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April 1, 2006
Stop being absurd...
Apparently, this is no April fools joke:
BLACKBURN, England (CNN) -- One day after Condoleezza Rice said the United States made possibly "thousands" of tactical mistakes in the war against Iraq, the secretary of state says she was speaking "figuratively, not literally."...
On Saturday, a reporter asked Rice to give examples of the mistakes.
"First of all, I meant it figuratively, not literally. Let me be very clear about that. I wasn't sitting around counting," she replied. "The point I was making to the questioner...is that, of course, if you've ever made decisions, you've undoubtedly made mistakes.
"The important thing is to get the big strategic decisions right, and that I am confident that the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and give the Iraqi people an opportunity for peace and for democracy is the right decision."
"The other point I was making to the questioner is that I'm enough of a historian to know that things that looked brilliant at the moment turn out in historical perspective to be mistakes, and the things that look like mistakes turn out to have been right decisions."
Obviously Rice was dealing in hyperbole. No one is stupid enough to think she's been counting. But there certainly is nothing wrong with asking her for a few examples.
Rather than admit to even one little mistake, she treats the reporter like an idiot. And while the reporter is certainly not a stand-in for the public, Rice treats the masses as asses with her remark.
She's used this same combination of hyperbole and innumeracy before. Remember the 75 percent of top al Qaeda leadership caught or killed in Afghanistan? A percent demands numerical precisian because you can't have 75 percent of something without first having a definite something. But she didn't have a definite something, which was made painfully apparent with the next question the reporter asked.
Rice pulls a little academic shenanigans today, too. I agree that what counts as a mistake or a success will be partly determined by history. I've made the same claim about my own discipline. For example, the "read my lips" line by George H. W. Bush was an effective bit of rhetoric when first uttered, but it turned out to be a political disaster over time. But Rice's contention amounts to an over generalization. Surely this administration has made a mistake or two in Iraq. Stop being absurd, and just name one.
Posted by acline at April 1, 2006 7:00 PM | | Spotlight