Bush at Fort Bragg: a study in apologetics

Apologetics is the rhetorical term for the systematic defense of a position. It shouldn't be confused with the word "apology," which has come to mean the admission of guilt and the petition for forgiveness. To be engaged in apologetics is not to beg forgiveness at all. That the speaker is defending a position that has come under attack goes without saying, but apologetics need not confront that criticism directly. It can, but it need not.

Tonight, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in front of attentive soldiers, and on national television, George W. Bush engaged in an apologetic of the war in Iraq. Whether it was his finest rhetorical hour is impossible to say; the speech confronted criticism at best indirectly, and each argument in it was contestable, and will be contested. But it undoubtedly did what apologetics seeks most often to do: It will satisfy those who already agree with him and inspire those who want to agree with him. There will be a third effect as well, as I will mention later: The speech re-established the ground of acceptable argument and perspective. It re-established an entire metaphysics of success and failure that crowded out what may be the only viable perspectives against the occupation and Bush's perpetual war. This third effect may, in fact, have been the easiest to achieve, but that doesn't mean it's not important.

Bush's speech emerged from a context of a dramatic decrease in his own approval ratings, and an equally impressive drop in support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. One cannot discount, also, the growing calls for the President's impeachment, or at least further investigation into the charges contained in the Downing Street Memos. Bush faced a nation that has grown skeptical not only of the potential for the invasion-occupation's success, but also of the deliberative political process that led to the invasion in the first place. Effective apologetics can both confront and dodge criticism, and in this case, Bush confronted the opposition's practical arguments about how the invasion/occupation is going now, while effectively diverting attention from the larger questions about deliberation, honesty, representation, and domestic dissent.

No one should be surprised that there is no longer any talk of the threat of the pre-war Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction, not even any mention of Saddam Hussein qua regional or international threat. Bush clearly framed the entire invasion and occupation in terms of democratization of the Middle East, "a part of the world that is desperate for reform." "Troops...across the world are fighting a global war on terror," he said, and "Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war." And later: "Iraq is where they are making their stand." The enemy we are facing, defeating, is one who "despises all dissent" and "believe[s] that free societies are decadent and corrupt." He quoted Osama Bin Laden in a curious, post facto way, in terms of Bin Laden's declaration that Iraq is a central battleground against the west. Later, Bush invoked the possibility that, absent coalition success, Iraq would become a base, like Afghanistan, of attacks against the United States. No one should be surprised by the implicit acknowledgment that Iraq was not such a threat before the invasion/occupation. Twice, Bush invoked the 'fight over there so we don't have to fight over here' language. The terrorists, Bush said, in a line probably designed to offhandedly deflect criticism of prisoner abuse, "wear no uniform. They respect no laws of warfare or morality."

In a defense of the occupation that was more specific and reasoned than most criticism I've heard of it, Bush painstakingly went through a list of accomplishments in Iraq. His speechwriters wisely devoted several minutes to this. The facts were multilateral in nature, effectively pre-empting criticism from the multilateralist opposition: The United Nations is helping the Iraqi government write a constitution. Eighty nations recently met in Brussels, as they will meet next month in Jordan, to commit to Iraq aid. NATO has established a military academy outside of Baghdad, part of a multilateral effort to empower Iraqi forces.

The Iraqis themselves were repeatedly invoked as a fool-proof defense against those calling for a withdrawal of U.S. troops. Bush's smooth, confident, quotable statement "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" will certainly be repeated for days to come.

Those who claim a certain amount of critical-political capital from Bush's rhetorical inaptitude no doubt cringed as he effectively invoked the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the wars of the 20th century, calling for sacrifice in a war that "demands much of us...we accept these burdens." And to those who might get bogged down in details about the U.S.'s treatment and conditioning of its own soldiers, Bush insisted that "the best way to honor [the lives of the fallen] is to complete the mission." We should emulate those who are "willing to serve a cause greater than themselves."

I have no doubt that this speech will inspire not only the neoconservatives, but also the Wilsonian liberals. There is a certain section of the opposition who share the ideals (probably with more sincerity than the Bush Administration itself) of the U.S. as a shining beacon of light bringing democracy to the world. Tonight, I think Bush effectively won over a large section of that particular opposition. Of course, Bush's real base, the military and their families who constitute 1% of the nation, will, at least momentarily, forget the irresponsibility and rhetorical trickery that committed them to war in the first place. They will be grateful for Bush's domestic call to action--that on the fourth of July, everyone ought to make gestures of appreciation to those military families.

To mention what was obfuscated by the speech is awkward by design. This is that third effect I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Bush obfuscated the lack of honest deliberation leading up to the invasion. He invoked September 11th six times in the speech, a clever and necessary repeat of such invocations in the days leading up to the invasion (tonight's most blatant example of this: "The only way the terrorists can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11."). He obscured our memory of the foolishly optimistic projections of quick victory and welcoming Iraqi masses, just as he obscured the larger historical memory of the United States creating Saddam and Bin Laden, or playing such a heavy hand in creating a world where future terrorism is inevitable. One does not need the critical sensitivity of a socialist or a deconstructionist to know which issues and viewpoints carry the "off limits" banner.

The problem is both simple and impossible. The left, whatever its current form or momentum, cannot effectively broach these subjects precisely because they are off-limits in the language, logic, and metaphysics of current discourse about policymaking. Oh, undoubtedly there will be a powerful rejoinder of the speech on tomorrow's World Socialist Web Site, just as the talk show hosts on Air America Radio will nit-pick at the facts and question Bush's sincerity (a questioning that remains utterly unverifiable, as they know). In fact, these two sides of the opposition, the radical WSWS and the patriotic Air America crowd, symbolize the schitzoid nature of those opposed to the war. Neither side has much of a fighting chance in a world where the President can get on television and (a) optimistically list facts that refute the "it's not going well" crowd, and more importantly (b) enthymematically re-constitute political metaphysics, arguing --silently-- that the world we live in is the only one we have. Thus, the left will again be reduced to speaking moral and political truths that seem too unobtainable to pursue on the one hand, or nit-picking about details on the other. Tonight's speech effectively set back the recent momentum that, at least for a moment, promised to bring together systemic and specific criticism of the Administration. It remains to be seen how effective this will be in the long run, but given that the opposition can't decide (and is unlikely to ever decide) whether it wants a more effective war, or a world without wars, Bush and the neocons have little to worry about.