What a laff riot. Over 1000 days into what is arguably the biggest foreign foray disaster in U.S. history, Bush invites 13 past secretaries of state and defense for a "bipartisan consultation" on Bush's Iraq strategy. And how much time is devoted to mining all this collective wisdom?
But if it was a bipartisan consultation, as advertised by the White House, it was a brief one. Mr. Bush allowed 5 to 10 minutes for interchange with the group - which included three veterans of the Vietnam era: Robert S. McNamara, Melvin R. Laird and James R. Schlesinger - before herding the whole group into the Oval Office for what he called a "family picture."
Those who wanted to impart more wisdom to the current occupants of the White House were sent back across the hall to meet again with Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But as several of the participants noted, by that time Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had gone on to other meetings.
No doubt they had more important people to meet with -- like some defense contractor, energy mogul or crazy Christian conservative. Meanwhile, Bush didn't even bother to pretend that he cares what these people think:
When he took the floor, Mr. Bush left no doubt that he believed his strategy to be the only path to victory, and he gave no hint, participants said, of self-doubt. "It would be a stretch to say he was really interested in many thoughts from around the table," said one former official, who asked not to be identified so that he could speak frankly about a private meeting with the president.
This ludicrous travesty is being heralded far and wide as a "new turn" for the Bush administration. The London Times called it -- unbelievably -- a "war summit"; the New Zealand Herald calls it "a remarkable White House occasion" in which "Bush proves willing to hear dissent". The Washington Post's headline is "Voices from History Echo Anew: Former Cabinet Officers Offer Advice to Commander-in-Chief", with "reporter" Jim VandeHei hailing the meeting as "virtually unprecedented". The Houston Chronicle's is "Bush Asks Former State, Defense Secretaries for Their Take on Iraq" and says that the meeting Bush earned "the right to claim he was reaching out". The Baltimore Sun's is "Ex-officials Advise Bush on Iraq War", with text courtesy of LA Times "reporter" James Gerstenzang:
WASHINGTON // Around the polished table in the Roosevelt Room sat an array of officials who had either prosecuted nearly every military action in which the United States had engaged since the Vietnam War or engaged in the diplomatic efforts to end them.
They were there at the invitation of the current occupant of the Oval Office, who sought advice yesterday from 13 former secretaries of defense and state who, collectively, had served every president from John F. Kennedy onward.
The 12 men and one woman came to the White House to hear President Bush make his case for his conduct of the Iraq war, as the military operation there nears the end of its third year, and to present suggestions and recommendations as the administration faces what one military briefer reportedly told the group would be "a very dangerous six months" in Iraq.
In the end, said Melvin R. Laird, defense secretary during Richard M. Nixon's first term, "some of the things he heard, he probably didn't like too well."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan had a slightly different take on the discussion. "There were a number of constructive ideas or suggestions that they had of things that maybe we ought to do differently," he said.
The former officials represented a spectrum of political, military and diplomatic thinking that, if not as broad as that reflected in American political life, encompassed the divergent wings of mainstream politics, Republican and Democrat.
Madeleine K. Albright, who was Bill Clinton's second secretary of state, has publicly criticized the decision to invade Iraq and spoken out about the poor light in which the United States is held in parts of the world as a result. She made the same points at the White House, an Albright aide said, telling Bush that he had launched "a war of choice, not of necessity - but getting it right is a necessity and not a choice."
Bush and a number of the participants said there were differences over whether he made the right decision to invade Iraq but agreement that, with American forces deployed throughout the country, the United States had to be certain of success.
The meeting represented a new turn in the administration's effort to gain support for the war - in this case by reaching out to occasional critics, as well as supporters, who take part in the public debate on Sunday morning talk shows and in newspaper opinion pages.
The Boston Globe (like the Post) prevaricates, stating that the meeting went on for an hour:
The hourlong meeting was also an opportunity for Bush to ask for their help in maintaining support for a mission all agreed must succeed because the United States has so much at stake in Iraq.
Of course, 40 minutes of that was "an exceedingly upbeat 40-minute briefing to 13 former secretaries of state and defense about how well things are going in Iraq" (as per the NYT article) and 10-15 minutes of that was devoted to taking the family picture, but who's counting?
No doubt the TV news was absolutely replete with glorious visions of Our Leader actually acting like one, for a change.
The World Socialist has a more accurate headline: "Bush Meets the "Wise Men": A Cynical Charade to Legitimize Iraq War", and provides an illuminating historical counterpoint:
It is doubtful that the White House spin-doctors were aware of it, but Thursday’s meeting had its historical parallel in the Vietnam War era. The differences outweigh the similarities, however, and demonstrate the profound decay of both the political institutions and personnel of the American national security establishment.
On March 25-26, 1968, newly installed defense secretary Clark Clifford convened a meeting of what were sometimes called the “wise men,” a group of former top national security officials of the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations, to discuss the deepening US debacle in Vietnam. The consensus among these former officials was for a rapid change in course, and they conveyed this to President Lyndon Johnson in a private meeting at the White House. Five days later, Johnson startled the country by announcing he was withdrawing as a candidate for reelection and would attempt to achieve a negotiated end to the war.
Some 38 years later, a similar group is assembled, not to tell a president some bitter truths about a strategic disaster, but to listen to administration happy talk and allow themselves to be photographed with a president whose ignorance and duplicity they certainly recognize. After this degrading spectacle, the current crop of “wise men” dispersed ignominiously.
As Marx said so well, echoing Hegel, “History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
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