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January 8, 2004
taking responsibility
In yesterday's Washington Post, Barton Gellman shows pretty effectively that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after the early 1990s--but also that it was possible for American leaders to make an honest mistake about this. Saddam's history of using poison gas and his continued trickery made him look pretty guilty. I think, indeed, that he was deliberately bluffing.
So wouldn't it be refreshing and disarming (no pun intended) if the President said the following? "We have captured a wicked dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and waged war on his neighbors. We are now doing our level best to build a democratic state in the middle of an extremely important region. We told you that the reason for the war was fear of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Like President Clinton and many foreign leaders, we were genuinely convinced that Iraq had live chemical and biological weapons and an advanced nuclear program. We were wrong, and we take responsibility for our error. You may hold us accountable for this failure of analysis. But we made an understandable mistake which may lead to a tremendous amount of good."
George W. Bush is not the kind of guy who ever says things like this, and he would be a better leader if he did. However, it's also pretty obvious that the press, Democrats, and foreign leaders would jump all over him if he retracted his original reason for the war. We have a political culture that simply does not tolerate changes of mind, and that does not serve us well in times of deep uncertainty.
Posted by peterlevine at 3:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack