Bush's Way Backward

Isaiah J. Poole

October 25, 2006

President Bush used an unintentionally apt phrase in his press conference Wednesday to describe what he calls his shift of tactics in Iraq. It is the same phrase the Ford Motor Company has used in its so-far unsuccessful campaign to come out of its corporate death spiral: the “way forward.” Bush's way forward in Iraq, however, is amped-up smoke and mirrors and fake, Democratic straw men for suffering Republican candidates on the campaign trail.

Bush said he was working with the Iraqi government to set “benchmarks … that show a way forward to the Iraqi people—and the American people, for that matter—about how this unity government is going to solve problems and bring the people together.” Bush used the phrase “way forward” several times in the speech, such as in his statement that that in Iraq, “Our job is to prevent the full – full-scale civil war from happening in the first place. It's one of the missions, is to work with the Maliki government to make sure that there is a political way forward that says to the people of Iraq, It's not worth it. Civil war is not worth the effort – by them.”

Bush’s press conference comes the same week that Ford announced that it had lost $5.8 billion in the third quarter of the year, a sign that its plan to retool its operations and return to profitability, called “The Way Forward,” was floundering.

The Republican Party is hemorrhaging credibility over the Iraq issue as Ford is hemorrhaging money, so President Bush turned on the Texas tough talk. He said early in his address that every success of the enemy should not lead to “calls for an investigation or a reason for our troops to come home,” and when he added that “we must not fall prey to the sophisticated propaganda of the enemy,” a listener could imagine him talking about Democrats, not an overseas terrorist group.

He also painted the picture of a bleak world that he implied would come into being if Democrats were allowed to take power:

… a world in which radical forms of Islam compete for power; a world in which moderate governments get toppled by people willing to murder the innocent; a world in which oil reserves are controlled by radicals in order to extract blackmail from the West; a world in which Iran has a nuclear weapon.

And if that were to occur, people would look back at this day and age and say, What happened to those people in 2006? How come they couldn't see the threat to a future generation of people?

Defeat will only come is the United States becomes isolationist and refuses to, one, protect ourselves; and, two, help those who desire to become -- to live in a moderate, peaceful world.

Bush’s opponents do not have an agenda of isolationism and certainly have not advocated not protecting the United States. In fact, a majority of terrorism experts think that the war in Iraq has made the United States--and the world--less safe. But Bush showed that he is once again not above demonizing his critics and exaggerating their views in order to win at all costs.

Thus, he mischaracterized Democratic opposition to key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act. Democrats don't believe in coddling terrorists—but they do believe these laws gave the executive branch too much unchecked power to engage in surveillance, detain suspects without legal recourse and use torture tactics on them. Bush once again uttered his disingenuous response to criticisms that he has been labeling Democrats as unpatriotic:

The Democrats voted against giving our professionals the tools necessary to protect the American people. I will repeat, like I've said to you often: I do not question their patriotism; I question whether or not they understand how dangerous this world is.

Actually, the danger is that the president of the United States would so blithely use distortions to defend his policies, not only with regard to Iraq but with regard to his domestic economic policies as well. He suggested that if Democrats took power, families would lose a child tax credit – even though no leading congressional Democrat has suggested that the tax credit be eliminated.

If you don't extend the tax cuts, if you don't make them -- in other words, if you let the tax cuts expire, it will be a tax increase on the American people. Take the child tax credit. If it is not made permanent—in other words, if it expires—and you've got a family of four sitting around the breakfast table, the taxpayers can be sure that their taxes will go up by $2,000: $500 for that child, $500 for the one right there; $500 for this one and $500 for that one. That is a tax increase. And taking $2,000 out of the pockets of the working people will make it harder to sustain economic growth.

Unfortunately, no reporter interrupted President Bush at that point and asked him to name the Democrats who are opposed to extending the child tax credit—just as he should have been asked to name Democrats who oppose “giving our professionals the tools necessary to protect the American people.” He cannot, and the American people should have seen his inability to back up his words on live television.

Absent that, it will be up to a progressive truth squad of activists to continue pressing the message that Bush’s “way forward” comes no closer to meeting public demands that we end the quagmire in Iraq  and the lies about our national economy than Ford’s “way forward” comes to restoring the luster of a once-great car company.