History Forum / General / General Topics / May 2004

A Speech That's No Joke
By BOB HERBERT

It has always been easy to make fun of Al Gore. But if there's any truth to
the thunderous criticism he's turned loose on the Bush administration this
week, it's time to dispense with the jokes and listen seriously to what the
man is saying.

If Mr. Gore is right, the nation is faced with a crisis of leadership that
is perilously close to an emergency.

If he's wrong, then all the folks who have made the easy jokes at his
expense can consider themselves vindicated.

The war in Iraq, said Mr. Gore, in an interview on Wednesday, "is the worst
strategic fiasco in the history of the United States. It is an unfolding
catastrophe without any comparison."

In an echo of the growing chorus of criticism here and around the world, he
said the war has not only damaged "our strategic interests" and isolated the
U.S. from its allies, it has also made the country more - not less -
vulnerable to terror.

In a widely covered speech earlier in the day, Mr. Gore said that Iraq had
not become, as President Bush has asserted, " `the central front in the war
on terror.' " But he said it has become, unfortunately, "the central
recruiting office for terrorists."

The speech was extraordinary - blunt, colorful and delivered with the kind
of passion you seldom see in politics anymore. The former vice president
described Mr. Bush as incompetent and untrustworthy, and said his policies
had endangered the nation.

The president, said Mr. Gore, had "planted the seeds of war, and harvested a
whirlwind."

In the view of Mr. Gore (and many others), the essential problem has been
the triumph in the Bush crowd of ideology over reality. The true believers
knew everything better than everybody else, and the arrogance born of that
certainty led, step by tragic step, to the war with no exit doors that we
are locked in today.

That arrogance gave rise to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, the
contempt for international agreements like the Geneva Conventions, the
dismissal of concerns by some of the highest-ranking military professionals
about the way a war in Iraq should be fought and the willingness of top
administration figures to blow smoke in the eyes of ordinary Americans who
were traumatized by Sept. 11 and worried about the possibility of further
terrorist attacks.

"The same preference for ideology over reality has turned trillion-dollar
surpluses into multitrillion-dollar deficits," said Mr. Gore. "And that same
approach has led to the locking up of American citizens without recourse to
lawyers or access to courts or even a right of their families to know
they're being held in secret."

These and other matters are transforming the United States into a country
that is more warlike, more brutal, less free, less just, less admirable and
much less appealing than the nation that existed when Mr. Bush stepped into
the presidency in January 2001.

Those who disagree with Mr. Gore should challenge him on his facts. Those
who agree must look for ways to defend the honor and perhaps the very
identity of the United States as we've known it.

The least serious part of Mr. Gore's speech was the part that got the most
attention, his call for top officials of the Bush administration to resign.
As an attention-getter, it worked.

But this was a speech in which the former vice president said: "What makes
the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the
rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our
natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and
democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over
evil in our collective aspirations, more than the people of any other
nation."

This is a time to remember the principles that made this a great nation, and
to reaffirm them. I don't know what will happen in the election in November.
What I know is that the nation is facing a crisis now. The Bush
administration needs to step back from the abyss its ideology has dragged us
to.

It may be that the president never understood what made the U.S. great. In
that case, he'd be among those who could benefit most from a reading of Mr.
Gore's speech. If he followed that up with a look at the Bill of Rights (it
would only take a few minutes), he'd have a better understanding of what
this country, at its best, is about.