Earth Shattering Political Flip-Flop
Is Resoundingly Silent After First Impact

By William Finucane

Republicans are tickled pink when they portray Democrat John Kerry as a flip-flopper. Some even brought their own flip-flop shoes to the Republican National Convention and held them up every time a Kerry cruncher took the podium and castigated Kerry’s so-called changes of heart.

One might think, therefore, that the Republicans might have recognized a flip-flop of enormous proportions when it recently fell like a boulder in front of a national broadcast audience.

How big?

The very biggest flip-flop of all, that’s all.

It betrayed a mantra that has been used since Sept. 11, 2001.

Asked about the war on terrorism, President George W. Bush said: "I don’t think you can win it."

What was that again?

Isn’t this the man who has tried to steel the American spirit to be prepared to spend years getting rid of terror? Isn’t this the man who has said, again and again, that America will fight terrorists for as long as it takes to win?

Hasn’t Mr. Bush basically said it is important to teach this to our children, because that is how long this war will last?

Didn’t Pres. Bush make is absolutely clear that we will win the war, wipe out the terrorists and become, once-again, the safest society we can be?

Isn’t this the reason we have put up with these inconvenient and increasingly intrusive government laws, many of which compromise our personal civil rights; to get the terrorists who supposedly can be caught and punished, we were told, there is no other way?

If none of these tactics are going to erase terrorists, then we have a grievous problem. We have to start out immediately on some very different missions, and simultaneously stop the erosion of the very freedoms that differentiate us from the Muslim fascists.

For example, if we can’t win the ‘war on terrorism’ in the manner Mr. Bush and his conservative supporters have been declaring, then we must look for other solutions; perhaps to begin with we need thousands of Americans who know or at least can grab a working understanding of Arab languages. We might also push for changes in our college language programs, where we currently train people to chat in any European tongue they might like, while virtually no Arab tongue is taught at all.

Perhaps the Koran and other religious books should be taught in college as well, so at least the new degree recipients would have a working understanding of the philosophies involved in terrorist thought. Perhaps it might be smart to have Americans who know enough about the Koran that they would be able to debate key points with anyone of Arab extraction, and who would know quickly when self-serving distortions are being passed off as absolute tenets of Muslim religious belief.

And we might try to have a national discussion, which could then move into the classroom, regarding how it is that all of the industrialized nations – America at the top of the list – use the Arab oil supplies and yet ignore the fact Arab chieftains, presidents, monarchs and now, in some ways, even mullah’s, reap all those billons of dollars while letting the common people who live on top of all that oil die of simple diseases while remaining dirt poor and ignorant.

This change of direction might take decades, but it could be started now.

The presidential election, on the other hand, is two months away.

So naturally the right answer here is the two-month version – at least for Mr. Bush on the last day of August, the date of his world class flip flop.

Bush made his non-winnable flip while appearing on NBC’s "Today" show.

By the evening, Bush was trying to flop that statement into something different.

He was talking before the American Legion and explaining that what he really meant in his NBC remark was that the United States might never sit down at a peace table with terrorists.

Ah, that explains it. Or does it?

The fact is, the United States cannot sit down at a peace table with terrorists because they do not represent a country. Doesn’t Mr. Bush understand that fact? The very reason that terrorists are such a menace is that they strike from everywhere and anywhere. What Bush told the American Legion is what has always been the case; there will be no peace treaty. That is an impossibility.

This was not a slip of Bush’s tongue; it was a slip of his whole war philosophy.

America and Americans can and should fight the Arab zealots who consider it an enhancement to their souls that they die while killing hundreds or thousands of others.

They are implacable. There's is a self-serving, barbaric cult of death, and they can only die, although some of their leaders manage to live long lives while sending others off to meet some twisted version of an afterlife. These fanatics can’t be reasoned with, nor can they make treaties; but they can be marginalized and turned into pariahs among their own peoples, and only candid information can begin that process.

America needs to see beyond those zealots, beyond all nihilists, and lay a thoughtful path toward an actual peace with the majority of Arab people. Those people do perceive that the richness of the oil under Arab feet never seems to earn any wealth for them, but their leaders have so far gotten away with deflecting attention from themselves by fueling resentment against others, principally Israel, America and the west as a whole.

It seems clear that to achieve peace in the Middle East will require more that just battling terrorists, and that means the struggle should be multi-faceted; part military, part diplomatic, and part educational. In other words it should be nuanced. But as Mr. Bush so famously declared, he doesn’t "do nuance."

All that is heard from Bush is warmongering gobblygook.

The strangest thing is that the one time he slipped up and admitted we are in a no win war was the one time he was right, and probably the first time he was truly candid.

But it’s unlikely there will be more flip-flop activity.

One sure thing will come out of this television misstatement: No more unsupervised television for Mr. Bush. Stick to the script, just as it was written.