Should President Bush Have Mentioned Iraq?
Do presidents usually allude in their inaugural addresses to the wars occurring at the time they are taking the oath? The short and simple answer is yes.
During the War of 1812 James Madison railed at the British, who had set fire to the capitol. His address, perhaps the angriest in American history, included a bloodcurdling reference to the "indiscriminate massacre" of whites by the Indian allies of the British, who countenanced the Indians' use of the hatchet and knife "to glut their savage thirst with the blood of the vanquished."
Abraham Lincoln devoted his second inaugural in its entirety to the Civil War as FDR in 1945 devoted his fourth to World War II. Dwight Eisenhower, assuming office as the Korean War was raging--a war begun under his predecessor--alluded gracefully to the great sacrifices Americans were making in the "the cold mountains of Korea." Lyndon Johnson largely ignored foreign affairs in his 1965 address, Vietnam included, though he made a glancing reference to the "terrific dangers and troubles that we once called 'foreign' [which] now constantly live among us." But Vietnam had not yet begun to consume the lives of young Americans.
By 1969 Vietnam had become the touchstone of national controversy, dividing the country like nothing else since the Civil War. Richard Nixon, sensing the great desire for an end to the divisions, promised to devote himself to peace, then, taking note of the divisions, implored Americans to come together: "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices." At one point he expressly referred to the war: "We are caught in war, wanting peace." Four years later he opened his inaugural with a direct reference to the war, which seemed finally to be coming to an end: "When we met here four years ago, America was bleak in spirit, depressed by the prospect of seemingly endless war abroad and of destructive conflict at home.As we meet here today, we stand on the threshold of a new era of peace in the world."
Vietnam oddly was only mentioned by name after it was long over. Ronald Reagan in 1981 was the first president to refer to Vietnam in a passage recounting the heroism of American soldiers throughout history, with references to battles in the Civil War, the two world wars, and "a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam."
Vietnam was again mentioned in 1989 by the first President Bush in the course of an appeal to the end of partisan warfare:
For Congress, too, has changed in our time. There has grown a certain divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives. And our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other. It has been this way since Vietnam. That war cleaves us still. But, friends, that war began in earnest a quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has been reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory. A new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again.
No president is required to follow the precedents of predecessors. But President Bush's decision not to make even a fleeting reference to the war in Iraq reinforces the impression that he has failed to come to grips with the unexpected turn the war--his war, after all--has taken. At the least he has given his political adversaries, who have long made the argument that he is out of touch with reality, an opening for attack. At the same time he has left his friends with the unenviable task of defending the war policy of a self-professed compassionate conservative who is seemingly indifferent to the suffering he has inflicted on the Iraqis he says he went to war to liberate.
President Bush did allude to the sacrifices made by our troops around the globe. But he did not specifically single out those who are facing the killer attacks taking place almost daily in Iraq. Like the anti-war critics who seek to divorce support for the troops from support for the war, he sought to praise the troops without mentioning the specific war they are fighting--almost as if the war itself had become an embarrassment, something one pretends not to notice.
One thing can be said with almost certainty. Had the Iraq war gone well, President Bush would have mentioned it.