A Careless President

The first three paragraphs were (slightly edited) published in the Lawrence Journal World yesterday.

Is this President the most careless President in recent memory? President Bush regularly declares that the war in Iraq will set the course for peace and prosperity in the Middle East, that a democratic Iraq will be a beacon of hope throughout the region and that a progressive democratic government in Iraq will be a blueprint for change for its neighbors. Yet in a 50 minute State of the Union address, the President spent hardly more than five minutes discussing the war. Even worse, in those minutes, he did nothing more than recycle failed policies and broken promises.

The United States is at war. If sending troops to war is the most difficult decision a President can make, then we owe it to the troops to hear from the Commander-In-Chief about the danger they endure day in and day out, especially if the situation is so bad that it requires more troops. It is so disappointing to see the President openly admit that even he is not happy with his own handling of the war but stubbornly refuse to consider the advice of even many members of his own party, not to mention the majority Democrats, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, many retired generals and nearly 70% of the country.

If Iraq is the central front to the war on terror, and the battle against Islamist extremism is the decisive ideological struggle of our time” and the “fight for our way of life,” then why commit only 150,000 troops to the war? Why refuse the counsel of the Iraq Study Group? Why ignore the midterm election results? Either the President is not being forward about the true nature of the war, or he not equipped to properly fight it.

What is the point in rejecting any constructive criticism? Is it purely for the potential benefit to his legacy that would come from any potential success in Iraq? Should democracy ever take hold in Iraq, President Bush would be able to claim nearly sole credit for the success. But the damage caused today because of his Iraq policy may be so devastating to our relationships around the world, to our need to educate our children and to our ability to research cures and fight disease and to prevent their spread that the question has to be asked “is Iraqi democracy more important than anything else we hope to achieve?” The Republican Congress passed very little meaningful legislation and spent nearly half trillion dollars fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no question that a democratic Iraq would be beneficial to the Middle East, the United States and the world. But is it more important than making college education available and affordable to all U.S. citizens who want it? Or ensuring all Americans have health insurance? Or providing water sanitation to the more than one billion people around the world who do not have access to clean drinking water? Or making a substantial contribution to the quest to cure HIV/AIDS (maybe even enough to find a cure)?

These questions and those like it are the questions we will all wrestle with as the war progresses and eventually ends. Forget the political question of whether or not someone who questions the war supports the troops. Very few people don’t actually support the troops. The important questions are the moral questions of our priorities. In a capitalist society, the way we measure our values is in how we spend our dollars. A half trillion dollars is a major demonstration of our values. The world spent the second half of the 20th century trying to emulate the American way of life. Even as our military budget eventually exceeded that of the rest of the world combined, the world followed our lead in advancing contributions to medicine, science and industry. Under this President we have quickly diverted funding from areas that benefit the greater good in favor of funding endeavors that tear us apart. We have withdrawn from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and the Nuclear Test Band Treaty and are now pursuing new nuclear weapons. Wasn’t nuclear annihilation the grave danger of the Cold War? Apparently we won the war but lost the lesson.

There are undoubtedly people who would like to see the downfall of the United States. Very few are fighting in Iraq. How long will we be considered a “city on a hall,” a beacon to people around the world? The United States was founded on a belief that there was a better way of living and of interacting with one another. Our behavior today indicates otherwise. My fear is not that the world will stop striving to become a partner in the search for a better world. It is that they will continue to emulate us.