessness are one thing. Actually being divorced from reality is another. Do Bush et al. really see only the democratic process they have installed in Iraq and not the bitter sectarian conflict that process has been unable to quell? Do they realize that whatever happens, there's not going to be a neat package, tied up with a bow, labeled "victory" -- certainly in the 34 months (but who's counting?) that the Bush administration has left in office?

Rumsfeld, I think, gets it. "History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately," he wrote in his op-ed piece, the whole tone of which reminded me of Fidel Castro's famous declaration as he was being jailed after his first, failed attempt at revolution: "History will absolve me." Condoleezza Rice seems to get it, too, telling Australians the other day that "beyond my lifetime" people would appreciate what the administration had done for the Middle East.

But what about the two men at the top?

Cheney lamented this weekend that "what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," and "not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress towards rebuilding Iraq." Yesterday Bush recounted a successful anti-insurgent operation in one town, calling it a good-news story that people wouldn't see in their newspapers or on their television screens.

Fine, blaming the media is a time-honored tactic. I just hope they're being cynical about it. I hope they don't really believe the nonsense they're trying to sell.

The writer will take questions today at 2:30 p.m. on www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address iseugenerobinson@washpost.com.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[RAK]

Rich, where has this goofball been the last 5 years? They have been creating their own reality all along, with the cooperation of the Press! Where was any questioning of the adminstaration"s Iraq policy before, during, and after the war? Is anything Rumsfeld have to say more outragious than his opinion that "a little bit of looting is not a bad thing"? The Mainstream Media is feeling the breath of the Blogs down their neck and that is the only reason that they are finally waking up and taking their job seriously. Blame the media? You're damn right! You try showing up 5 years late for a job and see how serious people take you.

RAK

[mylanta]

Rak,
We can blame the media but just remember, none of this is news, the Reds just chose to ignore it when reported, we never did! I mean while there are more
Republicans in the press than I ever remember in the past, but the word still got out.

[RAK]

Yes, the word got out, but not due to the efforts of the Washington Post or the New York Times. And certainly not by the "brave" reporting of Network and cable News. They weren't embedded, they were Shackin' Up! BBC, Guardian UK, French television all gave coverage that was unavailable in this country; and to a large part, still is. The story is just breaking on a disastorous raid by US Marines last week that may have led to the slaughter of women and children. This story has been all over the world since last Monday and is only getting National coverage today. And should we go on about the election coverage? All these clowns are doing now is coming out to shoot the wounded. I'm glad to see they suddenly decided to earn their paychecks, but don't expect me to applaud their "courage".

[Terry Hanushek]

Separating Fact From Fantasy

It's the president who needs to learn from his mistakes. Hindsight may not be the only wisdom, but it's better than operating in the dark

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

The administration's first, massive misstep was to occupy a country of 25 million people with only 140,000 troops. When security is scarce, people retreat to their ethnic, religious or tribal groups. They begin to mistrust anyone outside the clan. If the government remains weak, they start providing for their own security, creating or expanding militias. This pattern has repeated itself in dozens of examples, including the Balkans and now, of course, Iraq.

When the insurgency began, most administration officials saw it as representing a small band of dead-enders, supported by vast numbers of foreigners, rather than what it was, a movement largely based in Iraq's Sunni population (though of course representing a minority within it). When the U.S. disbanded the Army and "de-Baathified" the government, Washington believed that it was dismantling the apparatus of totalitarianism. But the Sunnis saw it as a mass purge directed against them.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush took a swipe at critics. "Hindsight alone is not wisdom," he said. In fact, the tragedy of Iraq is that most of these critiques were made—by several people—at the time the policies were announced, often before. It's the president who needs to look back and learn from his mistakes. Hindsight may not be the only wisdom, but it is a lot better than operating in the dark.

The entire article can be read at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11677307/site/newsweek/
or
http://tinyurl.com/myer4

Another commentary on the reality-challenged administration.

Terry