© 2007, UrbisMedia
The only thing that George Bush has that distinguishes his presidency is preemptive war in Iraq. Prior to 9-11 he was widely regarded as a buffoon who had won high office by the intercession of highly placed friends. Domestically he has accomplished nothing but to exacerbate the divisions in the wealth of the people, ignore domestic disasters such as that of Katrina, and give a bunch of religious bigots and hypocrites unprecedented access to political power in the history of this nation.
Bush liked calling himself a “war president,” but it sounded hollow coming from a guy who sent his national Guard duty during the VN war (a duty obtained for him by his father’s connections that jumped him over other candidates) drinking, failing flight physicals and otherwise blowing it in the manner of a spoiled fratboy. The mere thought of this goldbricking dimwit in charge of the most powerful military machine on earth gives on a shudder (especially if you have oil below your feet).
Bush reveled his PR tendencies in his commander-in-chief image, wearing military regalia and flying onto carriers to announce his “victories.” But he proved soon enough that he was not a real “war president.” Bush is the public relations war president ; he manages (or tries to) public opinion and imagery of the war. But as to managing the war itself Bush’s stupidity, arrogance and bad judgment have produced a war that exceeds even Vietnam as a colossal blunder.
By slow, painful reveal it has emerged that most of what Bush says is affective rather than effective. References to vague, unsubstantiated, occurances such as the so-called Iraqi purchase of yellow cake, are never retracted, connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda are spurious but left in place, the widespread belief that Iraqis were among the 911 terrorists are not countered with the truth. Colin Powell is set up and used and thrown away. Generals who do not agree with what has proed to be a disastrous war plan are fired, toadies are put in place. Common soldiers are used as part of the PR machine: Jessica Lynch in Iraq and Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Others are scapegoated as a “few rotten apples, when debacles like Abu Ghraib occur. Within his own administration Bush’s image as steadfast and loyal, a “stay the course guy,” is maintained by never firing anyone, but by pushing them out behind the scenes, making it appear that they have elected to leave because the fault is all theirs, not his.
The real truth, not the PR “truth,” has another way of emerging. The enemy quickly learns because for tem it is truth or die. And so the tactical war has been won by the enemy. After the fireworks of “shock and awe” they came out and undertook their low-tech war of attrition with guerilla strategies, IED’s, using the arsenals that Bush’s army never destroyed, effectively—even as they conducted a civil war among themselves. The Bush administration PR machine tried to convince that the use of IED’s are the dastardly tactics of AQ, but likes to portray bombing from high altitude or missiles sent from ships in the gulf are nice, clean surgical instruments of war. Torture is torturously parsed and re-defined, detainees are regarded as guilty until (but never get a chance to) proven innocent. New enemies are made, old friends are lost.
The problem is that this war, for which Bush (like his British lap dog, Blair) will be remembered in perpetuity, is the only chance Bush has for anything positive in what we call, and he no doubt thinks of as, his “legacy.” In the past, Bush was able to be rescued from his incompetence by his father and family friends. His business failures, his so-called military service, his boozing, have all been managed out of the record and replaced by his born-again Christian image.
But this reality re-emerges in a different guise, Bush himself knows the truth, and no doubt feels that his victory in what he regards as the GWOT would expunge it all, forgive it all, and supercede his father’s not so hot legacy. No matter the impossibilities or irrelevancy of winning a war on a tactic by repeating nonsense like “they hate our freedom,” it is what fears can be manipulated and created by the well-selected words, or what is left out that matter, not the truth.
So the result sought is an unexpressed policy of the most selfish, callous sort: what will rescue the legacy of Little George. This is what we get from a man who has been handled as a product, as a recipient of privilege from his earliest years, and for whom past failures are not “failures” but just missteps on the road to ultimate and glorious success in an endeavor that justifies it all. In time even he wioll come to believe the PR version of the “truth.”
It is not truth, but the result that is the essence of public relations. It is what public relations wishes to appear as the truth that is its prime function. It has more to do with belief than facts, half rather than whole truths. It is a profession that has becomes so toxically attached to politics in the form of campaign committees, focus groups, handlers, spin-meisters, press secretaries, and lobbyists that even the word democracy has become one more part of theimage. But at its most fundamental it is the professionalization of that most calculating, dangerous, and self-serving justifications—that the end justifies the means.
This is why Bush must hang onto his war; he has nothing else. At this point even the oil might not matter to him. So what if the death, torture, destruction and the ruination of America’s legacy are the cost. If he can hold out so that the Democrats must clean up his mess this time at least he can say that he was winning when he left (Cf, 38.2: The Ole Dumperooski).
The problem is that it will be difficult to set things right. George Bush is America’s creation, and Americans don’t like having to fess up to their mistakes on the international stage. It will be political suicide for any politician to do that. It was once said that, if you need a PR person, select an Austrian because Austria, which happily leaped into the arms of Hitler in the anschlussof 1938, managed to convince the world after the war that “Beethoven was an Austrian and Hitler was a German.”
Maybe the Republicans will try to change the Constitution so that an Austrian-born governor of California can run for President.
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©2007, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 5.18.2007)