WMDs and Democracy

Tonight Glenn Reynolds and Mona Charen are engaging in some annoying revisionism:

This morning on C-SPAN 2, I heard a nice young historian spout the conventional wisdom about President Bush and the Iraq War. This particular interpretation is now totally uncontroversial – but it is false. Elizabeth Borgwardt of Washington University told an audience that George W. Bush had urged the war in Iraq in order to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction and only later used democracy promotion as a post-hoc justification for the conflict. There is little question that “the weapons” as President Bush typically referred to WMDs were a key concern. But it is highly misleading to say that they were the sole justification.

Here is a summary of references from speeches in 2002-03 about Iraq: 5 speeches by Bush, 1 by Cheney, and 1 Congressional Resolution (then GOP-controlled).

In fact, President Bush mentioned WMDs more than four times as often as he mentioned bringing democracy to Iraq.

Speaker/Author Event Date Mentions of WMDs Mentions of Demo- cracy Mentions of Terrorist Connections Mentions of UN defiance TOTAL

 George Bush SOTU Feb 2003 40 5 3 48

 George Bush UN address Sept 2002 14 3 2 12 31

 George Bush AEI speech Feb 2003 7 11 2 2 22

 Congress Joint Resolution Oct 2002 10 1 6 7 24

 George Bush 48 hours speech Mar 2003 14 3 1 2 20

 George Bush Cincinnati speech Oct 2002 20 2 5 1 28

 Dick Cheney VFW speech Aug 2002 19 4 1 24

TOTAL 124 29 20 24 197

 Total Pct. 63% 15% 10% 12% 100%

If you read Mona Charen’s article, she quotes extensively, and solely, from Bush’s AEI speech.

Looking at the data, who is “highly misleading” — Mona Charen or Elizabeth Borgwardt?

Comments

  1. xmath wrote:

    Borgwardt. As your data show, they were a key concern, but not the sole justification.

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:13 pm

  2. commissar wrote:

    Four times as often as any other reason = merely “a key concern.”

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:17 pm

  3. xmath wrote:

    Re: “four times”, Well, the exercise of tallying “mentions” isn’t necessarily a meaningful measure of anything (beyond answering the simple question “did he mention it or not?”). “Number of mentions of X in speeches” isn’t necessarily proportional to the more ethereal/intellectual issue of “how much was X a justification”. But ok, change “key” to “primary” if it makes you feel better. Nevertheless, your data clearly show that WMDs was not the sole justification. And this is what Charen wrote. You can’t seriously think you disproved “not the sole justification”?

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:33 pm

  4. commissar wrote:

    “Number of mentions of X in speeches” isn’t necessarily proportional to the more ethereal/intellectual issue of “how much was X a justification”

    I love it.

    I don’t know about you, but if I tell my son: “Your room is a mess. It looks like a pig-sty. There are clothes and food all over the floor. I can’t even walk in there. And don’t drink all my Diet Coke.”

    Most reasonable people would conclude that the condition of his room was what had tweaked me off, and that his consumption of my beverage was not really that big a deal.

    Only a twit would debate whether the messy room was the “sole” or “primary” justification.

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:45 pm

  5. xmath wrote:

    Only a twit would debate whether the messy room was the “sole” or “primary” justification.

    Does that make you a twit? You chose to debate Mona Charen on such a point.

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:46 pm

  6. commissar wrote:

    Mona Charen denied “sole” and could not even bring herself to use “primary.”

    I’m not debating her on such a point.

    Of course, you find nothing ‘highly misleading’ about her selective use of the AEI speech.

    I’m going to bed soon. If you want to cling to the notion that bringing democracy to Iraq was anything more than a minor, throwaway, “motherhood & apple-pie,” line in Bush’s pre-war speeches, I can’t help you.

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:49 pm

  7. xmath wrote:

    She denied “sole”. You wrote this post. If you’re not debating her (anymore), I guess we’re done.

    No, I don’t find it highly misleading to quote a single speech to disprove “sole”. But like I said, she could have quoted everything you tallied, and it still would have disproved “sole”. As I think you’re now realizing, the bar here is simply not that high in the first place.

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 10:53 pm

  8. Grim wrote:

    I think Charen’s point is only that democracy promotion was not a “post hoc” justification, but a justification made previous to the war. Your data does show that she’s right about that, with twenty-nine mentions in the speeches you cite; indeed, it was the second most-mentioned justification.

    That said, it was mentioned far less often than WMD. Is that important?

    Maybe not. I think I can tell you why democracy promotion wouldn’t be mentioned nearly as often even if it were the priimary goal: because, if democracy promotion were a sufficient reason for war, there would be so very many places where we’d have to fight. A person wishing to make a rhetorical case for war could not, therefore, rely on it as a primary argument.

    Even if it were the #1 main reason Bush or Richard Pearle had wanted to go, you’d still have to build the case for war on other justifications. If “democracy promotion” were your main rhetorical point, opponents would say — with perfect justification — “What about Zimbabwe? Do we have to fight there too? What about North Korea? What about Indonesia? What about China? What about Russia? What about…”

    Of course, with WMD programs, one could ask: “What about Pakistan?” It seems interesting to me that the Democratic presidential debates have focused on that very question over the summer.

    Posted 27 Aug 2007 at 7:33 am

  9. DavidC wrote:

    I think Charen’s point is only that democracy promotion was not a “post hoc” justification, but a justification made previous to the war. Your data does show that she’s right about that, with twenty-nine mentions in the speeches you cite; indeed, it was the second most-mentioned justification.

    Exactly. I’m not sure why you (Commissar) think Charen is being misleading when she is responding to, and countering, the specific “post-hoc” argument of Borgwardt. I see no revisionism or anything misleading in what Charen has written.

    Posted 27 Aug 2007 at 2:14 pm

  10. a former european wrote:

    “Justification for war” as a phrase is a red herring. I hear it mainly used by those for whom no war is ever justified.

    Posted 29 Aug 2007 at 11:01 pm

  11. Eric Wilds wrote:

    I don’t think a word count is very useful in trying to discern the justification for the war in Iraq. The justification was straightforward: Iraq’s WMD pose an “urgent” threat to the United States. Simply, if we don’t take out Saddam we are going to witness may more events much worse than 9/11.

    Did President Bush mention democracy? Sure. But that itself was never a justification. You need to distinguish between the justification for the war and what we will do after Saddam’s regime is destroyed. If the war in Iraq was about regime change then we need to leave something in place of that regime, and why not a democracy? But this was never a justification for the war, just a policy we would pursue after we won the war.

    Currently, the Bush Administration is looking for excuses to justify the continued presence of US troops in Iraq and “democracy” is one talking point, just as “we are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” mantra. The propaganda may change, but the real mission will not: the permanent occupation of Iraq by US forces — democracy or no democracy, WMD or no WMD>

    Posted 02 Sep 2007 at 8:05 pm

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