The Writing on the Wall: Truth is not unpatriotic
As we head forward with our ‘new direction’ in Iraq, let us not forget from whence — and for what reason — we came
By Brian Goodman, opinion editor
Posted on January 16, 2007

His well-documented communicative aptitude notwithstanding, President Bush can be a bit predictable at times, to the point that taking a swig every time he says the word “freedom” in the State of the Union address has become a drinking game among us politically involved.

As easy as it was to predict what the president would say about his “new direction” in Iraq, it was just as easy to predict what would remain unsaid. For example, President Bush seems incapable of naming the fighting between geographical sections or political factions of the same nation anything other than “sectarian violence.” That little linguistic nuance is cute, but should be painfully reminiscent to anyone from the newspeak era of the Vietnam War. Calling the civil war between Shiites and Sunnis a civil war may not sound as manageable, but as our clear and desperate need for a “new direction” indicates, it hasn’t been manageable. One can only hope that calling a spade a spade will bring a modicum of reality crashing back into the five walls of the Pentagon and the one continuous wall of the Oval Office.

More important than “civil war” is the other word President Bush will likely never utter again without a healthy level of duress: “weapons of mass destruction.” Like an infant learning to talk, the president was obsessed with the word “WMDs” leading up to the war, just like he got stuck on phrases like “freedom,” “sectarian violence” or “stay the course;” oral fixation will be one of the legacies left by this administration.

Conservatives have spent more than a year trying to get us to forget exactly why we are in Iraq. Through the 2004 election, Republicans were effectively able to put the war in Iraq under the umbrella of the War on Terror — as little as two years ago, a majority of Americans believed (incorrectly) that Saddam Hussein was in some way involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But as things began to deteriorate in Iraq, and the WMDs that we launched this “pre-emptive” attack (remember that word?) never materialized, Americans began to separate the two, which one can argue was the Republicans’ undoing in 2006.

Before we can continue, we must lay the foundation for a bit of decorum. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, who fancies himself a Bill O’Reilly alternative with a heart that bleeds, has the habit of ending his show with a count of how many days it has been “since the declaration of mission accomplished in Iraq;” today will be 1,354.

Truth hurts. But just because it may hurt does not mean it is untrue, or should remain unsaid. It is not unpatriotic to keep count of the days since mission accomplished was declared, any more than it is unpatriotic to continue to ask where in the hell the weapons of mass destruction that prompted this pre-emptive war have gone.

More than 3,000 American servicemen, and an astronomical and unverifiable number of Iraqis (lest we forget, Iraqis are people, too) have died for this misled and mismanaged war. If there is any absence of patriotism, it is by those who will espouse that we are in Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a bad, bad man. If draping such falsehood over the coffins of three thousand Americans is not unpatriotic, nothing is.

As for this “new direction,” it would be a grave mistake to consider it a panacea. As The New York Times argued, “there are no really satisfying answers in Iraq, since all of the remaining options are bad.” At the same time, we are not winning, and having more troops very well might help us win, as might Robert Gates, who replaced Donald Rumsfeld’s disgraceful ineptitude and hubris. Only time will tell.

But as we move forward with this “new direction,” we must not forget our old directives. If this new Democratic Congress could wrap their minds around the concept of a “business day,” there would be more than enough time to press forward in Iraq and look backward in America. For example, if there are no weapons of mass destruction, we need to know why we so adamantly believed that there were. If someone intentionally lied about it leading up to the war, it constitutes treason at best, 3,000 counts of murder at worst. We owe it to the dead to start asking such questions. And it is not unpatriotic to say so.

Brian Goodman is a senior communications major.