Time To Plant The Goalposts
One thing to look for over the coming week or so is announcements of troop reductions to be met with the claim that those reductions are a result of John Kerry/John Murtha's calls to cut-and-run. The very idea is ridiculous and dishonest, which means it is likely that someone will pick it up and run with it. (It has already been floated in several comments here over the past week.) Not only is it wrong that future troop reductions in Iraq are due to any pressure from Democrats, I believe many of the Democrats' calls for troop withdrawal were made in anticipation of the reductions President Bush spoke of a year or so ago. Here is what I wrote about John Murtha's cut-and-run strategy on November 17, 2005:
Here is my take on this strategy. The more I think about it, the more I believe this is just a way to diminish any political goodwill that will accrue to the Bush administration when troops do begin leaving Iraq. I think the same can be said for the timetable Democrats wanted to impose in the Congress. With upcoming elections and the trial of Saddam, and more and more Iraqi troops and police being trained daily, it is likely, and I think the President has even stated, that the American military presence will start being scaled back within the next 6 - 12 months. When that happens, Democrats will try to claim it was the pressure they exerted that caused it. We all know that is what the President has said all along - that we will leave when the Iraqis no longer need us there. The public, however, has heard a constant drumbeat from Democrats and the media that there is no exit strategy. This war has become the Democrats' best hope for 2006 and they are going to do whatever it takes to get the maximum advantage from it.
Since everything that happens in Iraq is eventually spun by Democrats to support their belief that George Bush is a liar and that Iraq is a disaster, I think it is time for those on the left to tell us exactly what success in Iraq would look like. Stop moving those goalposts. Tell us all where they stand and plant them there.
Granddaddy Long Legs has a post on a broader version of this topic that should be bookmarked. In it he asks, "What if Bush didn't lie?" I know, there are some liberal heads that might just explode, but what Granddaddy did was wonder what, if anything, it would take to convince those diplaying "Bush Lied" bumper stickers that they were wrong and that Bush had been telling the truth. He then went through some of the "Bush lied" claims and provided evidence to debunk them. He has updated the post several times over the past few months as new information comes to light. His goal is clear:
As the rationales behind the Bush Lied! mantra are shot down, one by one, there must come a point where logic insists that the absence of any proof that Bush lied means accepting that Bush might not have lied at all.
I'm not suggesting that all of these people should become Bush supporters or even Republicans, but rather that they merely drop the Bush Lied! refrain due to intellectual embarrassment.
Critics of the Bush Administration constantly complain that he and his supporters always "move the goalposts" on every issue. So to help them avoid being hypocritical, I would like to propose that they set their own goalposts firmly in place regarding the Bush Lied! claim.
This can be done easily:
1. Specifically explain what Bush lied about.
2. If those accusations are disproved, then the facts must be accepted and the mantra renounced.
I am not even going as far as that. I am just asking liberals to set the goalposts for measuring success in Iraq. I know they will never admit that Bush didn't lie. There is just too much tied up in that claim.
By: Lorie Byrd at 12:29 AM | Link | Filed under: Iraq | Technorati Links | | Trackbacks (0)
