Dubya understood how to sell war to the America.
At dusk, in late May 2003, George W. Bush stepped aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Dressed in combat gear, W. had landed a four-seat S-3B Viking only moments earlier.
Then, standing in front of the crew and a large banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” Dubya, now dressed in a business suit, declared, “Officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
He added, “The battle of Iraq is one of victory in a war on terror that began on September the eleventh, 2001, and still goes on.”
As it turns out, the Lincoln sat less than 40 miles off the San Diego coast, not in the middle of the sea as the image viewed by Americans suggested. In the background, the San Diego skyline carefully left out of frame.
And, as reported by The Los Angeles Times, the Lincoln delayed its return to shore one day longer to accommodate the spectacle, leaving its crew, who had already seen their six month deployment lengthened to ten, to wait one day more before returning home to family and friends.
And, as it turns out, nearly seven years later, major combat operations in Iraq were anything but accomplished.
It mattered not.
As New York Times columnist Frank Rich notes in his 2006 book about Bush’s selling of the war in Iraq to Americans, “That this war happened to be against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 was largely overlooked in the excitement of an American victory achieved in just over forty days with only 139 casualties.”
Last week, President Obama announced his decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to an audience at West Point and a planned withdrawal to begin in July 2011.
Nearly a decade after the 9/11 attacks and eight years since the war in Afghanistan began, Obama lacked the Dubya swagger as he made his case to a war-weary American public on why they should support a war many of them soured on long ago.
“If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow,” Obama explained.
The night before Obama announced his decision, Politico asked Dick Cheney if he thought the Bush administration deserved any responsibility for the current situation in Afghanistan, Cheney responded, “I basically don’t.”
9/11 changed everything and nothing. Those numbers haunt this decade right alongside more recent numbers like record unemployment rates.
There are other numbers.
In a recent article, Elizabeth Warren reminds us, “Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure.
One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month.”
What Obama laid out that night at West Point was his best argument for the best policy he and his team — and the military — has for how to proceed in Afghanistan. And, in the coming months, Americans will learn whether that strategy can succeed.
But, what they already know is that things are not well on the domestic front. Now, at the end of the 9/11 decade, we prepare for more war and the costs associated with it.
And, in the place of cowboy swagger is Obama’s seemingly cool logic.
“And that is the high drama that has been unfolding this autumn,” writes Time’s Joe Klein, “the struggles of a highly intelligent, dispassionate man to find a rationale for a mission that is crucial but slightly crazy, a decision that will define his presidency.”
It is a decision that will define our country in the decade ahead as America struggles to come to terms with itself and the decisions of the past decade. With Obama, we’ve traded Bush’s John Wayne for Star Trek’s Spock.
Are we not entertained?
James is a MA student in screen studies and English. He received his BA in film studies and political science from the University of Oklahoma.
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