http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030210&s=alterman


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Posted January 23, 2003


STOP THE PRESSES by ERIC ALTERMAN State of Disunion


These are dangerous times. George W. Bush is set to make another State
of the Union address.

The last one was a doozy. Few speeches in political history have caused
so much damage based on so little forethought by so many wise guys.

Not long after that famous "Axis of Evil" 2002 address, I was sharing a
moment with William Kristol at a transatlantic confab in Brussels (where
I happen to be again). He seemed a happy man, and why not? After a long
and relatively public struggle, the Bush Administration had just adopted
the neoconservative foreign policy doctrine of global military
unilateralism and was promising to beat up bad guys--Iraq, Iran and
North Korea--just as soon as it got around to it. I congratulated
Kristol on his victory, but given how little sense it made to lump these
three very different nations together, even for rhetorical purposes, one
question nagged at me, "How can you be certain they mean it?" I
wondered. "What if it was just a speechwriter?" Kristol told me not to
worry. "In any other speech, at any other time, I'd be concerned," he
averred. "But not the State of the Union. It's too important. Every
sentence is fully vetted and deeply considered. Nothing gets in there
that they are not sure they mean."

We now know that Kristol was being overly generous. As former Bush aide
John DiIulio admitted before he was forced to make his show trial-style
confession, we are living in "the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis,"
in which everything--and I mean everything--[is] being run by the
political arm.... There is no precedent in any modern White House for
what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus."

Witness the 2002 address. David Frum, a former staffer of Kristol's at
The Weekly Standard, was the original author of the "axis of evil"
phrase during his fourteen-month sojourn as a White House speechwriter.
We learned this first when his wife, Danielle Crittenden, sent out a
mass e-mail announcing it. But Frum confirms the details in his
score-settling memoir, The Right Man. Frum, who alternately describes
Bush as "quick to anger; sometimes glib, even dogmatic; often uncurious
and as a result ill-informed," and "a sharp exception to the White House
code of niceness," says he originally came up with the term "axis of
hatred," but it was later massaged by chief speechwriter Michael Gerson
in order to employ "the theological language that Bush had made his own
since September 11."

He had been assigned by Gerson to come up with a justification for war
with Iraq. This, in itself, is rather alarming. After all, Frum was a
relatively junior speechwriter with no experience in foreign affairs.
The Administration had been trying to pin September 11 on the Iraqis
almost from the beginning, and despite the energetic efforts of the
punditocracy propaganda brigade, led in this case by the New York
Times's William Safire, they failed miserably. Even the professionals at
the CIA explicitly denied their case and gave Iraq a clean
bill--terrorism-wise--since 1993. So it fell to Frum, who we now learn
is about as flawed a student of history as Bush undoubtedly was when he
got into Yale based on its affirmative-action policy for the sons of
powerful rich white legacies. He came up with an analogy to Hitler,
Mussolini and Tojo that would require further explication just to rate
an F. Well, the whole concept might have been nothing more than yet
another sad example of a bookish Jewish boy trying to sound like a
Bible-thumping Texas gunfighter but it turns out that presidential
ideas--even incoherent ones--have consequences. Knowledgeable critics
immediately identified two obvious dangers. Yale historian Abbas Amanat
warned that the phony saber rattling toward Iran would likely strengthen
the mullahs there in their struggle with the progressive, democratic
forces that are seeking to open that nation up to US/Western influence.

More significant, at least at the moment, were the alarm bells Bush's
swaggering foolishness set off regarding the powder-keg Korean
peninsula. As Morton Abramowitz and James Laney then warned, "Besides
putting another knife in the diminishing South Korean president," the
speech would likely cause "dangerous escalatory consequences
[including]...renewed tensions on the peninsula and continued export of
missiles to the Mideast." Bingo. North Korea called the Bush bluff, and
the result, notes Richard Cohen, "has been a stumble, a fumble, an error
compounded by a blooper.... as appalling a display of diplomacy as
anyone has seen since a shooting in Sarajevo turned into World War I."
Even so staunch a Bush booster as Charles Krauthammer has been forced to
call his response an "abject Korea cave-in."

Ironically, the Bush team's macho/craven mismatch has endangered--at
least for the time being--its obsession with "regime change" in Iraq. In
England, America's most loyal ally in the fight against Saddam, Tony
Blair, is under increasing pressure to withdraw his outspoken support
for this unnecessary adventure. A Labour MP, described by Andrew
Rawnsley, chief political commentator for The Observer, as "impeccably
loyal and Atlanticist," admits, "I've no hang-ups about joining the
United States in military action. It's following that cowboy which I
find so hard to stomach." Rawnsley also quotes a former Conservative
cabinet minister who says he regards George Bush as "a child running
around with a grenade with the pin pulled out." Right now, the lack of
confidence Bush inspires in our allies is the world's single best hope
for peace.

Lest we forget the role of the librulmedia in all this, Bush's speech
inspired Chris Matthews to compare him to John F. Kennedy. Doris Kearns
Goodwin called it "galvanizing." Indeed. Let's hope this time around,
with Frum out promoting his memoir, and the fruits of this North Korea
nonsense bared for all to see, somebody keeps the guy tethered back to
Mayberry. I doubt even Barney Fife could have screwed up foreign policy
this badly. (And Professor DiIulio owes old Nicolo a big apology.)