The impact at home of the administration's bait-and-switch foreign policy
Rule, James B.
THE BAIT-AND-SWITCH scam is universally known among retailers. The huckster advertises an attractive item—an appliance, aluminum siding, a new kitchen—at an astonishingly low price. That's the...
...Of course, considerable obstacles remained...
...And though what we've ended up with is far more costly, isn't it really worth it, after all...
...Not to worry, the story goes...
...But it flourishes at the highest levels of American statecraft...
...What we've actually bought, it seems, is an open-ended colonial role in a fractious country with little inclination to accept American political tutelage...
...Does this pose a problem for those who hyped the sale...
...It's true, we're told, that the original deal wasn't quite what it was touted to be...
...Instead, I'm concerned about something even more important: the quality of public discourse in America, and especially the ways in which this country is mobilized for major national purposes...
...JAMEs B. RULE is at work on a book on privacy protection in America and abroad...
...The case of Iraq is by now well documented...
...Until severe consequences are imposed on those playing this game, bait and switch will continue to degrade our public life...
...Not if matters are handled right...
...Many a customer, his or her consumer juices now flowing, can't resist the huckster's blandishments and ends up springing for the higher-priced item...
...And didn't even the Clinton administration agree that Saddam had to be gotten rid of...
...Yes, on the strength of propaganda generated by the Bush regime...
...The advertised item isn't really available after all...
...That very fact motivated the regime in Washington to focus all possible attention on the supposed threat and to orchestrate the propaganda assault that undercut reasoned skepticism and sent us to war...
...Grave as that exercise in deception and self-deception was in itself, the broad pattern of such events worries me even more deeply...
...No one seems be counting the costs that slippage imposes on our public life...
...No doubt some of the perpetrators actually believe their own words at this point...
...Probably at least some of those orchestrating the hype actually came to believe it...
...And didn't Congress and the media agree on the war...
...or it's really unreliable, used merchandise...
...Hence, the indispensability of the weapons of mass destruction hype...
...Indeed, once you experience the outstanding advantages of the option you ultimately had the good sense to choose, you'll agree that this new deal is really much better for you...
...Or maybe not...
...I may have missed something, but I cannot recall any such principled pronouncements...
...But the seller just happens to have something else available that would do the trick—for about twice the price of the original "bait...
...For the scam to work, mere presentation of the switch does not suffice...
...In a few months or a year, you won't remember the money you've lost...
...The result threatens transformation of political debate into a sort of postmodern theater—or, more, a highstakes liars' contest...
...This bargain would not have been accepted by most Americans as sufficient justification for going to war, had it been honestly presented as such in the first place...
...Bait and switch is outlawed in many states as a selling practice...
...Americans are growing inured to the premise that, by the time a policy has run its course, no one will any longer remember, or care about, its original rationale...
...Probably not, but we're not supposed to think about that...
...But the regime in Washington focused attention on those misleading scraps of evidence that looked ominous— and twisted them into a crescendo of propaganda culminating in George W. Bush's winning appeal, "Don't tie my hands...
...It's out of stock...
...or it's not the appropriate model...
...A tyrant whose regime was built up in the 1980s by Washington...
...That's the switch...
...The Bush administration has honed this art in matters relating to the environment and the economy, as much as in foreign policy...
...But the fact is, for many thoughtful Americans, and indeed for some others around the world, the WMD issue was decisive...
...DISSENT / Spring 2004 • 35...
...Sometime...
...The recent orgy of Mondaymorning quarterbacking has revealed ample evidence for skepticism of danger from such weapons during the run-up to the war...
...Most Americans found it difficult to support an aggressive military campaign abroad, unless it were aimed against compelling danger to this country's safety...
...And even if Iraq 34 n DISSENT / Spring 2004 didn't have such weapons in 2003, it might have gone on to acquire them...
...Was there anyone who ascribed greater import to the damage to public discourse caused by the trumped up casus belli than to the alleged benefits of destroying Saddam Hussein...
...The huckster has to have his speech prepared to disarm the customer's inevitable misgivings...
...Many enthusiasts of the American invasion of Iraq now acknowledge that—for them—the infamous threat from WMDs was never a big consideration in their desire for war...
...Then, once the seller has engaged the would-be buyer, the story changes...
...Nobody did, of course, especially not the press or our elected representatives...
...But what America has encountered in Iraq, as everyone now knows, is not the promised bait...
...IRAQ SOMETHING Is profoundly wrong here...
...Aren't we all safer, now that we're "draining the swamp" where terrorism proliferates...
...So, let's bring out more flags, salute our brave fighting men and women in the field, and cease these backward-looking quibbles about weapons of mass destruction...
...We know that elimination of Saddam Hussein was the aim of key figures in the current administration from Day 1. September 11 created DISSENT / Spring 2004 • 33 IRAQ the ingredients in American public opinion that could be exploited to that end—the fear, the suspicion, the willingness to believe in far-reaching conspiracies abroad that would have deadly consequences at home...
...For now, I leave it to others efforts to pinpoint the details of how utterly the American public was misled in the run-up to the Iraq War—how the evidence counseling skepticism about WMDs was censored, who knew of the scam and who didn't, and so on...
...Aren't we glad to be rid of that dangerous tyrant...
...That's the bait, and consumers predictably rise to it...
...The worst of it, in this latter and most notorious instance of bait-andswitch, is that even some on the left side of the political spectrum were prepared to support a war whose public justification should always have been branded as tenuous...
...But, the sellers now aver, the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction wasn't that important after all...
...Most Americans (not the hucksters, but the once-skeptical majority) expected to be freed from the threat of weapons of mass destruction and to have our military efforts met with gratitude from the Iraqis and an upwelling of democratic sentiment and institutions...
...As the catch-phrase goes, by then we would all be "on a different page...
...But the weapons were not there, and creation of anything resembling enduring pluralism in Iraq is proving far more costly in blood and dollars than we were told—if indeed this latter aim can be realized at all...
...Thus, the switch...
...Americans are yielding to a world where national leaders build support for even the weightiest and most far-reaching public decisions by invoking rationales that are known to be evanescent, when they are not completely transparent...
...The selling of the Iraq campaign is simply the most outrageous recent example...
...In this world, what professional politicians call "the political justification" even of momentous policy directions has less and less to do with the actual considerations that move the country's elites...
...Members of the war party banked on the assumption that, by they time they had to match their assertions about threatening weapons with evidence, the world would look vastly different...
...During the run-up to the war, it would have been inspiring to have heard from anyone of any po - litical stripe who wanted to support an invasion whose aims were presented honestly, but who refused his or her support because of the deceptive rationale...
...The WMDs weren't really there to be removed...
...After all, what the buyer originally had in mind was rather different— and a lot less expensive...
...Who knows...
...By the time you read this, this list of rationalizations for the switch from what was promised to what's been delivered will undoubtedly be longer and far more embellished...
Vol. 51 • April 2004 • No. 2
