January 11, 2007--Bush's Final Grade

I was planning to write something today about a medical breakthrough—the FDA’s recent approval of a new prescription drug that has been shown to be effective in treating obesity in dogs.

But that will have to wait until tomorrow since I need to say a few words about President Bush’s speech about his changing course in Iraq. Actually, to use his exact words, about changing “America’s course in Iraq,” which is not exactly the same thing.

By now, just 15 hours after he delivered it, pretty much everything has been said about the speech’s military, economic, geopolitical, historical, and especially its political implications. But as an old college Composition and Literature instructor, I thought I would add my comments by looking at it as a piece of writing—as if George Bush had submitted it to fill an assignment. (The paper, sorry, the transcript as it appeared in the NY Times is linked below.)

Looking at it that way, it’s actually a pretty clever piece of work, as I hope the following examples will reveal:

Remember all the fighting about “staying the course”? War critics accused Bush of living in “a state of denial” and called upon him to face reality and change strategic direction in Iraq. In dozens of speeches and press conferences he stubbornly said “we” (not just “he”) would stay the course. But as things worsened he began to talk about the need to be “flexible’ and to change “tactics.” He insisted, though, that he would stay the “strategic” course.

But last night he used the S-word fully ten times. “Tactics” did not appear even once.

Another word virtually missing yesterday was “victory”—he used it just twice as a kind of afterthought toward the end of his talk. In its place we find “success,” as in “there is no magic formula for success in Iraq” and “the most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security” and “a successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations.”

Well done, Mr. President, you’re working on a good grade.

Then there is the issue about the Iraqis “stepping up so we can step down.” Many in Congress and the country are asking, “Isn’t it time for them to be willing to fight and die for their own country? Won’t a "surge" in American troops not only lead to more American casualties but also cause the Iraqis to remain dependent on us?”

The President did address this more or less directly (careful this time not to label those who are urging a scaling back as being in favor of “cutting and running”). But more subtly, every time he spoke about military activity, he said that we and they would carry out these operations together. And whenever he mentioned American and Iraqi troops fighting side-by-side, he listed them first and we second—as if they had been in the lead. As in—“Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods” and “In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents, but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. . . . [But] this time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods

So it was the Iraqi’s fault even more than ours that we did not have enough troops to get the job done.

My note in the margin—“Well done!”

Then there is my very favorite piece of writing. Many journalists and media analysts were wondering in advance of the speech if the president, who is clearly loath to admitting errors and mistakes, would acknowledge making any. As if somehow that would matter. It might make for interesting psychobabble, but what it might have to do with the situation and the global future escapes me. Whatever. What do I know.
But the president, having lost the midterm election, clearly had to throw the networks a bone; and so he said:

“Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”

What a perfect use of the passive voice. You know what that is-- where the object of an action becomes grammatically more prominent than its performer. Here the action, front and center, is the mistakes that have been made. And the performer? In this case we find him, the president, whispered at the literal end of the sentence, “me,” in the hope that he, as the performer, will escape notice and of course responsibility.

My note in the margin—once again, “Very well done!”

Thus my grade for the speech: A- for the writing (I never give straight As); F- for the content.