The WASTELAND

I thought at the time that there could never be a regime in a democracy more mendacious, more underhand and more impervious to reality or criticism that the Nixon White House but once again on Monday the Bush II White House topped it.

Acknowledging that the death toll of American personnel (including eight civilians) in Iraq since the invasion five years and a week ago has now reached 4,000, President Bush declared: “One day people will look back at this moment in history and say ‘Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come’.” To anyone with a scintilla of sensitivity, the obvious rejoinder is the famous line of Tacitus: “They have made a wasteland and called it peace”.

That Bush spends his every waking hour in denial has been clear since he began actively running for the presidency in 1999. Yet he has astute advisors around him – Condoleeza Rice stood at his side when he made his latest vapid claim – and, if they wished to make it clear that it wasn’t them who told him to say that, they could brief him with some harmless observation (one that could be seen to be erroneous even by unreconstructed neocons) which would only redound on him and not on them. It is surely the case that Bush is exhaustively coached every time he is unleashed on the press and, through them, the public; the impression he often gives of a man who doesn’t quite understand the points he is making confirms that.

The back-up material that the White House releases on occasions like this is equally expressive of an administration that does not listen to what it says. The latest roll call, observed Bush’s press secretary Dana Perino, was “a sober moment”. Even if the President were not himself a recovered alcoholic, the phrase is unfortunate. Government is not a game, it’s not for fun. All of Bush’s business should be sober and conducted in a sober frame of mind, whether it be his policy on stem cell research or his plans to try to prevent the world sliding into recession.

Perino went on: “President Bush believes that every life is precious and he spends time every day thinking about those who’ve lost their lives on the battlefield”. No he doesn’t. Nobody does that, not even somebody who is (unlike Bush) genuinely devout as a matter of life-long conviction and upbringing. My late parents loomed immeasurably larger in my life than any serviceman or woman whom he has never met does in Bush’s and yet weeks go by without my giving either of them a thought. Nonetheless, my feelings about them run no less deep. If Bush makes some kind of religiose daily routine of contemplating the deaths of American warriors, then its very ritual nature robs it of substance. In any case, what about the lives lost other than on a battlefield? Are they of no account just because most of them were not American? And if he genuinely and literally thinks that “every life is precious”, why did he confirm more death sentences when Governor of Texas than any other gubernatorial American in the nation’s history?

“He gets a report about every single soldier who passes away” went on Perino, resorting to craven euphemism. “And he always pauses a moment to think about them and to offer a prayer for their loved ones”. The making of empty gestures is bad enough: to have these gestures described as if they are meaningful is treating us like boobies.

And there’s more from Perino: “The President has said the hardest thing a commander-in-chief will do is send young men and women into combat and he’s grieved for every lost American life, from the very first several years ago to those lost today”. Dana Perino may be a bright girl but she has the look of one chosen for her looks (it’s an enjoyable irony that toothsomeness has become a liability for women who want to excel in a career where you need to be taken seriously). Given that most of those who heard or read her will know precisely which year it was that the first American lives were lost fighting in Iraq, the looseness of “several years ago” is pretty insulting. But it is difficult to credit that sending unknown cannon fodder to war is so darned hard when the only comprehensible reason for Bush not to bring them all home right now is his unwillingness to lose face. Indeed, the White House has been putting it about that the expectation of troop withdrawals this summer is too optimistic. This is also perfectly understandable. As Bush clearly cannot resolve the Iraq quagmire before leaving office, he may as well drive his troops deeper into the Iraqi sand so that his successor has a worse mess to clear up. Bush may be calculating that, as happened to LBJ after JFK over Vietnam, the blame for the calamity of Iraq may in time be transferred to President Obama, McCain or H Clinton. Add ‘cynical’ to mendacious, underhand and impervious to reality or criticism.