| Monday, July 14, 2003 |
11:11 - Any port in a storm, eh?
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There seems to be a problem with a certain lack of critical thinking in America today. At least among the media personalities. If there weren't those opinion polls which stubbornly insist that most people still think going to war was the right thing to do, I'd be starting to despair that this mental laziness were becoming an epidemic.
NPR all throughout the weekend-- particularly on Saturday, to and from the concert in Sacramento, which featured Three Dog Night, Lou Christie, and The Association, among others-- was giddily gleeful in all its headings. The dubious information that was used to justify the war in Iraq! To hear these headlines, you'd think someone had just sleuthed up a secret dossier titled EYES ONLY: OPERATION SCAPEGOAT. ZOG CENTRAL.
On Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, as usual, they led off with their typical raucous Bush-bashing; it was all the more maddening given the recent flap over the Nigerian yellow-cake business. According to the hosts, when confronted with the evidence of prevarication and subterfuge, Bush responded with wide-eyed confusion befitting a toddler. The hosts giggled and dished back and forth for a few minutes, then mentioned that Ari Fleischer had said, "I think the burden of proof lies with those who said Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction-- it's up to them to say where they are." Clearly going for the "You can't make up stuff like this" vibe, one of the hosts followed this up with, "What, is Ari going for a stand-up comedy career after this? I mean, at some point you have to just sit and marvel." Another added, "Hey, it's Comical Ari!"
And that's the infuriating bit: unless you think about it, Fleischer's comment does seem like the stuff of ripe parody-- unless you think about it. I wanted to reach into the radio and grab those guffawing hosts by their lapels and do what I've grown far too tired of doing: explain the reasoning behind the statement. That being that everybody knew Saddam had WMDs, including the UN, Hans Blix, Bill Clinton, the State Department, France, Germany, Russia-- nobody was disputing any of that. We knew Saddam had used WMDs, against Halabja, against Iran, and against our troops in Desert Storm. Iraq had many of those same weapons when the inspectors were expelled in 1998. This was a fact, never in any doubt. Where the weapons went between 1998 and now-- if indeed they aren't in Iraq-- is an interesting question, and one that ought to be answered (if only because we'd rather find them before al Qaeda does); but there is no logical means by which the failure to find the weapons constitutes a lie on the part of the administrations of the US or or Britain in the lead-up to the war. Nor does it change the fact that nit-picking at the dotted I's and crossed T's of the pre-war justification is not just petty and stupid, but an insult to the people of Iraq, some six to nine thousand of whom would have died in the time since March if we hadn't removed Saddam, and whose children would still be in prisons, whose family members would still be in torture chambers, and whose compatriots would still be buried in unmarked mass graves. Complete the sentence: Though none of the other grievances against him are in any doubt, Saddam may not in fact have tried to buy yellow-cake from Niger. Therefore: __________________
(I know! I know! Therefore... he wasn't a bad guy after all, meant us no ill will, never harbored a WMD program, and was loved by his people-- and we ousted an innocent man!)
Statements like Fleischer's seem like self-parody only if you don't think about them. And that's what really gets me: apparently the majority of the American public is able to see and grasp the logic of his reasoning, while the visible media personalities to whom they tune their radios and TVs-- whose job it is to keep up with and interpret the news-- can't. To them, it's all just the obfuscation of a bunch of unelected dunderheads steering this country to ruin, and isn't that just so tragic that we have to laugh to keep from crying?
They also made fun of Ah-nuld's chances at the California governorship, and his recent statements wherein he compared himself politically to Nelson Mandela. Apparently never having listened to a word the man has said on political subjects, they dismissed him out of hand on the basis of-- what? Apparently the fact that he's still making movies as a character actor. "Schwartzenegger's potential voting constituency is bodybuilders, pro wrestlers, movie fans, and Howard Stern," the hosts quipped, adding that "Well, hey, that's most of California." They then said that the next thing to expect would be Keanu Reeves explaining in a press conference why he's like James Madison.
It's funny, so it must be true.
We've trained ourselves not to accept anything on face value-- to assume that there's always more to the story, to assume that whoever's in power is trying to dupe the public, especially if they're Republicans. There's always some nefarious subplot. If one isn't obvious in what people say, then that's just evidence of conspiracy.
It must be an amazingly unfulfilling life, to be that suspicious all the time.
Now people are calling in to Greg Kihn's radio show and stating bluntly that "There are no weapons of mass destruction." And, presumably, there never were. Nor was there ever a Saddam Hussein or an Osama bin Laden. Or a World Trade Center.
UPDATE: Oh, and even Congresspeople are getting into the act. Some guy who said he voted for war is saying that he's shocked, shocked, at the recent revelations. When pressed, he won't say he was "duped" into voting for war, but clearly, clearly the war was fought under false pretenses and therefore for some sinister purpose of the Administration's. Condi Rice knew! She told Tenet to take the fall! Bush didn't know because he's an imbecile! Now an innocent dictatorship has fallen and a people has been ruthlessly liberated to their own destiny! Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!
The cognitive feedback loop on the left may have become such that there won't be a voice from there that anybody can take seriously until after a major shakeup-- like on the scale of the death of certain political parties. Bring back the Whigs and Federalists!
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