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It seems that no matter what Bush does these days, his approval numbers continue to plummet. The latest two or three attempts at righting the listing ship that is the Bush administration have fallen woefully short, and his speech to the U.N today is likely to do the same. The reason is simple: truth. His Iraq policies have been based on deception and lies. Events and time have revealed how obviously the foundations of those policies have flown in the face of truth. His recent attempts at appearing honest and straightforward have only accentuated how dishonest he has been previously.
When he tried to clarify that his administration did not, in fact, have evidence that Hussein was linked to 9-11, it merely put to lie his own ubiquitous insinuations to the contrary. Despite the inexplicably large portion of the populace believing that Hussein was behind 9-11 (much ballyhooed at 69% in a Washington Post poll in early September), the fact that this number plummeted after Bush’s “admission” (Newsweek-47%, Gallup-43%) indicates the double-edged sword Bush has put himself upon. On the one hand, the steep drop in this percentage indicates that people actually listen to him. On the other hand, when they hear him say this, it opens up all kinds of questions as to the validity of the war and his own trustworthiness.
People for months have held on to the belief that Hussein was somehow behind 9-11, despite the lack of any reliable evidence for such a connection. But one look at nearly any speech or statement on Iraq made by the president or any member of his administration in the months before and after the war reveals that they consistently mentioned Hussein, 9-11, and Al Qaeda in the same breath. This goes right up to, and even includes, Bush’s statement that Hussein and 9-11 were not connected! The fact is that Bush administration officials were nearly the ONLY ones who were fostering the belief all along. Many others in the media and elsewhere were saying that there was no evidence, but polls showed that people were listening to Bush. The recent waning in this belief following Bush’s statement only further demonstrates that he was responsible for the belief in the first place. People have been putting their faith in his word on this subject.
The desired effect, no doubt, was for people to say “There, see, he never said they were connected!” and to shield him from responsibility for the faulty perception. The result, however, was for people to say “Wait a minute. Before, you did everything you could to link Hussein and 9-11, and we believed you. That’s why we backed you in Iraq!” His recent statements have only revealed to the people that their faith in him was misplaced.
Likewise, the populace long held onto the belief that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. In the period before and immediately after the war began, the Bush administration was the primary source for this information (although, again, many in the press and the international community were saying otherwise). As the truth began to emerge that Iraq did not, in fact, have massive stockpiles of WMDs that could threaten us, confidence in Bush began to waver. As the truth began to counter the Bush line, the obvious conclusion was that the Bush line was not the truth.
More to the point, the American people were scared into believing that Iraq and its alleged WMDs were an imminent threat to the United States. Despite the administration’s recent attempts at claiming that they did not ever actually say Iraq was an imminent threat, their every word implied it. Remember the specter of a mushroom cloud? Indeed, if the threat was not imminent, then why was the necessity for war so immediate? Although the administration would have liked the populace to come out of this episode saying “Well, they’re right, they didn’t actually say ‘imminent threat’”, what they came out of it saying was “Well if you didn’t think they were an imminent threat, then why did you imply it in nearly every statement on the subject? If they were not an imminent threat, then why the rush to war?”
Despite all attempts at appearing steadfast and resolute, Bush’s recent pleas for more money from the taxpayers, more money and troops from other countries, and more co-operation from the U.N., can only be seen for what they are: an admission that he was horribly wrong and miscalculated in the extreme. Rather than gaining support for his faltering foreign policy, the effect of Bush’s desperate attempts at reshaping the public debate on Iraq has been that of waking a sleeping populace to how disastrous that policy has been.
Now we start to get a glimmer of how costly this war is going to be (in lives and dollars). Now we start to finally realize, en masse, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, Al Qaeda, or weapons of mass destruction… and we begin to ask: “Then why are we there?” Now we start to realize that maybe the anti-war protestors were right on this one.
The truth has a way of catching up to you. Especially when you are so bold, steadfast, and arrogant as to tell the Big Lie and to stick by it. In this case, the Big Lie (or lies) was that Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks on 9-11, and Iraq was threatening us with weapons of mass destruction. But when you put your faith in the Big Lie, the truths that come out to counter it are likely to be just as big. Unfortunately for Bush, the Big Lie has met the Big Truth.
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