The frequent repetition of the Republican slogan
"Cut and Run" signaled this week that the Republicans would rely on the phrase to define Progressives who argue for the ending the of the occupation of Iraq. The first rule of a debate is not to accept the analogy or definitions given by an opponent. For the resolutions offered by Democratic senators willing to debate the issue at length, the opportunity was missed to hurl a poignant phrase back to crystalize for Americans the feebleness of our policy in Iraq.
Before we can coin the apt phrase to paste on the Republicans for the Fall
campaign, it is important to examine where "
Cut and Run" emerged,
who used it, and its contexts. As the Republicans present themselves
as a unified group supporting
a failed policy that will entrap our country and more young soldiers, we have
an opportunity to re-cast the debate. Our task is to define the Republicans
and tag them with terms that are easy to understand and that must be
used with devastating
effects. The campaign season this Fall then has to pursue an aggressive attack
on all their policies using a combination of strategies. But first the analysis.
How was "
Cut and Run" used in recent diplomatic
and political history?
The slogan was effectively used by the outgoing Clinton National Security Adviser,
Sandy Berger, in the weeks before the Bush inauguration to goad the Republicans
to continue the peacekeeping activities of Nato in the Balkans.
"But we can't cut and run, or we will forfeit our leadership of NATO," said
Berger in a speech to Council on Foreign Relations.
Berger's pressure appeared to work successfully to avoid a change in foreign
policy. In February 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview
with the BBC, that the U.S. would not "cut and run" from
its Balkan troop commitments.
Fast forward to the end of the Iraq War in 2003. At the conclusion of hostilities,
the White House must have floated a trial balloon by mentioning a drawdown
of troops. In a hard hitting column titled "Bush is Flunking Reconstruction," on
May 19, 2003, Stan Crock in Business Week offered heavy criticism. Taking issue
with Rumsfeld's statement of "the U.S. will stay as long as necessary,
but not one day longer,"
Crock unloaded a haymaker:
"The second part of the statement -- not a day longer -- reflects an unseemly
desire to cut and run. And that's sending the wrong message to a key audience:
potential malefactors inside and outside Iraq. They may take from this that
America hasn't changed a whit since Lebanon or Somalia, that a little terror
or some
combat casualties will send the U.S. packing."
In other words, the term is employed with a sense of hasty retreat tinged with
weakness, cowardice, and embarrassment.
Crock in Businessweek struck again in July 2003 at Bush equating the unstable situation in Iraq as Chinese water torture, "
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP," with the falling numbers of the President's standings in the poll from 71% to 61%.
Clearly, Rove and his
associates squirmed when
Crock rolled out "
Cut
and Run" again:<
Cut and run: That's essentially what President Ronald Reagan did in Beirut
after a U.S. military barrack was bombed, killing more than 200 Marines,
and what President
Bill Clinton did in Somalia after U.S. troops suffered losses. But Washington
hasn't yet found the weapons of mass destruction that provided the rationale
for the war. Nor has the U.S. occupation nudged Baghdad toward a democracy.
Luckily for Bush, most Americans didn't read the title of Marian Wilkinson's
article that Fall in The Sydney Morning Herald: Bush May Have to
Cut
and Run.
In the article she serves up heavy criticism from an enemy of the Republicans.
"
We are at war in Iraq", said Richard Holbrooke, president Bill Clinton's
UN ambassador, voicing an opinion that is beginning to reverberate here. "You
cannot do nation-building with a country at war."
The problem for Bush is that his Iraq strategy is based on trying to nation-build
while fighting the growing insurgency.<>
A Progressive website picked up the blood in the water by publishing, "
How
We Know Bush Will "Cut and Run" from Iraq."
Progressives and their critical writings, published in a blogsite, probably
don't count for much in the Bush White House, but a similar article employing
the same
tone published by the U.S. State Department must have set off alarm bells. "
Don't
Cut and Run" was written by Donald Walter, a Federal judge from Shreveport,
Louisiana. It was a reprint of an op-ed column that first appeared in the Wall
Street Journal. When not in his robes, Walter must have been reading Crock
because the judge uses the same Chinese water torture metaphor.
"The news has not been good from Iraq of late.... Yet we mustn't let the
steady drip, drip, drip of bad news from Iraq keep us from fulfilling the
obligations
we have assumed there."
A raw nerve must have been touched by the State Dept. press office publishing
this story. Bush pronounced, "We're not going to cut and run," in
a BBC televised interview with David Frost on November 12th (2003). The interview's
transcript winds up on the the State Department's website.
Bloggers looked at the phrase for its potential too:
If they choose to cut and run, it will be the greatest recruiting tool
Muslim Murder, Incorporated will need. Al-Queda and every other terrorist
faction
will be emboldened like never before.
On November 17, 2003,
the
White House organ (Fox News.com) ran with its
new catch-phrase: "
Bush:
U.S. Will Not Cut and Run in Iraq." Essentially the article recapitulates
the Frost interview.
The repeated use of the dreaded phrase against Bush meant political damage
and other danger regarding ending the occupation at the expense of Iraq's
reconstruction.
The Washington Post fed Bush's insecurity and fear with
an
article by Eliot Cohen on November 19th.
Suppose President Bush -- or for that matter a Democratic
successor -- were to decide that the project of reconstructing Iraq
was impossible or too costly. What would cut and run look like,
and what consequences would it have?
Of course, an administration would do something that would look
more like "cut and shuffle" than skedaddle. Somalia after the
"
Blackhawk Down" incident would provide the model -- a pulling
back from engagement in heavily populated areas, a hunkering
down of American forces in their compounds, a declaration that
the main mission (overthrowing Saddam Hussein or neutering Iraq
as a menace to its neighbors) had been accomplished, and a
disengagement over a year or two.
Note that each time "
cut and run" is used by Progressive
and Liberals, the phrase connotes impotence and cowardice coloring Bush's conduct
of the
war and occupation. This must have alarmed the strategists trying to
position Bush
as acting Presidential before the 2004 election campaign. In
a
warm-up speech for the New Hampshire primary in December 2003, John Kerry attacked
Bush using a familiar slogan:
In a major national security address Wednesday Democratic presidential
contender John Kerry was sounding an alarm about premature U.S. withdrawal
from Iraq. “I
fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election the administration is considering
what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy,” Kerry said in remarks
prepared for delivery to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Then Cobra (Bush's nickname) struck. In two columns,
Escape
from the Green Zone (7/1/2004), and
Amnesia
in the Garden (9/5/2004), Maureen
Dowd sliced
and fileted
Bush by showcasing his fear of cutting and running from Iraq something worse for the President than soaking in Dowd's hemlock marinade.
The New York Times had already shown the
damage
done to Bush by the
ongoing conflict in Iraq in May 2004 and made use of "cut and run" in the context of "Polls
Show Bush's Job-Approval Ratings Sinking."
Wolf
Blitzer of CNN asked Howard Dean the Summer of 2004 if he agreed
with John Kerry and John Edwards whether the job should be finished
in Iraq
by bringing
in a multilateral force.
BLITZER: When you take a look at this situation in Iraq, I don't know
if you agree or disagree with John Kerry and John Edwards, who both
maintain you have
to finish this, get the job done, and then leave. They don't want to
cut
and run.
DEAN: I've always said that.
In a well written media perspective piece on Bush entitled,
Cut and
Run,
Doug
Muder lined up pertinent information as to why leaving Iraq
is a
matter of letting
go of a fantasy and facing the reality of what a tragedy our involvement
is becoming.
Progressives began to catch on to the power of the slogan by 2005.
Gregg Trimb aptly
analyzed how Bush was using the key phrase in question.
I have grown weary of the Bush administration's attempts to oversimplify
the message of the antiwar movement. Just like EVERY other issue they
touch, they
take a complicated situation and turn it into three or four word slogans
and platitudes.
"
With or against us", "Axis of evil", "Bring 'em on," etc.
(I just did a Google search for right wing slogans and found that I
could fill two sides of a sheet of legal paper with all of the three and four
word slogans
and platitudes peddled by the Bush administration).
However, the phrase "cut and run" has now become the right wing response
to anything "anti-war." Political commentators now frequently refer
to "cut and run protesters" rather than "anti-war protesters." This
is no accident. This is how the right wing is reframing the political
landscape. They are losing public opinion with regard to the war in
Iraq, so now they
are desperately trying to smear the anti-war movement by means McCarthyism.
Democracy Now hosted Retired Army General
William
Odom to answer what's
wrong with
cutting and running (10/4/2005) in a show last Fall.
" I'm trying to think like a strategist, and in war, as well as in politics
and diplomacy, one has to know when to withdraw and when to attack.
This was a misguided
act and it requires a strategic division and moral confidence to turn
it around."
Lastly, we saw Congresswoman Jean Schmidt use the "
Cut and Run" phrase
to taunt Congressman Jack Murtha and portray him as a coward.
This
episode showed the extent to which Republicans were going to verbally attack
Democrats
right
up to this week rather than to have a serious debate on the the pretexts
used for the War, the sources of rebellion, terror, and failure in Iraq, and
the
absence of a rationale for the occupation. Last Fall, the issue of
withdrawal showed
the venality of the Republicans' approach.
The purpose of this review is to show that "Cut and Run" as
a slogan was initially used against Bush by journalists in the MSM,
Progressive bloggers,
and John Kerry. The damage done to Bush's image made the administration
harden its approach to working out scenarios for a deep drawdown of
U.S. forces and
eventually an end to occupation.
What becomes apparent from this analysis is that Bush fears becoming
labeled as a coward and a bumbler regarding his war policies. He has had "Cut and Run" used against him before and so he has taken the phrase as his own to protect himself. His insecurities
are masked by some of his own overt personal behaviors during public appearances
including strutting,
leaning on podiums, and overly repetitious use of slogans and trite
phrases. He is afraid to admit to mistakes. A change of course in Iraq
would make
manifest all of these insecurities and he has no stomach for being
labeled a coward
by his right wing. With Rove's canny political sense, the Bush administration
adopted
the very phrase "Cut and Run" which had been previously used
against it. This ability to wheel around and use our own political
perspectives against
us must be countered.
For Progressives, we have to admit our own errors. We missed the approach
offered by Gen. Odom to question the Occupation and to seek withdrawal
with moral confidence.
Lastly, we overlooked the analysis of Greg Trimb. His insights show
that we must counter the Bush sloganeers and get serious about how
we use
political rhetoric
for countering the method used to "define" Progressive policies.
Until we do, the violence in Iraq will continue
as the country unravels.