Machan's Musings - Bush’s Censorial Temptation
by Tibor R. Machan
Does President Bush believe that by his announcing that critics of the Iraqi war dampen morale among the troops he will have managed to prevent such criticism? Does he believe his words will silence critics and heighten troop morale?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is America and if Americans share a common trait. it is most likely rebellion at those who wield power over them too overtly. Well, they used to, anyway—most of them. Because the country was born in revolution. Those who wage revolutions usually know what they are doing, why, how others ought to pay attention, and how pointless it is to try to still it.
There is a lot of irritating stuff in much of the criticism of this war, mostly that too many critics have lost their credibility about chiding government for extending its brute powers. After all, it is the Left that likes big government and wants it to perform innumerable “precautionary” measures in every nook and cranny of society. I say, you all on the Left, with your irrational enthusiasm for (even exuberance with) every government program aiming to right the wrongs of society, are hypocritical trying now all of a sudden to rein it in when it comes to this particular (foreign) extension.
It’s like it was back during the Vietnam war. Critics of the Left kept complaining that we are all being taxed for something few support. But when the same could be said about The New Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society—to mention just the broad programs of the last several decades that had been shoved down everyone’s through, like it or not—these statists would retort that it’s all good with government intervention, redistribution, conscription, expropriation, and regulation. OK, then what’s all the fuss about a little preemptory, precautionary war in Iraq?
In any case, President George W. Bush should have stayed away for the line of censorial lament aired previously by his first Attorney General, John Ashcroft. It will not fly; this is not the Soviet Union (yet). I myself have been laying off the war partly because being steeped in it, the US probably should get more solid, expert advice on how to extricate itself from it. The whole thing was ill conceived, ill commenced, and should at least be well concluded. Fretting now about why this is a botched operation isn’t going to be very useful.
Still, now that Mr. Bush raised the matter so unwisely, let’s see why it is a good thing all around to keep up the critical scrutiny he wishes to discourage if not outright suppress. For one, everyone needs to get a very clear idea that the military forces of the United States of America are hired to do the job of defending the country from those who would—or are highly likely about to—launch an attack upon it’s citizenry. The military (or at least the Marines) are not, as one grossly misconceived bumper sticker I saw near West Point when I was teaching there back in the early 1990s, “The 911 of the World.” It should only be the 911 of Americans and so resist the temptation to go gallivanting about the globe involving itself with nation-building and operation Iraqi or whatever disgusting country’s freedom.
Second, once committed to the war, every bit of brain power and moral fiber is required not to succumb to complacency about it, lest the country turn into the very thing those troops have been sent to reform, a suppliant dictatorship. This is a bad war and it is time those with the know-how put their minds to answering the question of how to undo the damage, even as we all realize that there is now some measure of responsibility to leave without provoking further tragedy.
Third, history should benefit from the ill begotten war by being reminded that it was far from inevitable, that had wiser counsels been considered, it could have been avoided and other policies instituted to help those Iraqis—by no means even so many—who really want to live in a genuinely free country (as distinct from wanting to take hold of power and force everyone to live by one’s creed).
No, Mr. President, it is not a wise thing to tell us all to shut up to suit your bad mood and feelings of embarrassment from being in the midst of an impossible situation from which you will not likely emerge with a swell presidential legacy. The troops, by the way, will do just fine, may even be proud, knowing that citizens back home haven’t gone to sleep on their citizenship jobs of taking government to task when that’s justified.
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