We’re all expecting to see a select showcase of some of Donald Trump’s biggest and best lies this evening. “I’m a billionaire,” “Mexico will pay,” “Hillary started it,” “I gave at the office,” “the check is in the mail,” and of course “no I don’t think you’re all idiots.”
There’s one lie in particular I want to focus on, that I think is worthy of further examination. It’s a self-serving, self-perpetuating deception spanning numerous episodes over several seasons, a show that desperately needs cancelling.
Episode I: October 3, 2000
Q: How would you decide when it was in the national interest to use US force?
[Future President George W. ]BUSH: Well, if it’s in our vital national interests. And that means:
- Whether our territory is threatened, our people could be harmed, whether or not our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened.
- Whether or not the mission was clear, whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be.
- Whether or not we were prepared and trained to win, whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped.
- And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy.
I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don’t think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we’ve got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president believes in nation-building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.
But it was a lie. (Never trust a guy who speaks in ordered lists.) In Bush’s “more humble” foreign policy, humility didn’t mean less bellicose, it meant less idealistic. Less sissy stuff like nation building, and more kick-their-ass, take-their-gas.
W staffed his administration with hawks like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, John Bolton at the State Department, John Negroponte at the UN, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams and John Poindexter at an undisclosed location, and many, many others. All this before 9/11 was used as an excuse to toss aside campaign promises the way Trump rips up finance contracts.
Bush promises to be very careful, then gets us into a pointless and totally avoidable war based on lies. His lies. His other lies. But this is all ancient history, long forgotten, right?
Regrettably, no. The lie is dead. But it lives on as a zombie.
February 2016:
I'm the only one on this stage that said, "Do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq." Nobody else on this stage said that. And I said it loud and strong. And I was in the private sector. I wasn't a politician, fortunately.
But I said it, and I said it loud and clear, "You'll destabilize the Middle East." That's exactly what happened.
I also said, by the way, four years ago, three years ago, attack the oil, take the wealth away, attack the oil and keep the oil. They didn't listen. They just started that a few months ago.
This claim by Mr. Trump has been decisively debunked by everyone who has examined it. And I’m using “debunked” in the obsolete sense of “definitively proven to be incorrect,” not in the modern usage where it merely means “contradicted.” It’s a lie. Everyone knows that Trump is not describing real events. Trump is a narcissist, to him the truth is anything that makes him feel like a winner. So he separates himself from Bush, the worst kind of loser — a war-loser. Yet in the very next breath Trump is suggesting a petroleum heist bigger than oil maggots like Cheney ever pulled off. There’s no foreign policy realism in Trump’s agenda, just more of the same bluster and puffery. More secret plans that turn out to have never existed.
Why does it matter? Because in belatedly renouncing the failed Bush leadership, Trump is actually repeating the same legacy of lies that got Bush elected in the first place. It will work this time because we’re real manly men. On closer examination, this is what the Republican message always boils down to, with no substance anywhere to be found.