Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech delivered last Thursday in Gaston Hall, discussed the American invasion of Iraq and reflected on his recent trip there. “We had a fairly exciting trip to Iraq this weekend,” he noted. His speech had some great lines, including one rather evangelical-sounding claim: “Today there is plenty of good news in Iraq. Plenty of good news and hope for the future among one of the most intelligent and able populations in the Middle East.” Other highlights included advice for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, straight from the Department of Defense (“If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, I think they could in fact make enormous change very, very quickly”) and a prediction for the history books on Iraq (“This is a great venture, one which the international community will one day look back on with pride”), the foreign policy equivalent of pointing the bat to the outfield.
But when pressed by students during the question-and-answer period, the deputy secretary bristled immediately with the Bush Administration’s two classic rhetorical tools: mark a clear line using whatever moral compass you feel applies in this instance, and accuse your questioner of anti-Americanism for opposing you.
The latter is an age-old tactic. Every president hopes, overtly or not, that they will align perfectly in the public’s imagination with dreams of America, its history and its values. Every president knows, or should, that this is seldom the case. Loving your country isn’t the same as loving whomever your country has elected. To assume this is true gets old very quickly; to continuously claim this is insulting and undercuts public debate.
Emphasizing unambiguous moral distinctions is a tactic the Bush Administration has been able to use without compromise on the domestic front. Gay marriage bad, abortion rights bad, tax cut good, and that’s all you need to say about that. In foreign policy, however, the Administration’s moral north pole and its rationale for war have both had to wander a bit. Wolfowitz certainly wasn’t spending this time last year arguing that Saddam needed to be removed to end oppression of Iraqis. Saddam, he was arguing, needed to be removed because he was producing weapons of mass destruction that would eventually be used to attack the United States. Now, apparently, his thoughts on the topic have changed. After ambling, with the rest of the hawks, from logic to logic-past a deep commitment to enforcing United Nations Security Council resolutions, past the trucks that weren’t weapons labs, past the imaginary al-Qaeda connection-he now seems to be justifying the war in Iraq because the United States should depose tyrants. When questioned Thursday by students who obviously opposed the war in Iraq, Wolfowitz’s responded with a classic example of this new logic: “I have to infer from your comments that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power.” Certainly few would argue that tyrants are a good thing, but arguing that we should be in the business of invading their countries is an entirely different claim.
Yet this important distinction is lost in the blunt statements of Administration officials. Most professors at this school wouldn’t stand for such spurious reasoning from students. Should we really permit it from our leaders?
