Where's the Unity?

Last week, at a speech before the American Legion National Convention, Donald Rumsfeld made the following observation:

It seems that in some quarters there's more of a focus on
dividing our country than acting with unity against the
gathering threats.

It's hard to image a more deeply cynical statement. After all, Rumsfeld was speaking on behalf of an administration that has, from as early as 2002, engaged in a deliberate strategy of dividing the nation on issues of national security. This is something I've written about previously:

In the summer of 2002, less than one year after the most
traumatic day in modern American history, the Bush White
House made the decision to "run on the war." In the days after
9/11, the American people came together; Republicans and
Democrats largely put their ideological differences to the side
and pledged their support for the war on terror. Overwhelming
majorities favored our invasion of Afghanistan, a move that
we all agreed was an eminently logical and necessary response
to the 9/11 attacks. The world was with us too. The coalition of
the willing included just about everyone.

But in the summer of 2002, Bush and his advisors made a
fateful decision. They looked around, saw a unified nation, and
decided it was time to cash in politically. They decided to turn
terrorism and war into political issues and use them to solidify
GOP control of Congress. Suddenly, decorated war veterans
like Max Cleland found themselves being attacked for being
soft on terrorism because they took issue with the labor
provisions of the Homeland Security Act. Karl Rove and his
surrogates made a point of characterizing any Democratic
disagreement with anything as being "soft on terror."

And from that point on, there was no turning back. The GOP
was carried to victory on the fumes of a national unity that
would soon be completely dried up.

This has always been an intentional strategy on the part of the White House. They saw an opportunity to seize the issue of terrorism for the Republican Party and they took it (or at least tried). They didn't want bipartisanship. They wanted to own this issue, to be able to use it as a perpetual club with which to beat their political enemies over the head. They knew that one of the prices of following this strategy would be a lack of national unity with respect to our foreign policy initiatives. They didn't care. In fact, they were counting on it. They figured a climate of disunity and bitter polarization would ultimately favor the GOP.

This strategy is evident in every single foreign policy address made by the Bush administration from 2002 onward. Every one of these speeches, at least at some point, badly mischaracterizes the views of the administration's critics. We've been treated to nothing but strawman rhetoric for years. While this may be an effective way to gin up support among your base and convince some swing voters, it is, needles to say, not the best way to win over your critics or foster national unity.

But putting rhetoric and politics aside, there's a deeper problem. The disagreement over our current policies is fundamental. We all agree that we should be working to reduce the threat of terrorism. But many of us feel that the strategies we've pursued over the last few years, particularly the invasion of Iraq, are fundamentally counterproductive, that we're creating more problems than we're solving. You’re never going to have unity when one side thinks we're moving forward and the other thinks we're moving backward. Does Rumsfeld really expect those of us who think we are about to march over a cliff to just shut up and get in line? If so, what makes us any different than lemmings?