Devil's Details: Critical Evidence or Nits to Pick?
As unfavorable reviews of statements by President Bush and John Ashcroft, to touch on the two most recent ones, come in, I find myself tempering the negative with some acceptance of human foibles in the face of waves of questions, and the very real sense that hindsight is always 20:20. I simply cannot bring myself to pick at every memo and instill every line with weight it simply couldn't have held prior to the events of September 11, 2001, at least not without feeling like one of the dupes who believe in the prophecies of Nostrodamus.
However, I'm resolute in the belief that the U.S. was drawn into an invasion and a war under patently false pretenses, and that this is where most of the attention should be given. To that end, the most interesting portions of the events prior to and immediately surrounding 9/11 are those indicating that Saddam Hussein was a declared target unto himself as far as this administration was concerned, and that the completely unrelated terrorist attacks were grotesquely misused to further a pre-existing agenda by the Bush administration. It's with that in mind that I find myself, on the balance, approving of the dissection of memos, speeches and timetables of events.
After all, if so much money and far more valuable time could be so readily flushed concerning Bill Clinton's lying about sexual contact with an intern, then Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld deserve to at least be tarred, feathered, and tossed into the Potomac.
Back to the present, what worries me more is that I've also caught myself becoming weary of it all, shutting it out for days at a time. Unfortunately, that's part of the U.S. psyche that some in power are likely counting on as millions are spent to muddy the waters, and misdirect & bore the feeble attentions of the U.S. public, so prone to treating any subject as a flavor of the week they quickly lose a taste for.
Remember that the aim of each party is not merely to galvanize one's constituents, but to convince those who would never vote for your side in the first place that there's no reason to bother voting. I had Easter dinner with some of these people, and listened as some opined a Naderesque line that there wasn't enough of a difference between Bush and Kerry to bother trying to replace the incumbent.
On the one hand, it's sometimes easy to believe that aside from the camps who've already decided and are unlikely to be shifted, the rest probably won't be sure of who they're voting for until they're nearly in the voting booth. This attitude can lead us to look at the roughly 7 months until election day and decide that any action to sway the easily swayed will be wasted until at least 6 of those months have passed.
That's a trap, though, because others with an interest in the outcome of this race will be plugging away all along, undermining most of the last minute pitches we might make by presenting straw man versions of those arguments over and over in the coming months, sweeping each aside dismissively. By November, attempts to get a great many of these currently unaffiliated voters to listen will only result in them rolling their eyes in boredom at what they think is a dustily familiar and repeatedly discredited argument -- as fast as one can say "megaditto."
They certainly have a great deal of money to spend on these messages, and spend, spend they will.
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