post mortem, "terrorism" thread

[roachboy]

this is not intended as a provocation. please do not take it as such.
i found something oddly disappointing in the degeneration of that thread and am doing this simply to pose questions--what we are doing here, why we are doing it, where we understand ourselves to be?

i was thinking about what happened in that thread last night between strange films and bursts of apartmental packing--it is interesting to note the extent to which all of us, regardless of political position, found ourselves playing roles in a performance there, one that started by trying to relativize the category "terrorist" and ended up a space of considerable pissiness and the almost total absence of interaction. standing on opposite sides of a huge fence, throwing shit at each other, is not interaction. well, it is a form of interaction...a debased and ridiculous form.



from time to time, pan and others post stuff that laments our collective inability to get along...that thread, ugly as it was, gave an interesting perspective on that.

is there in fact any meaningful possibility for debate about structuring categories like "terrorism" (--structuring in the curious discusirve universe of bushworld at least)?

is it necessarily the case that when this central signifiers come up for debate that things start with argument and degnerate into bizarre pissing matches over ancillary issues?

how did the context in which all of us function come to this?

if we lived in a democracy, we would be practiced in debating fundamental questions.
if we lived in a democracy, we would be able to distinguish appeals to the emotions from questions of principle and questions of fact.
if we lived in a democracy, we would understand the danger of arguments that appeal exclusively to the emotions, more or less for the same grounds that plato outlined--this type of argument bypasses deliberation, bypasses thinking----this type of argument is inevitably simplifying and simplistic--this type of argument is dangerous in a democratic context because it can lead to polity to fuck up, and if a democratic polity fucks up, there is nothing and no-one to save it---except itself

if we lived in a democratic context, we would accept uncertainty, accept the provisional--we would understand ourselves as collectively making decisions that had actual consequences--we would understand the need--the fundamental need--for accurate information because without it coherent debate is hopeless.
in this context--which is shot through with uncertainty at almost every level, the fact of uncertainty is something to be feared, to be avoided.
there is nothing--and i mean nothing--more profoundly undemocratic than these features short of an explicitly authoritarian regime--but even there, the features of debate amongst the people would not be much worse than they are here--there would simply be an official acknowledgement of the fact of the matter, and a different set of modes of governance based on that conclusion.

but from the point of view of actual power residing with the people, exercized through deliberation, the difference between where we are and an authoritarian regime would be mostly one of style.

we have arrived at a place where all information is understood as suspect.
we have arrived at a place where all political committments are understood as matters of religious faith.
we have arrived at a place where the basis for the actions of the polity might be rational---or might not be rational--and the people, with whom power is supposed to rest--have no way of knowing.

debate has become a matter of recycling a priori convictions, of not listening, of not offering coherent counter arguments, not taking seriously either the subject matter, the idea of debate or people who engage in debate. it is a cartoon, a weak shell of debate, a joke. maybe we do it, this debate thing in a degenrate environment, so that we can keep some hope alive that this space is a choice and that others are possible---and that while we work for this other space to bring it about we try to continue operating in this one as if it provided a kind of practice for what might follow, a potentially democratic space. maybe we do it out of vanity.

what is worst about this is that we do it to ourselves. we accept this climate, we accept the degradation of information, the transformations in the nature of political committment--we accept all of it, even if within that we debate particular policies or actions. by accepting this degenerate climate, we engage in a long, tedious ritual of political self-immolation that we perform in 3-d life and that we perform here. we no longer know how to act when basic questions come up for debate--a form of interaction that we no longer value, that we confuse with a mode of argument that one most often sees happening between domestic partners in a long term relationship who have come to detest everything about each other.

the point is not that we operate in a climate that see you and me as a management problem that is addressed by attempts to organize/structure opinoin--it is that we accept it--and worse still reproduce it--we reproduce our own disempowerment, we are our own disempowerment, we simply havent reached a level of courage adequate to enable us to say it.

but sometimes our actions say as much for us.

we have choices: we do not have to treat ourselves this way. we do not have to treat debate as though it was nothing other than a variant of a circle jerk, a reinforcement device, a space across which one's vanity is stroked because you deploy arguments without any idea that they could possibly be wrong.

this applies to myself as well as everyone else.

the terrorism thread, and others like it, are simple indices of the extent to which we seem to have come to enjoy our own disempowerment. we like it. maybe we need it. we substitute rotating in little circles for questions of substance. we all do it. and again, we do it to ourselves. it is not good.

[JumpinJesus]

When I was a child, I remember going for drives with my father along the Northern California coast, up along Bodega Bay. The road was windy and hugged the ocean cliffs. I was terrified of the thought of plunging over those cliffs in our car and hated the notion of not being in control of the car, even though I was only 8 or 9 years old.

Later, when I learned to drive myself, I was driving a friend home from the airport. I had borrowed his car while he came home to the states for a wedding. On the 3 hour drive back to our base, he fell asleep. He slept a good 2 hours in the car. When he woke up, I was jokingly angry, telling him he didn't keep me company at all on the drive back. He responded, "Take it as a compliment, I hardly ever sleep when someone else is driving. It's a sign of trust."

Some of us trust in our political leaders because they do the thinking for us. We give to them our support because we believe that they know what they are doing and they are keepers of our faith. When we trust in them to this extent, we don't think enough for ourselves because we believe they have our best interests in mind and are doing exactly what we would do if in control. It is comforting to us in those times to know that someone is in control that we can trust, so we can sleep, ideologically.

Others are wide awake while our political leaders are at the wheel. We don't trust that they will get us to our destination safely and demand to know everything they are doing, and if we feel they are doing something wrong, will become a very vocal backseat driver. We are the ones pointing out the oncoming traffic, the barrier-less curves hugging the cliffs, the speed with which they are driving. We would feel much more secure if we were doing the driving ourselves, but we can't, so we exercise control the only way we can, by pointing out every danger.

Those who trust in our leaders because they share a common idea or belief system want those who mistrust to shut up and let the leader drive. They're trying to sleep and our constant racket is disturbing them. However, if we don't keep it up, we could crash.

When we question the honesty, wisdom, motives, and/or methods of our leaders whom we mistrust, we are also questioning the same people who support them. No one likes to be wrong and having our mistakes constantly pointed out and examined so closely is frustrating. It is easier to maintain the status quo of our own beliefs than to question their validity. To me, this is a simple matter of sociology. If you trust your doctor, you have no reason to question why he or she prescribed you a particular medication. You don't necessarily want to know that he or she received a kickback to prescribe that particular medication. To find this out causes you to question every other decision your doctor has made. This epiphany can be quite frightening for many people. It is easier to accept that your doctor knows best and go with his or her recommendations.

The difference between that and this forum is that you don't have a multitude of people in the doctor's office shouting to you that your doctor is a fraud and is corrupted in his or her decisions. I imagine that if this were the case, then doctors' offices everywhere would resemble the politics forum here.

In this forum, we are constantly having to defend our fundamental beliefs on a daily - sometimes hourly - basis. Both sides of the political spectrum wear each hat, the sleeper and the backseat driver, depending upon who is in control. To us, our view is so obvious and logical that anyone who disagrees is a buffoon for they are clearly ignoring common sense.

What we witness here is not the first reaction the other side has to us, but the end result of having to constantly defend their position. The frustration gets to us and after feeling like you're beating your head against a wall, it becomes quite easy to simply insult or threaten she or he to whom you are speaking. It's not good, but it makes perfect sense that this would happen.

[Zodiak]

I completely agree that nothing meaningful can come of this space if boths sides, one side, or any prominent individual in this space confuses debate with rhetoric. I have seen this on every thread in TFP Politics and stayed out of the "terrorism" thread because I knew it would degenerate into a shouting match. The non-freeform threads have enough of that sort of thing.

If one operates under an environment where both sides of political discourse are supposed to mutually respect one another, then the use of rhetoric instead of debate serves only to avoid meaningful discourse and is indicative that the originator of rhetoric is not operating with respect for the other side. Insulting one's intelligence is just as debasing as insulting one's character, personality, family, etc. and, in my opinion, has no place in an environment of mutual respect.

If anyone is unaware what rhetoric versus debate is, then I have compiled a little list of "underhanded" rhetorical methods for enlightenment. This is not to say that eveyone is guilty of this. I am fully-prepared to accept the possibility that not everyone is aware of these things. How many of us were on debate teams? I would wager very few of us.

1) Strawman argument - Rather than confront what an opponent posts as a self-contained entity, the arguer either changes the meaning of the post or sets up a false argument to knock down in order to look correct. In the end, the issue raised in the orginal post is not addressed.

EXAMPLE: Original post: I think that social security has served America well since its inception because less elderly people are below the poverty line than before its inception.
Strawman post: You are advocating for socialism, and socialism is the opposite of what America stands for.

2) Non-sequitur - Literally means "does not follow". The arguer ignores the content of the orginal post and decides to enter into a new argumentative line that has little resemblance to the topic of the original post.

EXAMPLE: Original post: I think that abortion is bad because it kills babies.
Non-sequitur post: Malaria kill babies, but I don't see you arguing to stop that disease.

3) Argument by repetition - Ignoring the result of reasoned debate in the past and repeating an old argument as if the matter wasn't settled before.

4) Argument by caps lock - Including CAPITALIZED text in an argument under the IDEA that the reader's have no SKILL in reading comprehension. This is both insulting to one's intelligence as well as it serves to make the poster look angry.

5) Argument by bias - Quoting an unreliable, biased source as gospel and dismissing all other sources as biased because they do not agree with the quoted source. This came up with the National Review on another thread. Unless common ground can be agreed upon for sources, then all threads where argument by bias is introduced will degenerate into meta-arguments (arguments about arguments) on sources. In the end, no real debate over the original topic can occur.

6) Gloating - Pointing out to the other side that they have lost elections, lost support, lost the agrument, etc. or revelling when the other side isn't happy. In my opinion, this behavior crosses the line of TFP completely and should be a reason to warn a poster of bad behavior.

7) Brinksmanship - Every post of a brinksman will walk the fine edge of the rules, getting away with being as insulting as the rules allow without getting banned. This behavior is indicative of bad faith as the poster does not wish to engage his opponent without wearing warpaint.

8) Argument by bifurcation - also known as the "multiple distraction" argument. The idea behind this method is to throw as much crappola against the wall that some of it sticks. When engaged directly, the perpetrator will bring in all kinds of arguments that are barely germaine to the subject. If one of these arguments is ignored or overlooked by the opponent, then the bifurcator declares vistory. "I put up 20 arguements for you, but you missed #13, so I win"

9) Argument from ignorance - This method can be either ignorance of the topic or ignorance of the debate. The idea here is to post without reading on the topic, without being informed on the topic, or without reading the relevent posts upstream in the thread. If one is too lazy to read what was said, then one is insulting the other posters by interjecting their opinions without reading the opinions of others first. Another example is "I have never read a Potter book, but my church tells me it is bad for kids, so I think Potter should not be sold to children in stores" Another example is "I stopped reading your post when you said X because X is wrong."

10) Stereotyping - Also known as the "broad brush" argument. In this form of argumentation, one takes his own prejudices and pre-conceived notions about the opponent and engages those ideas rather than what he sees in front of him. An egregious example of this was seen earler when a drive-by inflammatory flame-bait post was highlighted by one side and pinned on everyone from the other side. "All you lefties think this way, but at least (insert flammer name here) is honest".

This argumentation is also very bad for TFP because not only does it insult those on a political side that have yet to weigh in, but it also reinforces the stereotype with one's own side. As a matter of fact, painting the other side with a broad brush (and it is always an ugly color) is a form of hate-speech and has no place in an atmosphere of "mutual respect".

Well, that is the first ten I can think of, but there are many more that are possible, and I am not snobby enough to not think that I have used rhetoric in place of debate in the past (and may lapse in the future). Unless everyone comes to TFP Politics with good faith and argues from a position of true respect (rather than walk the tightrope on what is legal), this experiment will fail and all principles involved will be convinced that meaningful debate between both sides is impossible. From there, the gap will widen until eventually there will be nothing between right and left but hate. I don't think anyone wants that.

ON EDIT: JumpinJesus.....that was a very good analogy. Kudos.

[JumpinJesus]

Zodiak, Thank you for the list. It makes a great guideline to understand the basis of these arguments. I learned a lot from it - even that I am guilty of some of those transgressions from time to time.

[Zodiak]

To answer roachboy's questions:

Why am I here? I was intrigued by a friendly environment where both sides of American politics can argue under the rubrik of mutual respect, and I wanted to meet the "other side" without puffed-up egos and hate-speech. Yes, I do think that is possible, but as it exists on TFP Politics, it has a long way to go. This is, of course, my opinion.

What do I view myself to be? A former centrist who has found his political environment turned sharply to the right, so now I am considered "liberal" and finding myself arguing for the left in the interest of returning to a balance between ideologies. I fully-recognize that neither side has the answers to everything, and so I am pre-conditioned for "mutual respect", but the last five years have made me intolerant of the pattens of speech that got us to this unbalanced situation in the first place.

[Zodiak]

Oh, one more thing. If one side "loses" a line of argumentation in an atmosphere of mutual respect, then the onus is on that person to acknowledge that he/she was wrong or may need to rethink things. There is no shame is losing a debate or being shown that you are wrong. The only shame I can think of is failing to acknowledge it or pretending it didn't happen.

If you agree, say you agree. If you are wrong, say you are wrong. I cannot get over how people invest so much pride in something that they cannot easily control. If you are wrong, you either didn't have all of the information, which is entirely forgiveable in a world where there is so much information, or you didn't see it from both sides, which is also forgiveable and the purpose of this forum as I read it.

To JumpinJesus: We all are guilty of these transgressions from time to time. As long as we don't intentionally dip from the well of rhetoric in place of debate and have no fear of our rhetoric being pointed out to us as fallacy, then everything is hunky-dorey.

Then again, all of this is simply my opinion..I am never short of those and I fully-admit that I can be a bit preachy (and I post a lot on days when I am home sick )

[Elphaba]

I applaud everyone that has posted in this topic. The logic represented in moving beyond the petty sniping here is clearly stated. I freely admit that I was one of the snipers in joining this forum having come previously from a free-for-all politics forum.

Is it possible that progressives and conservatives can communicate in an honest discourse of politics? I sincerely hope so. Zodiak is refreshing in his observations on how we relate to one another, and he adds support to RoachBoy's observations.

Intelligent people post here in the Politics Forum. It is my hope that we all refrain from cheap shots and stick to learning from each other in our understanding of the politically environment within which we live.

[ubertuber]

Originally Posted by roachboy

how did the context in which all of us function come to this?

if we lived in a democracy, we would be practiced in debating fundamental questions.
if we lived in a democracy, we would be able to distinguish appeals to the emotions from questions of principle and questions of fact.
if we lived in a democracy, we would understand the danger of arguments that appeal exclusively to the emotions, more or less for the same grounds that plato outlined--this type of argument bypasses deliberation, bypasses thinking----this type of argument is inevitably simplifying and simplistic--this type of argument is dangerous in a democratic context because it can lead to polity to fuck up, and if a democratic polity fucks up, there is nothing and no-one to save it---except itself

if we lived in a democratic context, we would accept uncertainty, accept the provisional--we would understand ourselves as collectively making decisions that had actual consequences--we would understand the need--the fundamental need--for accurate information because without it coherent debate is hopeless.
in this context--which is shot through with uncertainty at almost every level, the fact of uncertainty is something to be feared, to be avoided.
there is nothing--and i mean nothing--more profoundly undemocratic than these features short of an explicitly authoritarian regime--but even there, the features of debate amongst the people would not be much worse than they are here--there would simply be an official acknowledgement of the fact of the matter, and a different set of modes of governance based on that conclusion.

My recent passion has been trying to understand the history around the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath. I am becoming surprised to learn that the political climate and discourse of the day was not much elevated above what we're engaging in today! Very few individuals were able to rise above partisan bickering, even in those days in which it was supposed that America was free from parties (then called factions), which themselves were a symptom of the defective parts of British government that we could expect to cure by acquiring independence. There were also very few people that could really pose well reasoned arguments that did not really on emotional content or pithy phrases (that often did not fit the other's true views) for their mechanism, if not content. Hamilton rises above all others as one who, when motivated, could marshall a devastatingly tightly reasoned argument. Jefferson, who of course is better remembered for perhaps more trivial application of literary skills (the Declaration excepted) often employed logic that had inconsistencies great enough to cause the servers of TFP to crash into oblivion, were he still alive to post them here. My point is that it seems that in no part of our national history has democracy meant the cool, reasoned consideration of opposing ideas. Stability has come at the point between opposed forces of considerable strength, and often accordingly vitriolic attacks. In this spirit, it is the vigor of the debates which, historically, has created the figurative eye of the hurricane that appears to be calm weather. Of course it is the fear of the consequences of this barely-bridled energy that lead ALL of the founding brothers to distance themselves from the word democracy (for which they substituted republic).

Originally Posted by roachboy

we have arrived at a place where all information is understood as suspect.
we have arrived at a place where all political committments are understood as matters of religious faith.
we have arrived at a place where the basis for the actions of the polity might be rational---or might not be rational--and the people, with whom power is supposed to rest--have no way of knowing.

I feel your pain in these statements. I suppose it is only natural that the access to information that the internet brings has manifested itself in a greater suspicion of other's claims, and less of a tendency to back our own up. Natural, but regrettable...

I still get a lot out of TFP - I learn from both sides of the arguments here, and that has expanded my perspective on issues. It is important to confront the most intellectually and emotionally challenging arguments of those you disagree with. This is how one can learn. So while you lament what our discourse causes us to do to ourselves, roachboy, I don't think all is lost. There is still much to be gained from this place, and hopefully these things will provide the kernel for future growth.

Also, JumpinJesus, I liked your analogy. You carried it well.

Zodiak, I responded to the list of fallacies that someone else posted as a thread topic - I'm not sure who put it up first. I appreciate you putting up a list where we can all see it, but I hope it doesn't encourage more of the lamentable tendency to respond with bullet-style quotes that only label the fallacious techniques employed. Simply applying a label is itself an appeal to authority (debate standards), which is not too convincing without some explanatory content to explain why the particular shoe fits. I'm not accusing you, merely remarking on what has long been an accepted technique around here that doesn't add anything to discussions. I'm glad you're here, as the posts of yours that I've seen have been full of good thinking - welcome!

[roachboy]

uber: for what it's worth, i had in mind more athentian demcoracy than that of the late 18th century in america. simply because of the spatial scenario in athens and the type of direct democracy that this spatial arrangemnet enabled. american, tocqueville notwithstanding, is not the first place i think of when democracy somes up.

autocritique: the opening post was not written from a place of despair--more a kind of head-scratching reaction to a space of unwitting performance. if the post drifted toward despair, it happened as i was writing it. which more than occasionally happens.

[Zodiak]

Ubertuber....I agree. If a debate is concerned only with the logical fallacies of the opposition, then the debate would be dry and substance-less. If one is to point out the logical fallacy of an argument, I think that the best manners to include why that conclusion was reached and to extend to opportunity of clarification to the one who made the fallacious argument. After all, even though the logic was twisted up, that person still had something to say.

[ubertuber]

roachboy - point well taken. I guess I am still surprised by the notion (heard from other quarters than yourself) that today's climate of discourse is a fall from some "Golden Age" of rational debate. This Age has yet to take place in America...

[roachboy]

uber: that is a bit like the term postcolonial, which would be nice as well....

[Elphaba]

Roachboy's discourse on the "naming" of things has facinated me throughout several threads. I hope the article I found today is best placed in this topic.

Selling the War
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com

Thursday 28 July 2005

When your mission is failing, is it enough simply to rename it? Not if you care about credibility.

Never before has a president suddenly discarded his self-proclaimed "mission." But after declaring himself the commander in chief in the "global war on terror," President Bush has tossed the catchphrase aside in an elusive search for a new one. The "global war on terror" was his slogan to link the war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq, the battle supposedly being one and the same. The quest for a new slogan is more than a public relations gesture. It reflects not only the failure but also the vacuum of his strategy.

Since Bush's speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., on June 28, for which the White House asked for and received national television coverage, and in which Bush reaffirmed "fighting the global war on terrorism," mentioned "terror" or "terrorism" 23 more times, and compared this "global war on terrorism" with the Civil War and World War II, his administration has simply dropped the words that more than any others Bush has identified as the reason for his presidency.

Throughout July, administration officials have substituted new words for the old. Instead of trumpeting the "global war on terrorism," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have sounded the call to "a global struggle against violent extremism." Medals have been awarded to brave U.S. soldiers stamped "Global War on Terror." Will new medals now be minted?

Myers' change in language involves considerable historical and policy revisionism. He had gone along with Rumsfeld in policies opposed by senior military figures such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was publicly derided by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz for worrying about invading Iraq with a light force. But now Myers presents himself as a secret dissident. In a speech before the National Press Club on Monday, he claimed he "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution."

Myers also reveals himself now to be an ardent internationalist who believes that though the military is carrying the burden, future conflicts demand "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." In effect, Myers is repudiating the Bush doctrine of "preemptory self-defense," enunciated in the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" in December 2002 to provide justification for the Iraq war.

"It is more than just a military war on terror," Stephen Hadley, the national security advisor, told the New York Times in an interview this week. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative." Hadley, of course, as deputy national security advisor, had confessed responsibility for approving the false 16 words spoken by President Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2002, in which the president claimed that Saddam Hussein was seeking enriched uranium in Niger to build nuclear weapons.

The imperative for a "positive alternative," however, is not to disperse something as nebulous as a "gloomy vision." It has not just dawned on the Bush national security apparatus that a "war on terror" described a never-ending battle against a tactic. Dropping the signature phrase of the Bush presidency is part of an effort to cobble together some sort of expedient political solution that will allow U.S. troops to be drawn down before disaster strikes the Republicans in the midterm elections of 2006. "Shock and awe" has been replaced by stunned and confused. By stuffing the old slogan down the memory hole, the Bush administration has withdrawn credibility from its neoconservative policy. Unfortunately, ideology has consequences.

The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has arrived on the bloody scene to warn of impending civil war. But U.S. intelligence does not have an accurate sense of either the number of insurgents or their composition. "That would not be a worthwhile metric," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said recently. Thus Rumsfeld's assistant secretary for public affairs acknowledges that he doesn't know precisely who the enemy is.

Some are Sunni Arabs opposed to Shiite and Kurdish domination of a country they ruled from the Ottoman Empire until the U.S. invasion. Some are former members of Saddam's Baath Party's secret police. Others are jihadis who operate like mobile mafias.

"My answer is, bring them on," Bush declared about Iraqi attackers on July 2, 2003. Since then there have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq. Saudi intelligence interrogated about 300 Saudis captured on their way to fight or detonate themselves in Iraq; a Saudi study revealed that few if any of them had previous contact with al-Qaida and that most were motivated by the U.S. occupation. A similar study of 154 foreign fighters by the Israeli Global Research in International Affairs Center reached the same conclusion.

In the face of relentless suicide bomber attacks, U.S. forces have withdrawn as much as possible in the past few weeks to the safety of their bases, drastically reducing their "operational tempo" and cutting casualties to about half those in June.

The insurgents' strategy is not to create another Vietnam. Their forces are not analogous to the hierarchical armies of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Some responsible Sunni sheiks and leaders may be drawn to participate in writing a new constitution, but there can be no full representation of insurgents. Apart from the nearly insuperable obstacles of getting Sunnis to endorse a Shiite Islamic republic and Kurdish autonomy, ultimately there is no "they" there to negotiate with. The insurgents have no concrete program; their game plan, after all, is a bloodbath. If they cannot strike at Americans, garrisoned in their forts, they will kill soft targets such as Iraqi policemen, local officials and even children. Their strategy is to perpetuate anarchy, perhaps triggering a civil war: the worse, the better; their models are Lebanon and Somalia.

"Bush is in a tough spot, one of his own making," retired three-star Marine Gen. Bernard Trainor told me. "Bush has to try to make the best of a bad hand. This administration did not really pose the what-if and what-then questions in planning. Now I hope they are. I haven't seen evidence of it yet. I'd like to think that people in the second and third tier understand. Whether the top three understand -- the president, [Dick] Cheney and Rumsfeld -- I don't know. It's hard to say. If you look at the evidence of the first administration, the answer would be no."

While other administration officials tried out the new post-war-on-terror slogans, Bush's longtime packager Karen Hughes, nominated as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, testified in her confirmation hearing before the Senate last week. Her rhetoric was filled with high-flown abstractions about "limits on the power of the state" and "respect for women," and stentorian phrases against "tyrants" and in favor of "freedom."

But U.S. diplomats in Iraq must attempt to negotiate through Iraqi ethnic, religious and sectarian politics to help produce a settlement that "doesn't quite live up to Jeffersonian principles," said Trainor. Women's rights, for example, will almost certainly be undercut in the new constitution. And Shiites are insistent that the new state be Islamic.

"Right now the goal is to get the Iraqi national security forces into some sort of reasonable shape and draw down our forces. Our presence is an irritant, but perhaps it's a lesser of evils, at least for the time being.

These are the things that should have been discussed early on." (Trainor's book, "Cobra 2: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," coauthored by Michael Gordon of the New York Times, will be published next year.)

In the closing days of the 2004 election campaign, President Bush returned time and again to the theme that aroused the most fervent support for him. "The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror, and in this war there is no place for confusion and no substitute for victory." He ridiculed his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry. "His top foreign policy advisor has questioned whether it's even a war at all, saying that's just a metaphor, like the war on poverty," Bush said. "I've got news: Anyone who thinks we are fighting a metaphor does not understand the enemy we face and has no idea how to win the war and keep America secure."

But that "war," like the campaign, is over, and it has been rebranded. A new metaphor has been ordered up for duty. Just as Bush has leapt from reason to reason for the Iraq war, from weapons of mass destruction to the "march of freedom," so he now jumps from slogan to slogan. His changeability, in the short run, according to Trainor, may be a hazard.

"Bush has to keep up a brave front. If he shows any signs of changing course perceptually, that could be a problem for him not only domestically but also on the battlefront. Any backing off from the hard position has a strong chance of giving encouragement to those who wish us ill. What happens when you aren't seen as exercising control? What happens when you are seen as less than all powerful? That's the position they are in right now."

The undermining of democracy by sacrificing credibility to justify endless war was early described by the historian Thucydides in his "History of the Peloponnesian War": "The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man."