February 19th, 2016
After spending months being anti-anti-Trump–or more accurately, anti-anti-Trumpism–I’ve finally come around this week. And oddly enough, it was because of Trump’s debate performance on Saturday when he insisted that George W. Bush lied America into the Iraq war. What’s odd about this, of course, is that I’ve always been pretty anti-Bush and skeptical (at best) of Iraq. So my rooting interest on this isn’t in defending the Bush administration, which I regard as a large-scale failure.
It also isn’t that I’ve suddenly realized Trump is a stubby-fingered vulgarian–that’s been clear since the start, too.
What got me was the way Trump’s supporters went into full-scale denial and rally-round-the-Trump over this insane charge. If Trumpism causes people to turn into zombie idiots, then nuts to that.
Back during the NFL players strike, Steve Czaban had a great riff about what it was like signing up to the defend the players union. It’s like joining a motorcycle gang, he said. You might just be joining because you like the jackets or because you enjoy riding your Harley with like-minded enthusiasts on Saturdays. And both of those aspects are part of the gang. But you’re also signing up with a bunch of criminals.
And it strikes me that it turns out that it’s basically the same with Trumpism. You might come for the border security and anti-PC sentiments and America-firstism. But that also means joining arms with know-nothings like Scott Brown and Sara Palin, who willingly subsume their own critical faculties for the sake of being on Team Donald.
That’s exactly what’s happened with Trump’s “Bush lied” line:
(1) Success in the 2016 Republican party no longer requires candidates to support the Iraq war, specifically, or the Bush 43 Freedom Agenda generally, as a price of entry. There is plenty of room for candidates who think that the Iraq war was a mistake. Or a poor judgment call. Or even a fifty-fifty proposition that ended badly.
(Conversely, there’s also plenty of room for candidates who defend the Iraq war and argue that, for all his faults, Bush had the situation basically under control by 2008-and that it was President Obama who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.)
But what you can’t do is take the MoveOn.org, Code Pink, Michael Moore, maximalist position that President Bush knowingly “lied” to the world in order to foment the war.
(2) Why not? Well, for one thing, the charge is incorrect.
(3) For another, it suggests you’re unhinged. Look: As far as national security goes, it would actually be comforting to think that Bush “lied” America into war. It would suggest that we have a massively competent intelligence agency capable of conducting an enormous operation, in broad daylight, with total and impermeable compartmentalization and secrecy. It would mean that our CIA was run by a bunch of hyper-competent Jason Bourne clones.
As it is, the truth is much more worrisome: That we had two massive intelligence failures-the 9/11 attacks and Iraq WMDs-within a year of one another. And this was either or the result of a not-Jason-Bourne levels of competence, or the practical limits of what intelligence can know. Neither of those options is especially comforting in contemplating our future.
So people who buy into “Bush lied” aren’t even worst-case-scenario pessimists. They’re partisan zealots and conspiracy-theorist cranks.
(4) Now, every political movement has partisan zealots and conspiracy-theorist cranks. And sometimes a politician has to pander to them. But on Saturday, Trump was pandering to the guys on the other side. In the Republican primaries there are no votes-not even Rand Paul votes-to be had from Trump’s position. (And don’t try selling me the Limbaugh, reverse “Operation Chaos” line. Even he doesn’t actually believe that.)
(5) If this was an isolated incident, maybe Trump could move past it. But the problem is that “Bush lied” fits with a pattern: Support of Planned Parenthood;eager acceptance of Obergefell;a “great relationship” with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.Now he’s being applauded by Code Pink?
At some point voters are going to start to wonder whether Trump is really a Reaganite late-convert bent on bringing populist nationalism to a corrupt Republican establishment-or just Alan Grayson with more money and a hard-line immigration fetish.
(6) Taking the “Bush lied” position puts Trump’s surrogates and talk-radio supporters in a tight spot. Are they supposed to defend him? Agree with him? Plead the Fifth? That’s what Scott Brown tried to do over the weekend. I very much doubt he’ll be volunteering to go on TV and face questions about this in order to support Trump at any point in the future.
How about Sarah Palin? Does she believe that George W. Bush knowingly lied to America? I wonder if she’ll be eager to answer this question publicly.
The people on talk radio who’ve been playing footsy with Trump don’t have the luxury of keeping quiet. They’re going to have to figure out how to square this circle pretty quickly. (Which is what Limbaugh was trying to sell with his ridiculous theory.)
(7) But those are the people already on the hook for supporting Trump. How about all of the prospective Trump endorsers? Allahpundit argued last week that Chris Christie’s smartest play would be to come out for Trump, be an effective surrogate, and then hope for the AG slot.
That’s probably impossible now. Christie can’t sign up with a “Bush lied” guy. And anyone who currently holds elective office and has to face voters again would be crazy to hop on the Trump train now. It’s just too big a risk. Why put your career on the line?
(8) Some version of this probably holds for prospective Trump voters. It’s possible that people who are already supporting Trump will find some way to rationalize/accept/downplay his statements. (I’m skeptical of that myself; I actually think he’s likely to start bleeding support.) Even if they stand fast, this makes it much harder for Trump to consolidate other candidate’s supporters as the race goes on. With negatives already at 1-to-1, he just lowered his ceiling.
Anyway, that was the first movement of my face-turn. Here’s part two, on the corruptions of Trumpism. And here’s me calling for the power-bomb.
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Your “Trumpism Corrupts” piece was simply awesome, JVL — especially the brutal takedown of Ann Coulter, “who has reached the stage in life where she is capable of falling in love serially with Mitt Romney and then Donald Trump…” Ouch!
You mentioned Rush and Coulter; other Trump-friendly voices in conservative media have also been shamefully silent or evasive about the Donald’s “Bush lied” moment, including some people I usually like a lot — e.g., Laura Ingraham (see her tweets during the last debate) and even Mark Steyn (who, to be fair, has been in Australia this past week).
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“Finally”? Slow learner.
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Who is Jonathan Last, I asked myself. Aha! another citizen who believes there will be another candidate to pull Excalibur from the stone, save the country.
Good luck to you. …..Lady in Red
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I’m a vet. I couldn’t care less what Trump said s about Bush. The facts are the 2nd gulf war felt wrong to me from the begginning. I’m all for the Afghan War and the 1st Gulf war. Where they left st me was the narrative. First it would be paid for by oil then 2 weeks later after sniveling from our allies (they got the oil we get to bleed) it’s not paid for. Then it’s “Saddam tried to kill my daddy”. I’m like so what your daddy tried to kill him. Big deal. Funny but then even though I didn’t care about WMD’s and still don’t it’s a stupid phrase. Where were they? We found a few old 80s vintage expired rounds but that’s it. What it laid bare was this was a sloppy made up reason why? Okay I’m cool with taking over the ME. Just say it. Do it for peace it would’ve been reasonably true. But where are we now? A little better off than Vietnam. We’d won the Vietnamese war but we were still feel gutting the finish. Then we got betrayed by the Dems. Okay in this Iraq war we’d won 100% and then after all our people died we gave it to ISIS and Iran. Also Bush stupidity led to Obama. How is any of this good. The fact is I don’t care if Trump is right or wrong about this: I’m sick of the elites especially the Clintons and the Bushies running our country into the dirt. Screw them. trump 2016!!!
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Who cares what this dork thinks…?
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From Trump’s 2000 book, The America We Deserve : “Consider Iraq. After each pounding from U.S. warplanes, Iraq has dusted itself off and gone right back to work developing a nuclear arsenal. Six years of tough talk and U.S. fireworks in Baghdad have done little to slow Iraq’s crash program to become a nuclear power. They’ve got missiles capable of flying nine hundred kilometers—more than enough to reach Tel Aviv. They’ve got enriched uranium. All they need is the material for nuclear fission to complete the job, and, according to the Rumsfeld report, we don’t even know for sure if they’ve laid their hands on that yet.
That’s what our last aerial assault on Iraq in 1999 was about. Saddam Hussein wouldn’t let UN weapons inspectors examine certain sites where that material might be stored. The result when our bombing was over? We still don’t know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons.
I’m no warmonger. But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don’t, we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us.”
Are there any real journalists left? Will anyone ask him about this?
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[…] The Worm Turns on Trump […]
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This column misses the mark. Here is the anatomy of a lie. From Wikipedia on the topic of Curveball:
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان, Rāfid Aḥmad Alwān; born 1968), known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym “Curveball”,[1] is a German citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.[2] Alwan’s allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group’s final report published in 2004.[3][4]
Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government and British government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said “we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs”, and Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.
There are a few ways to spin this. One is that gross dereliction of duty is simply a mistake and not a lie. The other is that willfully being selective in which intelligence to count and which to disqualify counts as a lie of omission, something that journalists use regularly in order to craft their stories to advance their particular point of view.
Relying on Curveball is impossible to defend as a honest mistake. Making the choice to highlight Curveball’s “intelligence” by making no effort to validate it counts as a lie of omission because the gambit of keeping in place plausible deniability arising from not investigating, and running to ground, Curveball’s accusations strongly suggests that Feith and Bush and the others likely knew that any serious investigation of Curveball would result in his story being exposed as a fiction and thus denying them the use of his story to sell the war.
Subsequently shown to be false. Yeah, after it didn’t matter, after the decision was made and implemented. The time to verify his allegations was BEFORE the decision was made and BEFORE any action was taken.
Remember, it was Bush officials who claimed that they had the power to make reality what they wanted it to become. This is exactly what is in play here. There is a huge amount of hubris on display and it’s trying to give cover to, what is at the core, a lie of commission by Curveball which is transformed into a lie of omission by Bush’s team.
Bush and crew lied by CHOOSING to rely on Curveball.
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Dude. Not bad. And I’m not easy to impress. I’m a former journo who has gone into business..but still dabbles in commentary. Conversational, well researched and basically right on. I have met with some top shelf traditional Arizonans, who secretly did not mind Trump, but would never admit it out loud. Tough on ISIS, good for business and would cut a deal with the D’s to get something done. But the 9/11 stuff and the Bush Iraq War stuff was over the top. Hillary, the fraud Collin Powell and Trump, himself said they supported the war, based on intelligence everyone saw. So, Trump is being your standard revisionist fraud. Now what?
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My comment here will address what Jonathan Last calls “two massive intelligence failures-the 9/11 attacks and Iraq WMDs”:
Bill Clinton had multiple opportunities to get bin Laden, yet he failed to act.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/joe-kidd/when-bill-clinton-had-multiple-opportunities-to-get-osama-bin-laden-he-failed-to/797651746914049Concerning the Global War On Terror, #WMDs did exist.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/joe-kidd/for-the-record-wmds-were-there/761840163828541 #WMDinIraq -
Bush said the threat of Saddam giving WMD to America was an existential threat to America.
“The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.
The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/18/usa.iraq
We now know that Saddam had virtually nothing to do with al Qaeda and had no active WMD programs that posed a threat. The US had enough intelligence assets and capabilities to know those facts at the time.
The case could be made that Bush lied.
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Mr. Last,
I have experienced the same transformation. Saturday’s event left me stunned.
However, I will believe the drop in support when I see it.Dan
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I will not support Trump in the general election period. Even against Hillary. I have been active in the GOP for 57 years. He went a bridge too far with Bush lied theme. Even now he is trying to back up. This is his way of operating. Say something outlandish. Then backup, if necessary. You cannot govern that way.
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It’s SOOOOO much fun watching all the Establishment types head’s blow off over Trump. What you anti Trumpists just don’t understand is… this is how bad we hate the establishment and political correctness! Is he most of our’s ideal candidate? No. Does he tick enough of the right boxes? Yes. What’s the alternative… elect ANOTHER politician? Because they’ve done so much for us this far? We’re willing to go in another direction cuz the one we’ve been heading in isn’t getting us there.
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[…] Jonathan Last has officially come out against Trump because he’s concerned about the fanaticism of Trump supporters. I’ve had the same concern about some of those who comment here. Many make the […]
Nedward February 19, 2016 at 5:10 pm
I’m still pro-war. I’m glad Saddam & his sons were hunted down and, after a fashion, exterminated. It was time.
However I now concede that the Bush/Rice/Woodrow Wilson nation-building idea was a lousy one, and that its rottenness should have been apparent at the time, underneath the propaganda cross-traffic. It does sting a bit to say I was wrong, though of course such puny feelings on my part being de minimis next to the mass killing and maiming of capable and highly trained men exploited for the folly of domestic-dispute mediation between various psychotic clans, giving their lives for political correctness, and the same getting Nancy Pelosi & Obama elevated to power, thus effecting the betrayal of our few allies in the place. In summary, leaving Iraq worse off than if we’d never been there. Oh yes, the waste of trillions of dollars as well, a minor detail upon which RNC Rapid Response seems not to have got around to frontally attacking Trump yet. Democracy promotion in the Middle East was the stupidest political platform of the last 15 years (maybe tied with economic stimulus & sub-prime monte). Iraq would’ve managed with another Mubarak. On all of these counts the Washington war hawk motorcycle gang hasn’t come clean.
AFAIC Trump can let them have it with “scurrilous accusations”– I don’t care any more. Just as you are within your rights to vent hatred of the Juggaloes. D.C. must really be a sick place. I daresay that citing the existence of 3 or 4 contributors at your magazine who were anti-war in 2003 sounds less impressive today than you might suppose. By the way didn’t Ken Adelman endorse Obama in ’08? Speaking of disreputable snake-in-the-grass opportunists.