Say Anything Blog

In response to criticism of their defeatist rhetoric and the national party leader's "we can't win" stance on the war in Iraq the DNC has issued a press release (quickly picked up by my state's Democrat party, who conveniently left out a link to any source material) claiming that President Bush has said that we can't win the war on terror.

To: National Desk, Political Reporter

Contact: Karen Finney of the Democratic National Committee Staff, 202-863-8148

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by the Democratic National Committee:

The RNC got it wrong. Today, they falsely claimed that President Bush has always predicted victory in the War on Terror, and argued in a release that "President Bush Never Said We Couldn't Win." In fact, last summer, on the first day of his convention, President Bush told Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today Show" that he didn't think "we can win it."

NBC, "The Today Show", 8/30/04

MATT LAUER: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you'll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war of ter--on terror? For example, in the next four years?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I have never said we can win it in four years.

MATT LAUER: No, I'm just saying, can we win it? Do you say that?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I don't--I don't think we can win it.

New York Times Headline: "Bush Cites Doubt America Can Win War on Terror." "President Bush, in an interview broadcast on Monday, said he did not think America could win the war on terror but that it could make terrorism less acceptable around the world, a departure from his previous optimistic statements that the United States would eventually prevail." (New York Times, 8/31/04)

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, http://www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Well, that certainly makes it look like the President was saying that we cannot win the war on terror, but lets give his statement some of the context that is left out of this press release:

Lauer: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you'll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war on terror in the next four years?

President Bush: I have never said we can win it in four years.

Lauer: So I’m just saying can we win it? Do you see that?

President Bush: I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let's put it that way. I have a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand is to find them before they hurt us, and that's necessary. I’m telling you it's necessary. The country must never yield, must never show weakness and must continue to lead. To find Al-Qaeda affiliates who are hiding around the world and want to harm us and bring ’em to justice — we're doing a good job of it. I mean we are dismantling the Al Qaeda as we knew it. The longterm strategy is to spread freedom and liberty, and that's really kind of an interesting debate. There's some who say, ‘You know certain people can't self-govern and accept, you know, a formal democracy.’ I just strongly disagree with that. I believe that democracy can take hold in parts of the world that are now non-democratic and I think it's necessary in order to defeat the ideologies of hate. History has shown that it can work, that spreading liberty does work. After all, Japan is our close ally and my dad fought against the Japanese. Prime Minister Koizumi is one of the closest collaborators I have in working to make the world a more peaceful place.

You can see what the Democrats have done. The President did state that we cannot win the war in Iraq, but then he qualified that statement by pointing out that this isn't a traditional war. We're not fighting a country, or even a traditional uniform-wearing army. We are fighting an ideology pushed by a group of people who protect themselves by blending in with the general population.

They have no leader that we can capture or even negotiate terms of surrender with. They have no capital city we can occupy. Thus, in order to defeat them, we must fight against the conditions that breed their ideology: Oppression and totalitarianism. By spreading democracy in the middle east we attack terrorism at its roots. And while we can certainly be successful at that, we will never win an unmitigated victory against terrorism as there will probably always be factions of people in this world who embrace terror as a means to their ends.

And the Democrats know this, but its easy to score cheap political points by cherry-picking a statement from the President and implying that he thinks our cause against terrorism is hopeless.

Really, though, shame on them for pushing this falsehood. And shame on the North Dakota Democrats for pushing it as well, especially after one of their own recently came out and blasted Howard Dean for his defeatist rhetoric.