Nailed it: As usual, columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. sussed out the nagging reason that most of us don’t condone President Bush’s latest plan to fix the war in Iraq — we simply don’t trust the guy who has lied to us, spied on us and proved to be the Worst President Ever.
I know that we’ve been misled to an awful intersection of history where there are no good options, only options in varying shades of bad. I know how tempting it is to say we ought to wash our hands of this mess and bring our men and women home. I know that it still strikes me as wrong, for reasons both moral and pragmatic, to come in, blow up these people’s country, then walk away and leave them in the rubble.
Most of all, though, I know this: I do not trust my leaders. And politics is not the only, or even the primary, reason. No, at the end of the day, this is a question of character.
From the beginning, the architects of this war have shown a frightening nonchalance toward truth, a troubling willingness to treat fact as optional. Where reality has collided with political expedience, political expedience has invariably won. Where it has been inconvenient, it has been ignored.
It happened when the administration linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks even though one had nothing to do with the other. It happened when the White House used discredited intelligence to make the case for war. It happened when the president dismissed gloomy intelligence reports that did not jibe with his preferred view. It happened when he insisted we ”stay the course” even after it became apparent to everyone with eyes that the course led straight off a cliff.
So now, here comes Bush with sober mien and chastened air asking for one more chance to get it right. And if you sense in this corner a reluctance to comply, well, it has less to do with the merits of his proposed strategy than with the fact that it is his proposed strategy. Bush is a man who has heretofore shown only arrogance in the face of monumental and fatal misjudgments. Now he comes before the country asking us, in effect, to trust him.
You can read the complete column here.
