Slate's Dynamic Trio

Currently posted at Slate are three must-read columns about the politics of the Iraq War written by Jacob Weisberg, Michael Kinsley, and John Dickerson, respectively (who, by the way, are probably my three favorite mainstream columnists at the moment).

Weisberg's column, "The Misleaders," provides a succinct and damning assessment of the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence. He concludes:

If you examine these and other pillars of the
administration's case for invading Iraq, a clear
pattern emerges. Bush officials first put
clear pressure on the intelligence community
to support their assumptions that Saddam
was developing WMD and cooperating with
al-Qaida. Nonetheless, significant contrary
evidence emerged. Bush hawks then
overlooked, suppressed, or willfully ignored
whatever cut against their views. In public,
they depicted unsettled questions as dead
certainties. Then, when they were caught out
and proven wrong, they resisted the obvious
and refused to correct the record. Finally,
when their positions became utterly
untenable, they claimed that they were
misinformed or not told. Call this behavior
what you will, but you can't describe it as
either "honest" or "truthful."

I think that's absolutely right. I also agree with Weisberg's final two paragraphs:

Another giveaway is the administration's
lack of outrage over the bad intelligence they
now claim to have been victimized by. Only
Colin Powell, before his U.N. speech, seems to
have pushed back with any skepticism about
charges he was being asked to retail. And only
Powell has expressed any outrage after it
became evident that his U.N. speech had
been a case of garbage in, garbage out.

Powell's old colleagues now defend themselves
by saying they didn't know their claims about
Iraq weren't true. But the truth is most of
them didn't care whether their assertions were
true or not, and they still don't.

Kinsley's column takes Bush and Cheney to task for consistently resorting to the most dangerous argument in all of politics: that questioning the wisdom of war policy undermines the war effort by suggesting that the efforts and sacrifices of our troops have been in vain. Kinsley writes:

Thousands of Americans died in Vietnam after
America's citizens and government were in
general agreement that the war was a mistake.
We are now very close to that point of general
agreement in the Iraq war. Do you believe that
if Bush, Cheney, and company could turn back
the clock, they would do this again? And now,
thanks to Rep. John Murtha, it is permissible
to say, or at least to ask, "Why not just get out
now? Or at least soon, on a fixed schedule?"
There are arguments against this--some good,
some bad--but the worst is the one delivered by
Cheney and others with their most withering
scorn. It is the argument that it is wrong to tell
American soldiers risking their lives in a foreign
desert that they are fighting for a mistake.

One strength of this argument is that it doesn't
require defending the war itself. The logic
applies equally whether the war is justified or
not. Another strength is that the argument is
true, in a way: It is a terrible thing to tell
someone he or she is risking death in a mistaken
cause. But it is more terrible actually to die in
that mistaken cause.

That point needs to made over and over again. There is nothing more tragic than casualties suffered in vain. And there is nothing more difficult than admitting that brave men and women have died for a mistake. I'm not saying that we should begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq. I don't know whether that's the best move. But I do know that when debating whether or not to withdraw our troops, we should not dwell on sunk costs. That particular logical fallacy has led to many of history's most colossal errors of judgment. The spilling of more blood and treasure in Iraq needs to be justified by weighing that loss against the potential future benefits. It must be a strictly forward-looking analysis. To justify future sacrifice by pointing to past sacrifice is to create a self-reinforcing logical loop that almost always results in unnecessary suffering.

In the third column, John Dickerson points out why the Democratic party's lack of an obvious leader is a good thing and is causing all sorts of problems for the Bush administration. Noting how the administration's initial attempt to vilify Jack Murtha failed miserably, Dickerson writes:

This is what happens when a party goes into
campaign mode without a single opponent. With
no specific person to target, the Bush
administration ends up taking on all members of
the opposition at once. The White House
plugged Murtha into an indiscriminate and
undifferentiated rapid-response machine and it
didn't work. Finally, Democrats have reason to
be happy that they have no clear leader.

Dickerson notes that the White House--after realizing that their attacks on Murtha had back-fired badly--is now going out of its way to call him "a good man, a marine, and a patriot." Dickerson concludes:

The bungled Murtha response gave him more
energy, validity, and acclaim than he probably
would have gotten otherwise. It has made the
withdrawal option in Iraq a far more serious
topic of conversation than it would be
otherwise. No one is signing on to Murtha's
quick timetable for withdrawal, but the idea
can no longer be dismissed by merely
mentioning the name of the person who offered
it. Murtha's next proposal will arrive with far
more credibility because of this episode. People
will pay attention to what he has to say. After
all, he's a good man. Just ask the president.

The Republican political machine is very good at turning a policy debate into a referendum on the personality of a particular Democratic politician. Just ask John Kerry or Al Gore. Right now, there is no obvious spokesman for the Democratic party as a whole. Without a figurehead to caricature and mock, the GOP political machine is being forced to something it hates to do: substantively defend GOP policy. Those who are hoping that a clear leader will soon emerge from the Democratic ranks should be careful what they wish for.