Any fair-minded analysis of the increasingly bitter debate over the Iraq war leads to the conclusion that, in the short run at least, the anti-war Democrats are winning.
Public opinion has shifted, the president’s popularity has declined and the administration is clearly on the defensive.
While it would be silly to dispute those facts, it might be useful to pay a little more attention to the techniques that anti-war critics have been using to achieve their goal of eroding public support for the war.
Their case is built around a series of carefully crafted complaints that are intentionally designed to limit, if not foreclose, any meaningful exchange of information.
All of the following statements rely on the use of a negative that makes the charge much more difficult to answer. By saying what something isn’t, rather than what it is, critics avoid having to fully distinguish their ideas from those of the administration.
For example:
“Members of Congress didn’t receive the same intelligence as the administration prior to the start of the war.” Those who make this charge almost never turn that sentence around and say, for example, that the intelligence Congress did receive was different from the intelligence given the administration. Such a construction would require the person to immediately explain how the intelligence was different and whether that difference was sufficient to allow for an opposite conclusion. It is much easier to say that “the intelligence wasn’t the same.”
“The Bush administration doesn’t have an exit strategy.” The way this complaint is constructed allows the critic to stop way short of discussing what exit strategy might be needed to end the war in Iraq. Critics don’t go around saying “We need a different exit strategy” because to do so would acknowledge that an exit strategy did exist and force them to say what that strategy should be. It is easier to say that the Bush administration “doesn’t have an exit strategy.”
“Our policy in Iraq isn’t succeeding.” This complaint quickly conjures up in the average American’s mind all of the suicide bombers, the roadside explosions and political uncertainty long associated with the Middle East. Anti-war critics carefully stop short of saying “Our Iraq policy is a failure” because that construction would force them to quickly explain the elements of the failure. In the favored construction, it is not necessary to balance successes against failures. It is enough to say that the “policy isn’t succeeding.”
“The United States shouldn’t torture prisoners.” This statement implies both that the torture of prisoners is common and that it is sanctioned by U.S. policy. It does not invite a discussion of policy. By all accounts, it is not U.S. policy to torture prisoners and in fact those who have violated that policy have been prosecuted. No wonder anti-war critics insist on a negative construction. They would not do so well in an argument over whether U.S. policy against the torture of prisoners needs to be better enforced. That formulation would force them to be specific, and specific is what they don’t want to be.
“The Iraqi army isn’t able to provide security.” This final complaint, like some of the others, is deliberately open-ended. It allows the listener to fill in the rest of the visual image. If one wants to imagine poorly equipped troops, running from battle, it is easy to do so. Almost any other construction of the complaint would produce a more useful discussion. For example, “Iraqi troops need better training” would at least quickly lead to a discussion of how the current training is deficient, or how it might be improved, or how the training time might be shortened. This is not the kind of discussion the anti-war critics want for it would assume that Iraqi forces might be trained and eventually make a difference.
There are two possible explanations for why the debate has been framed as it has. The first is that there is a kind of intellectual laziness loose in the land and a reluctance to employ the precision of the English language. In other words, it is just easier to call someone a loser than to fashion a real argument.
The second is that anti-war critics are simply more skilled at the callous manipulation of public opinion than the administration.
Either way, the nation suffers.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@ mindspring.com) is a former editorial-page staffer. His column appears on Wednesdays.
