Memory, Media Manipulation, and "Mission Accomplished"
Posted by: Scott W. Graves | 07/31/2007 10:10 PM
By Michael Medved
In recent years, leftists have found a new reason to celebrate May Day: it's not only the traditional holiday for marches and rallies by socialists, trade unionists and aging Communist dictators, but also an occasion for Bush-bashing liberals to celebrate the anniversary of the President's notorious "Mission Accomplished" speech.
This year, with continued grim news arriving every day from Iraq, Democrats chose to delay sending the President their surrender timetable/troop funding bill so that they could focus the confrontation on May 1st, recalling the outrageous 2003 performance by the Commander-in-Chief. All TV news outlets cooperated in this endeavor, showing brief snippets of the Bush address on the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, treating the President's words as an embarrassment and prevarication equivalent to Bill Clinton's endlessly re-cycled proclamation that "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky..."
On the anniversary of the Bush speech, Senator Barack Obama declared: "Four years after President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared 'Mission Accomplished', we are still in a war where more than one hundred American service members have died in just the month of April." Hillary Clinton similarly highlighted the President's infamous words: "Never before in our history has a President said 'mission accomplished' when the mission had barely begun."
The phrase remains so toxic, so inappropriate, that even Bush loyalists cringe at our memories of the President landing on the deck of the carrier in his jumpsuit, then declaiming "mission accomplished" in that brassy Texas twang.
The biggest problem with the vivid recollection, however, is that it's totally inaccurate.
The most important point about the most derided speech of the Bush Presidency is that the Commander-in-Chief never once pronounced the dreaded words "mission accomplished." Yes, a colorful banner with those words decorated the aircraft carrier, and appeared in all the video imagery of the occasion, originated with the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln and reflected their celebratory mood--and their eager anticipation of heading home.
What the President himself actually said was: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Mainstream media repeatedly replayed this speech excerpt, but regularly left out the very next sentence: "And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
Yes, it's true that no members of the administration predicted that this process of "securing and reconstructing" Iraq would require more than four years, but Bush never promised a quick or painless resolution.
In fact, his actual words--as opposed to the media distortions of the event--hold up well in anticipating some of the subsequent challenges: "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of the country that remain dangerous," he reported. "We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people...The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. And then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq."
Moreover, a careful reading of the Bush speech helps to blow away another common myth about the administration and the Iraq War: the suggestion that the President and his closest associates concentrated almost exclusively on eliminating weapons of mass destruction as a justification for attacking Saddam Hussein. The majority of the President's speech of more than four years ago actually spoke about the significance and difficulty of establishing democracy in Iraq, with only two brief mentions of weapons of mass destruction. In summarizing his overall strategy in the war on terror, the President explained: "We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in a peaceful Palestine. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction. We stand for human liberty."
In contrast to his emphatic emphasis on the importance of the war as a means of transforming the very nature of the Middle East, he made only two brief references to WMDs. "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated," he announced. A few paragraphs later he added: "Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all...Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world--and will be confronted."
Do sane or reasonable Americans doubt the continued need to 'confront'--if not invade--such regimes?
In fact, nothing in his speech sounds embarrassing or hopelessly dated even four years later, and reading the address in its entirety provides a significant reminder of the historical context of the war.
It also delivers a powerful, sobering reminder of media power to shade and even alter our memory of actual events. Many Americans will swear that they distinctly recall Bush delivering a cocky, swaggering, prematurely gloating performance, altogether ignoring the difficult days that lay ahead (forgetting all about that specific line, "We have difficult work to do in Iraq.") Countless movie lovers remain convinced that they heard Humphrey Bogart pronounce the famous words, "Play it again, Sam!" in the course of Casablanca, instead of the less memorable (but actual) line, "Play it, Sam!" The minor scrambling of a bit of beloved movie dialogue, however, remains much less significant than the deliberate and largely unchallenged distortion of one of the most important public statements by an embattled President.
At the end of his remarks on May 1, 2003, the President spoke movingly of the Americans who had already fallen in the battle to drive Saddam from power. "Every name, every life is a loss to our military, to our nation, and to the loved ones who grieve," he said. "There's no homecoming for these families. Yet we pray, in God's time, their reunion will come."
He then went on to pronounce words we should recall today to challenge partisan hacks who seek political advantage from public weariness with the Iraq war. The President said: "Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this Earth was to fight a great evil and to bring liberty to others."
Can anyone honestly disagree with this summary of their service and sacrifice?
Far from apologizing for his address on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the President should do what he can to correct the misleading recollections and outright lies about his message of four years ago and help us to recall the power and clarity of his actual words.
In recent years, leftists have found a new reason to celebrate May Day: it's not only the traditional holiday for marches and rallies by socialists, trade unionists and aging Communist dictators, but also an occasion for Bush-bashing liberals to celebrate the anniversary of the President's notorious "Mission Accomplished" speech.This year, with continued grim news arriving every day from Iraq, Democrats chose to delay sending the President their surrender timetable/troop funding bill so that they could focus the confrontation on May 1st, recalling the outrageous 2003 performance by the Commander-in-Chief. All TV news outlets cooperated in this endeavor, showing brief snippets of the Bush address on the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, treating the President's words as an embarrassment and prevarication equivalent to Bill Clinton's endlessly re-cycled proclamation that "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky..."
On the anniversary of the Bush speech, Senator Barack Obama declared: "Four years after President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared 'Mission Accomplished', we are still in a war where more than one hundred American service members have died in just the month of April." Hillary Clinton similarly highlighted the President's infamous words: "Never before in our history has a President said 'mission accomplished' when the mission had barely begun."
The phrase remains so toxic, so inappropriate, that even Bush loyalists cringe at our memories of the President landing on the deck of the carrier in his jumpsuit, then declaiming "mission accomplished" in that brassy Texas twang.
The biggest problem with the vivid recollection, however, is that it's totally inaccurate.
The most important point about the most derided speech of the Bush Presidency is that the Commander-in-Chief never once pronounced the dreaded words "mission accomplished." Yes, a colorful banner with those words decorated the aircraft carrier, and appeared in all the video imagery of the occasion, originated with the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln and reflected their celebratory mood--and their eager anticipation of heading home.
What the President himself actually said was: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Mainstream media repeatedly replayed this speech excerpt, but regularly left out the very next sentence: "And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
Yes, it's true that no members of the administration predicted that this process of "securing and reconstructing" Iraq would require more than four years, but Bush never promised a quick or painless resolution.
In fact, his actual words--as opposed to the media distortions of the event--hold up well in anticipating some of the subsequent challenges: "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of the country that remain dangerous," he reported. "We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people...The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. And then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq."
Moreover, a careful reading of the Bush speech helps to blow away another common myth about the administration and the Iraq War: the suggestion that the President and his closest associates concentrated almost exclusively on eliminating weapons of mass destruction as a justification for attacking Saddam Hussein. The majority of the President's speech of more than four years ago actually spoke about the significance and difficulty of establishing democracy in Iraq, with only two brief mentions of weapons of mass destruction. In summarizing his overall strategy in the war on terror, the President explained: "We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in a peaceful Palestine. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction. We stand for human liberty."
In contrast to his emphatic emphasis on the importance of the war as a means of transforming the very nature of the Middle East, he made only two brief references to WMDs. "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated," he announced. A few paragraphs later he added: "Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all...Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world--and will be confronted."
Do sane or reasonable Americans doubt the continued need to 'confront'--if not invade--such regimes?
In fact, nothing in his speech sounds embarrassing or hopelessly dated even four years later, and reading the address in its entirety provides a significant reminder of the historical context of the war.
It also delivers a powerful, sobering reminder of media power to shade and even alter our memory of actual events. Many Americans will swear that they distinctly recall Bush delivering a cocky, swaggering, prematurely gloating performance, altogether ignoring the difficult days that lay ahead (forgetting all about that specific line, "We have difficult work to do in Iraq.") Countless movie lovers remain convinced that they heard Humphrey Bogart pronounce the famous words, "Play it again, Sam!" in the course of Casablanca, instead of the less memorable (but actual) line, "Play it, Sam!" The minor scrambling of a bit of beloved movie dialogue, however, remains much less significant than the deliberate and largely unchallenged distortion of one of the most important public statements by an embattled President.
At the end of his remarks on May 1, 2003, the President spoke movingly of the Americans who had already fallen in the battle to drive Saddam from power. "Every name, every life is a loss to our military, to our nation, and to the loved ones who grieve," he said. "There's no homecoming for these families. Yet we pray, in God's time, their reunion will come."
He then went on to pronounce words we should recall today to challenge partisan hacks who seek political advantage from public weariness with the Iraq war. The President said: "Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this Earth was to fight a great evil and to bring liberty to others."
Can anyone honestly disagree with this summary of their service and sacrifice?
Far from apologizing for his address on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the President should do what he can to correct the misleading recollections and outright lies about his message of four years ago and help us to recall the power and clarity of his actual words.
