The Washington Establishment Fails Logic 101

By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet. Posted March 18, 2005.

I just got back from a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. Didn't ride the Teacups, though. Because I wasn't in Disneyland but in Washington, D.C., where everyone is walking on air, swept away by the Beltway's latest consensus: President Bush was right on Iraq, and, as a result, Tomorrowland in the Middle East will feature an e-ticket ride on the Matterhorn of freedom and democracy.

The political and cultural establishment has gone positively goofy over this notion. In the corridors of power, Republicans are high-fiving, and Democrats are nodding in agreement and patting themselves on the back for how graciously they've been able to accept the fact that they were wrong. The groupthink in the nation's capital would be the envy of Dear Leader Kim Jong II.

Even heroes of mine like Jon Stewart and my buddy Bill Maher have hopped on the Bush bandwagon. "I've been supportive of President Bush," Maher told Wolf Blitzer this week, "now that I think Iraq is turning around. ... He had a bigger and better idea than the rest of us."

How did this cozy unanimity come to pass? Is it something in the water, a byproduct of Bush gutting the EPA? But then I thought back to my time at Cambridge, taking a course in elementary logic, studying the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle. For those of you in need of a refresher on the concept, here's an example from the first chapter of my Logic 101 textbook: "All oaks are trees. All elms are trees. Therefore, all oaks are elms." See how easily you can go from point A to point Z, jumping over all the important steps in between?

So: We invaded Iraq. Change is afoot in the Middle East. Therefore, the Middle East is changing because we invaded Iraq. Q.E.D. G.W.B.

See how simple it is? And how illogical? The Bush White House has been masterful at this infantile reasoning: America is free and democratic. Terrorists attacked America. Therefore, terrorists hate freedom and democracy. And that's all anyone needs to know.

What makes this particularly seductive is the historical longing of Americans for political consensus. It's no accident that the European idea of a loyal opposition never took hold here in the New World. Instead, Democrats are all too eager to suspend disbelief and go along with the fairytale the president is telling about freedom and democracy on the march, and the happily-ever-after future of the Middle East.

But flip the page on this "Once Upon a Time" fantasy and what's revealed is a very ugly war story – a bloody narrative we hear shockingly little about on our daily news. Maybe the four people Brian Nichols killed in Atlanta are more important than the tens of thousands killed in Iraq. Or maybe Bush's fairytales have inoculated us to the daily horrors of life over there. The dream is so wonderful that, in its name, we accept all sorts of nightmares.

In truth, I doubt the people of Iraq are going to bed with visions of Thomas Jefferson dancing in their heads. Not when their days are filled with random bombings and checkpoint shootings and kidnappings that have become commonplace. And six weeks after so many of them risked their lives to go to the ballot box, there is still no new Iraqi government in place.

What about the highly touted changes going on elsewhere in the Middle East?

The "cedar revolution" in Lebanon turned out to be only part of the story, as 500,000 pro-Syrian demonstrators took to the streets of Beirut last week to denounce U.S. involvement in their country. What's more, the competing protests were ignited by the assassination of the anti-Syrian former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which wasn't – as far as we know at least – the handiwork of George and Condi and Wolfie.

Find more Arianna at Ariannaonline.com.

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