Republicans operatives and policy hands are trying out a new set of Iraq War talking points. Just refuse to answer the question. On principle.
One of the big takeaways from Tierney Sneed’s several day effort to find anyone still willing to say the Iraq War was a good idea was just how many big name Bush administration officials and neoconservative policy intellectuals — all architects of the war — were simply not willing to talk about the subject at all. But one of the most striking and darkly comedic findings was the number of less high profile neocons who are simply arguing that the question itself (was invading Iraq a mistake?) is unfair, a liberal trap and that Republicans should simply refuse to answer it on principle.
One example was Fred Kagan, one of the princelings of the neoconservative movement, often known as a key architect of the so-called surge. He told Sneed, “Our collective intellectual efforts would be much better employed trying to understand how to manage the wars and threats we face now — none of which are going well — than continuing to rehash an argument we’ve been having for more than a decade.”
Marc Thiessen, a Bush administration speech writer who now writes a column for the Post, sounded the same theme.
Jeb Bush’s fumbled answer on Iraq is so troubling because the controversy is so unnecessary. The only people in the United States obsessed with re-litigating the 2003 decision to invade Iraq are on the left. Most Americans are far more concerned about what the next president is going to do about Iraq today.
And — news flash — the vast majority want to send ground forces to Iraq right now.
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So let’s be clear: There is no groundswell among GOP primary voters for Bush or any of the Republican presidential candidates to disavow the 2003 invasion.
Operatives and policy intellectuals aren’t the same as politicians. But this latest angle being field-tested — in so many words, refuse to answer the question, no one cares — shows how umbilically connected to the GOP the decisions of 2003 still are.
