The Courtesy of Lying
This entry was posted on 12/5/2006 5:33 PM and is filed under All Posts,Iraq War,The New Congress.
Richard Cohen of The Washington Post has a good column today on the controversy regarding Jim Webb's dis of our president a couple of weeks ago. I love the title: "How's Your War?"
The dastardly act, aside from being oh-so-satisfying to the perp, can have its uses. In this case, it might have jarred Bush into appreciating the fact that many of his critics actually feel keenly about the war in Iraq — that they are not mere political opponents but people who are morally appalled by a war that continues for no apparent reason.
That's it, isn't it? This president is so morally clueless, and so politically competitive, that the political game is the only frame he can see the Iraq War in. Cindy Sheehan? Partisan operative? Deserting troops? Tools of the Democrats. Nice tricks, he thinks. They play well. Let's play hardball right back, Karl. Let's call John Kerry's medals "unearned".
And it's all because the media/political class of our country has been too fucking polite to this man.
Washington is a bad marriage with monuments. Just to get through the day, it's necessary to lower voices, modulate tempers, eschew insults, voice soft lies — compromise, compromise, compromise. Quaint parliamentary rules have their utility — no name-calling, please, and lots of grandiloquence about the "eminent gentleman" who in actuality is a skirt chaser who needs to trim his nasal hair. It is all necessary, like the rules of war or journalistic ethics. Sans manners, nothing would get done. Even with them, precious little is accomplished.
And it also provides a terrific opportunity for the powerful to undertake the outrageous. They are protected by manners. They are allowed to lie to our faces, as long as they do it convincingly, and with grace. The most passionate outrage expressed by the media is always regarding ineloquent, blunt attacks on this war. Statements baldly calling our president a liar—a documented, consistent fact—are always, always labeled as "controversial".
What is controversial about the truth? I'll reach into my grab bag of documented lies told by President Bush, for one of the most recent. On Wednesday, November 1, six days before our midterm elections, the president said that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would stay on through the end of Bush's term, 2008. On Wednesday, November 8, one day after the Republicans were trounced in the midterms, President Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld. When asked by a reporter that afternoon why he had stated, just a week before, that Rumsfeld would stay through the end of 2008, Bush admitted that he had lied when he said that. If you want the visual proof, watch the video clip embedded in the link I just posted.
It's just one lie of thousands.
