Rice Insists Not “Escalation” But “Augmentation” In Iraq
If political scientists or people outside of the United States are puzzled why this administration is losing support from all but Sean, Rush and the rip-and-read administration backers, here’s a prime example.
Now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, perhaps realizing the word “surge” has been rejected by the public at large, is trying out a NEW word to insist that the war in Iraq is not being escalated:
“I think that I don’t see it, and the president doesn’t see it, as an escalation,� Rice told an incredulous Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Hagel responded, “Putting 22,000 new troops, more troops in, is not an escalation?� “I would call it, senator, an augmentation,� Rice said.
CLICK HERE to watch her.
Several things about this:
(1) It is ironic that an administration that came to power ridiculing President Bill Clinton for saying “it all depends on what is is” has become the “it all depends on what is is …WAIT! Find us a Thesaurus!” administration. The refusal to use the word that a loaf of pumpernickel on the shelf at DZ Akin’s deli in San Diego would know is “ESCALATION” and try to find another word and get into word games has one net effect: it further suggests that thinking Americans of all (or no) parties must question everything this administration says. Because it’s clear that even in how officials compose a sentence they are not speaking FRANKLY. The White House is lawyering up; do all Americans now have to go out and hire lawyers to study the words of Bush administration officials?
(2) Rice is quickly eliminating herself from serious consideration as Presidential material by such a tepid performance — one that is sure to give late night comedians and left-wing talk show hosts material. And we’d bet there are members of Bush 41′s administration that are already shaking their heads right now. Robert Novak reports that some GOPers in Congress are already concerned about Rice:
Republicans in Congress who do not want to be quoted tell me that the State Department under Condoleezza Rice is a mess. This comes at a time when the U.S. global position is precarious. While attention is focused on Iraq, American diplomacy is being tested worldwide — in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Korea and Sudan. The judgment by thoughtful Republicans is that Rice has failed to manage that endeavor.Rice’s previous government duties had been as an analyst and staffer rather than as a manager. That made it important for her to name a strong deputy secretary to run the building.
HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTED WORDS AND PHRASES MS. RICE MIGHT TRY AND USE IN PLACE OF “ESCALATION:”
an enforceatoriable boost
un poco-ito mas
neocon Viagra
an enlargement
fleshing out
a little bit more than a little bit more
expansion of the American franchise
offering more foreign travel opportunities for more military
providing more opportunities for our fighting men and women to experience Iraqi culture
30 Responses to “Rice Insists Not “Escalation” But “Augmentation” In Iraq”
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible….Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness….Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
From Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
I believe the Bush administration is out-Orwelling even Orwell himself!
Republicans better hope that Chuck Hagel runs for president. After GWB’s impending sacrificial “surge”, the election will be about the war and little else. There is exactly one Republican candidate who has been on the right side of this war since the beginning, and that is Hagel, and that makes him the only electable Republican in 2008.
Chuck is prominently featured in my most recent YouTube effort “It’s the war, stupid.” and recent blog post of the same name.
Joe,
Thanks for the link to clip featuring the exchange between Hagel and Rice. I commented on this over on my blog earlier today and was lamenting the fact that I didn’t have any video or audio or even a transcript.
Also, I don’t know who ms, but I have come across his/her blog, Divided We Stand, United We Fall before, and I heartily recommend it. In terms of limiting the size and power of the federal government, history has shown that Divided Government works best.
I think “bulge” is underrated term. Or maybe “engorgement”.
“Neocon viagra” get the same idea across with more circuity and tact.
[H]istory has shown that Divided Government works best.
Not sure about that. However, if you were to argue that “history has shown that not electing a gladhanding, vainglorious, someone-you-want-to-have-a-beer-with ignoramus as President works best,” I’d agree wholeheartedly.
Hagel is the best of the bunch up there. He doesn’t hedge his bets, he goes for the truth, and still seems to do what is in his concience. I would seriously consider crossing over if he wins- he has much more crediblity than McCain- last week’s GOP flavor of the month.
Hagel? Ugh!
Holly- now that was a thoughtful comment, lol! If you don’t like him splain why.
Gosh Joe, that waz positively shrill!;-)
Agreed, but that aint saying much.
I hear they’re going to rename boob jobs “breast escalation.’
Right now, the way I look at it, the top three Republican contenders are John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney. The problem: they all solidly backed the war in Iraq. That’s not necessarily a liability…yet, but with the way the war’s going, it eventually might be.
Hagel stands out as being the only Republican who’s been speaking out against the war for the last three years. Assuming that McCain, Giuliani, and Romney split the pro-war vote, that’s got to leave Hagel in a pretty good position. Not enough to win the nomination, but at least enough support to get part way through the primaries and force a debate within the Republican Party over the war.
Actually, I would be remiss not to mention Michael Smith, who’s also seeking the Republican nomination for president and has already filed with the FEC. Sure, he has no previous political experience and has absolutely no chance of winning the nomination, but he seems like a really nice guy, and the Republican party could use more principled fiscally conservative/socially libertarian Republicans like him. It might be nice to visit his campaign website and let him know that you appreciate his efforts to reclaim his party back from the neoconservative and social conservative wings of his party.
Hey Joe, Elayne Boosler (who’s been posting regulary at HuffPo since the New Year) put up a Bush Admin. lexicon. Check it out here.
Reviewed all options= Iraq, paper, scissors
Ha. Does “Iraq” still beat “scissors”?
Another suggestion for the thesaurus of Bushista newspeak:
Troop swell
And supporters of this policy will be called ‘swell-headed’…
Oh, and Tony Snow could use the following phrase starting his stand-up routine:
Everything is going swell!
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Bush wants to boost the US Army by 92000 soldiers, too. Even if the unmanly lefties will oppose it, the president will sure bore the palm by deploying his executive superpowers. Since the PC media coyly shrinks away from talking about potent successes of the WH, public recognition of the originator of this enlarged virility of US forces should be ensured by calling it ‘Bush’s bulge’.
OK, my opinion seems to be in the minority here but I’m getting used to that. I don’t consider this an escalation. Yes, I realize you could strictly take the dictionary definition and say it fits, but words do mean different things in different contexts. In terms of what escalation of a military conflict means, it ISN’T strictly about the number of troops. It’s about the scope of the mission and the open-endedness of it. If we take the new plan at it’s face value and assume that there will be the political will to follow it (for Bush to keep pressure on Maliki and for Maliki to start dealing with the Shi’a militias), then this doesn’t meet those criteria. In some ways the mission is narrower because we’re phasing out of regions other than Baghdad and Anbar. I guess you could say that going after Sad’rs gang is an expansion of mission but it’s a tactical one that might actually allow the plan to work this time. Likewise for dealing with Iran and Syria (which I believe we’re going to do through threat of naval blockade, not actual airstrikes or boots on the ground- and I think this might have the effect of a deterrent because Tehran won’t want to risk having their oil exports cut off.)
On openendedness, Bush didn’t go far enough in saying what the specific consequences would be if Maliki fails to meet benchmarks, but at least he’s now saying that there ARE conditions for our support.
And regarding the exchange between Hagel and Rice, the quibbling over words occurred because Hagel insisted on the use of the term escalation, which he knows very well has a strong negative connotation after Viet Nam. I can understand the backlash against the parsing of words but I hardly think that an administration official objecting to an emotionally charged word is the same as Clinton trying to redefine “is”.
Hagel was posturing, either considering a presidential bid or helping out his co-committee members who are doing so. He set up a question so that Rice either would have had to have ignored the use of this term and it would be said that she admitted that Bush is escalating an unpopular war, or do as she did and be lambasted for doublespeak. It was “gotcha” at its finest. Why exactly is that exchange useful for anything but political posturing? Does it get us any closer to understanding the rationale for this plan and allowing people to evaluate it?
“dealing with Iran and Syria (which I believe we’re going to do through threat of naval blockade”
Well, the preparations for naval blockade seem to have hit a hindrance recently, CS…
Well, the preparations for naval blockade seem to have hit a hindrance recently, CS…
Feel free to delete comments 17 to 27 now, or to move them to Joe’s story about ‘Posting Problems’, Michael. Sry for messing up the thread with those tests…
have deleted most of them.
“Hagel was posturing…” – cstanley
Nonsense. You could make a case for “posturing” if Hagel was just now expressing his frustration with the war and changing his views to blow with the prevailing popular wind. You could make that case for Republicans like Sununu, Murkowski, Voinovich, and Lugar – all former supporters of the war that now in open oppostion. You could even make that case for Democrats like Clinton, Kerry and Edwards, who were not critics of the Iraq action prior to March ’03.
When popular sentiment strongly backed Bush in that timeframe (70% approval rating?), Hagel was the only Republican who did not toe the line, and he remains a consistent and more vocal critic of the war than most Democrats. If you want to really appreciate how far Hagel was ahead of the curve on Iraq, check out this video of his speech at Kansas State University in February of 2003 (Landon Lecture Series – warning, it is long some 50 minutes).
Filmed a few weeks before we went into Iraq, Hagel warns about almost every single thing that has happened as a consequence over the last three years. Not hindsight, real foresight. It’s scary how on-target he was – He sounds like a friggin’ prophet now. Nobody was listening to him. Not in the administration. Not the American people. Just a voice lost in the howling wind of war fever. I include myself among the deaf, as I was as gung-ho as every other yahoo at the time.
mw- You are right on target about Hagel. He’s not intimidated by the Bush smear machine, and has been a concientious maverick on the war all along. He does not want this country to go through the foreign policy debacle that Vietnam turned out to be, and sees us repeated the same mistakes made then. Murtha, another Viet Nam vet has spoken out in a similar vein. These are the voices that I respect, not those who have failed time and time again to learn from their failures- who see the world as they want it to be, not how it is.
I’ll give the administration the benefit of the doubt and assume they feel they had no choice but to go in the direction that they did, but then they needed to fight the war at its onset in a much more serious manner.
CS: If Hagel was posturing, so was Rice.
Your (and Rice’s) argument that the troop increase shouldn’t be characterized as an escalation rests on the credibility of the Administration as to what these troops will be doing. Insisting on the literal use of “escalation” makes the point that Bush’s and Rice’s credibility is insufficient to support their insistence on their own characterization. Bush’s and Rice’s problem is compounded by their attempt to switch rhetorical horses midstream.
mw,
Point well taken about Hagel. I wasn’t trying to say that he’s disingenuous, just that I feel this rhetorical style is politically motivated. I do have to concede that it’s possible that his heart felt conviction motivated it rather than opportunism.
jjc,
Yes, I agree and I do assign blame to both Hagel and Rice. I’m just objecting to Joe’s post, which ridicule’s Rice’s response, because I really don’t see how she could have responded any other way. She was backed into a corner, and while some will say that is a good thing, I don’t really think that’s the best way for the situation to be handled.
jjc,
Also wanted to add, I agree with Jason Steck in his comment to his own post above, “Indulgence of Blame”. He’s basically said that we should hold Bush to the terms of the plan and force him to say what the consequences will be if Maliki can’t or won’t meet the benchmarks. That makes a lot of sense to me because it allows us to see if the plan can work while also sending the message that this has to be the endgame. I agree that there isn’t reason to have good faith belief in the administration, but if Congress and the American people put some benchmarks of our own on them, then it has merit IMO.
“I would call it, senator, an augmentation,� Rice said.
Mmmmmmm truthiness
mw,
I agree with the main point of your post. But let it not be said that Hagel was the only Republican who did not toe the line. Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has also been very critical of the war, and has been been (in my opinion) the most consistent opponent of the war in congress (Democrat or Republican).
Since the PC media coyly shrinks away from talking about potent successes of the WH, public recognition of the originator of this enlarged virility of US forces should be ensured by calling it Bush’s bulge.
Gray- And the ensuing battle in Congress over funds for enlarging the military will be the Battle of the Bulge, lol!
What’s ironic is that fact you guys did nothing in the last 6 years to stop this madness. Now that us Dems have taken back control of Congress, we’ll have to clean up the mess.
What did moderate Republicans do for the country while they were in Congress? Nothing.
Maybe next time you’ll think before blindly towing the party line and mortgaging the future of the country to a bunch of idealogues.