Column: Yesterday's Emergency Has Been Cancelled Due to Political Inconvenience

There are some things any hardcore political junkie is compelled to admire about this administration. For instance when it comes to propaganda, the Bushies outdo with ease the wiliest of opposing spin rascals, and that includes the wiliest of them all -- Iraq's information ministry, which defiantly declared the absence of U.S. forces near Baghdad even as the 7th Cavalry was pummeling the city's elite guard. The Iraqi leadership's brand of earnest fiction requires a certain P.R. panache rarely seen, yet Bush II has managed to top it.

Remember when the White House thundered about unavoidable war because Saddam Hussein's secreted weapons of mass destruction posed an intolerable threat to our national security? Remember its verbal pounding on that point? Remember its incessant claims of knowing the whereabouts and wherefores of Iraq's seemingly vast WMD, evidence of which the administration could not then responsibly disclose? Remember its repeated avowals that Iraq would not hesitate to use these weapons against us, even during a faux peace? Remember all that?

Well, forget it.

Since Saddam chose not to unleash so much as a can of pepper spray against invading American forces, invading British forces, the hated Kurds or hated Shi'ites during the onset of hostilities, the White House has leapt to an altogether different dish of propaganda. Sure, Centcom issues occasional warnings about possible chemical attacks just to keep the inspirational Old Testament alive. And such an attack may yet come. If so, the White House will leap back to its original fundamentalism. But by and large, that once-imposing danger is no longer mentioned by the White House. It simply melted away, quite literally without a word, when the chemical nasties and biological bugs failed to arrive as advertised.

Ain't that the damnedest thing?

To fill the nagging void, George W. Bush now speechifies that his chief objective all along has been to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam's long reign of terror. This -- not the protection of national security in the face of clear and present danger -- is why war could not wait, why the United Nations could not stall us any longer, why $75 billion in requested funding was purportedly incalculable a month ago, and why untold young American lives must be put at risk -- now, and not a minute later. This political sleight of hand has been far trickier than Dick and slicker than Willie, and the "in-bedded" media report nary a word.

No one disputes that the sadistic reptile Saddam Hussein has administered said reign of terror. No one, assuredly, will miss His Bloated Pomposity when he's blown to pieces and dispatched to wherever dead dictators go. And naturally anyone possessing the slightest compassion is heartened by the prospect of truly liberating an oppressed people. Excepting the Saddams of this world, we all desire freedom and a democratic voice. Yet those are givens, thus hardly the point.

The point, rather, is that Bush's initial casus belli has been replaced without comment by what the White House propaganda machine, in these ever-changing opportunistic times, now considers the more easily salable: the Iraqi regime's brutality. The administration expected (correctly so far) that by applying proper diversionary tactics the public would simply forget what the selfsame administration emphasized only weeks ago; that is, America's desperate security straights. With characteristic nonchalance, George has opted to erase history. As brazen propagandistic ploys go, this one has been a beaut; one made especially comely by a televised-tragedies-distracted, hypomaniacally patriotic American public buying the president's political gamesmanship in wholesale quantities.

And gamesmanship it is, for if oppressed peoples' liberation was indeed the administration's principal -- and principled -- objective at any cost, then we'd be lobbing cruise missiles and deploying khakied teenagers around the world this very day. There is no shortage of oppression to be relieved, and some of the oppressors possess infinitely more destructive weapons of mass destruction than Saddam Hussein has ever socked away or was too stupid to R&D effectively.

The barely submerged truth, of course, is that neither biochemical bugbears or humanitarian outrage led the administration to drag us all to the brink of global bedlam. It dwells instead in the realm of relentless ideology. Those resolute folks laying siege to the weak and easily impressionable presidential mind have yearned for this war since 41 wimped out, be it to redraw geopolitical maps or assert intimidating military muscle at will. The titular strongman might wish to permanently erase recent history, but reality is stubbornly, inherently indelible. In fact, the above-referenced resolute folks have made little to no effort to conceal their underlying motivations. The public record alone is littered with the frank and open bellicosity long advocated by the Dick Cheneys and Donald Rumsfelds of official Washington and assorted right-wing think tanks.

Another truth is that by any conscientiously observed rules of rhetorical engagement, the unsure among us should not take the antiwar commentariat's word for these things any more than they should accept the administration's word without question. They instead should turn off the propagandistic tube and indulge in some honest cramming. Alternatively, they can just stay tuned for tomorrow's new-and-improved emergency message, which could very well be the real thing.

© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.