Freedom's Fidelity

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Bush's Speech on Iraq

I thought it was a pretty good speech from Bush last night, he was stark and deliberate, which was exactly necessary. The most frustrating thing to me about this administration has been their inability to articulate the reasons for this war and they have been awfully lackluster in touting the successes. I know the reasons, I understand the stakes, but much of that is because blogs such as Glenn Reynolds, Austin Bay, Arthur Chrenkoff, Steven Den Beste and the Belmont Club do such a great job of outlining the case for spreading democracy, and the necessity of battling this kind of evil and driving the rule by gang and violence from the face of the earth. One wonders where we might be if this war happened in a pre-blog era. I don't think it would too far fetched to guess that we might be in the process of withdrawing under the orders of President Kerry - sorry Iraqi civilians, we know you need our help, but we are going to once again abandon you to those with the least scruples about using brutality to advance their own objectives.

As for the media coverage, of course many of the editorials and opinions masquerading as news are calling this a change in strategy from uncovering WMDs to fighting terrorists and building a stable Iraq. Conveniently they gloss over the fact that WMDs were only part of an overwhelming case for removing Saddam. If you'll recall it was Colin Powell and the State Department that wanted to emphasize WMDs, and I guess it made some sense in the context of persuading the UN security council. The Bush administration realized that the humanitarian angle of deposing an absolutely demonic dictator and fostering democracy in its place would carry no weight with the UN, and neither would the argument that Saddam was in clear violation of countless security council resolutions. That's not very flattering for the UN, especially given their whole purpose for being.

But go read Ed Morrissey's take, he does an outstanding job of taking on the editorializing of the LAT, NYT, WaPo et al. Still, it's a bit troubling that bloggers working for free can be more effective in communicating what will be the defining policy of this administration better than the administration itself.

posted by Paul  permalink | |