[Mb-civic] EXCELLENT: The Planet of Unreality - Eugene Robinson - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The Planet of Unreality

By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; A17

This is not good. The people running this country sound convinced that 
reality is whatever they say it is. And if they've actually strayed into 
the realm of genuine self-delusion -- if they actually believe the 
fantasies they're spinning about the bloody mess they've made in Iraq 
over the past three years -- then things are even worse than I thought.

Here is reality: The Bush administration's handpicked interim Iraqi 
prime minister, Ayad Allawi, told the BBC on Sunday, "We are losing each 
day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. 
If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in 
the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return 
yet, but we are moving towards this point. . . . We are in a terrible 
civil conflict now."

Here is self-delusion: Dick Cheney went on "Face the Nation" a few hours 
later and said he disagreed with Allawi -- who, by the way, is a tad 
closer to the action than the quail-hunting veep. There's no civil war, 
Cheney insisted. Move along, nothing to see here, pay no attention to 
those suicide bombings and death-squad murders. As an aside, Cheney 
insisted that his earlier forays into the Twilight Zone -- U.S. troops 
would be greeted as liberators, the insurgency is in its "last throes" 
-- were "basically accurate and reflect reality."

Maybe on his home planet.

Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, was busy on The Post's op-ed page, abusing 
history. Leaving Iraq now, he wrote, "would be the modern equivalent of 
handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis." The bizarre analogy was 
immediately disputed by foreign policy sages Henry Kissinger (who noted 
that there was "no significant resistance movement" in Germany after 
World War II) and Zbigniew Brzezinski (who just called the comparison 
"absolutely crazy'').

George W. Bush, who speaks as if he has ascended to an even higher plane 
of unreality, marked the third anniversary of the invasion Sunday by 
touting a "strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq." I know that 
"victory" is a word that focus groups love, but did anyone else hear an 
echo of Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam? Does 
anyone else remember that there was no "secret plan''?

It's reprehensible when our highest elected officials act cynically, as 
I believe this administration has done -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the 
rest knew the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was less 
than conclusive, but they hyped it anyway to build support for an 
invasion they were determined to launch. It's dangerous when our leaders 
act cluelessly, and the Bush White House has done plenty of that as well 
-- experts who called for a much bigger invasion force were silenced and 
shoved aside, assurances that Iraqi oil revenue would defray U.S. costs 
turned out to be a sick joke, and there was no effective plan to get the 
electricity turned on, much less deal with thousands of insurgents.

But cynicism and cluelessness are one thing. Actually being divorced 
from reality is another. Do Bush et al. really see only the democratic 
process they have installed in Iraq and not the bitter sectarian 
conflict that process has been unable to quell? Do they realize that 
whatever happens, there's not going to be a neat package, tied up with a 
bow, labeled "victory" -- certainly in the 34 months (but who's 
counting?) that the Bush administration has left in office?

Rumsfeld, I think, gets it. "History is a bigger picture, and it takes 
some time and perspective to measure accurately," he wrote in his op-ed 
piece, the whole tone of which reminded me of Fidel Castro's famous 
declaration as he was being jailed after his first, failed attempt at 
revolution: "History will absolve me." Condoleezza Rice seems to get it, 
too, telling Australians the other day that "beyond my lifetime" people 
would appreciate what the administration had done for the Middle East.

But what about the two men at the top?

Cheney lamented this weekend that "what's newsworthy is the car bomb in 
Baghdad," and "not all the work that went on that day in 15 other 
provinces in terms of making progress towards rebuilding Iraq." 
Yesterday Bush recounted a successful anti-insurgent operation in one 
town, calling it a good-news story that people wouldn't see in their 
newspapers or on their television screens.

Fine, blaming the media is a time-honored tactic. I just hope they're 
being cynical about it. I hope they don't really believe the nonsense 
they're trying to sell.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/20/AR2006032001417.html
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