Myth-Making in the Face of Change

An army of mythmakers is hard at work in Washington and across the nation claiming to be inspired by principle, but motivated in reality by partisanship and self-promotion. Congressional Republicans, who borrowed and spent us into oblivion, now use what little political capital they have left promoting thrift, balanced budgets and tax cuts. Editorial writers and pundits tackle everything from Guantanamo to Obama's stimulus proposals.

It isn't surprising that former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, would use familiar prose regarding torture and the decision to close Guantanamo. In his Washington Post op ed, (1/22/09) Thiessen relies on the fear-mongering so deeply embedded in the Bush administration rhetoric. His main thrust seemed to be, that if our government relies on Army Field Manual guidelines for interrogations, we "will effectively kill a program that stopped Al Qaeda from launching another September 11-style attack." Any future attacks, he suggests, would be the result of not using "enhanced interrogation techniques" and thus Obama's fault.

What is surprising, however, is that Thiessen and others claim so insistently that Guantanamo has been and continues to be a lynchpin in our national defense. For one thing it is hard to imagine that anyone who has been held for five or more years remains a valuable source of intelligence. And questions persist about just who we've been holding all this time - - where they were picked up and on whose authority. Why, in any case, weren't combatants captured on foreign soil incarcerated in prisons in those regions instead of being whisked off to the never-never-land of Guantanamo?

Strangest of all, perhaps, is that Thiessen and other Bush supporters are so anxious to place the burden of failed policies firmly on Obama's shoulders. If, they say, dangerous terrorists are freed they will continue trying to destroy "our way of life." Moreover, they add, these detainees were not in uniform nor were they part of an identifiable national military force. Accordingly, they are not protected by the Geneva Conventions and are not entitled to the judicial procedures established for ‘legitimate' prisoners of war. The problem is that a general concept such as ‘a war on terror' precludes an end to specific military operations. Imprisonment in such circumstances has no term limits.

How to dig our way out of the morass left by the Bush administration is the question of the day and years to come. Our economy, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ire of a defeated and demoralized Republican Party all play into the national dilemma. Obama rejects "the false choice between our safety and our ideals" and is attacked for being soft on defense in another round of pseudo patriotic scare tactics.

And, as our financial condition worsens, conservatives make a strident case for more tax cuts and less spending as a means of stimulating the economy - - perhaps a payroll-tax holiday and a reduction in the capital gains tax though how either would create jobs is a mystery and jobs must form the basis for any recovery. Besides payroll taxes fund Social-Security benefits; imagine if George Bush had succeeded in ‘reforming' social security and private accounts had been thrust into a stock market now in serious distress.

There are compelling reasons to debunk some of the popular myths making the rounds, one of which is that President Bush kept the country safe, which is true only if one leaves 9/11 out of the mix. No satisfactory explanations have ever been given for why warnings were ignored and our ports of entry and departure left so vulnerable. President Clinton had cautioned that terrorism would be a major concern, and urgent intelligence "chatter" said  Al Qaeda was "determined to strike" in the United States. Bush had been in office for almost nine months, eight years after the first Trade Center attack, but had paid little attention to the matter of Al Qaeda's intentions. And then of course there was Katrina. Surely it's a stretch to credit him with having been a responsible steward of our security.

It is often said that repeating an unproductive course of action and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Tax cuts, especially in a time of war, haven't made us prosperous; torture, intrusive domestic surveillance and pre-emptive military action have given us a false sense of security and diminished our stature abroad. Obstructionist tactics supporting the failed strategies of our recent past cannot be defined as the actions of a "loyal opposition" and do not conform to the wishes of an electorate that voted for change in November.