The Passive Construction

Did you see Bush's awkward, zombified performance last night?

It was kinda embarrassing, wasn't it? Didn't you almost feel sorry for him? He looked a little like a ten-year-old boy who was sent to the principal's office for making fart noises in class.

If only 3,000 Americans and 655,000 Iraqi civilians weren't dead as a result of his idiotic decision to invade Iraq with no provocation in order to kill the guy who tried to kill his daddy, it might almost be amusing.

But it's not amusing. It's tragic. It's tragic for the Americans who have been killed and wounded, and it's equally tragic for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed as a result of this nonsensical war.

Of Bush's whole pathetic performance last night, I found one sentence particularly revealing.

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

Now, what do we notice about this particular sentence? Take a guess. Think real hard.

What's interesting is the passive construction of the sentence. Think of all the different ways that sentiment could have been stated:

• "We have made mistakes in Iraq and I take full responsibility for them."
• "I have made mistakes in the planning and execution of the war and I have to take responsibility for those mistakes."
• "I am a pathetic excuse for a president and this war is a total failure and it's all my fault and I hereby resign effective immediately."

Okay, that last one is a little bit of wishful thinking on my part.

Keep in mind that Bush also said in his speech that "It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq" when up until recently he was repeating over and over and over again that we were winning. Now, all of a sudden, we need to change our strategy.

But it's the passive construction of the sentence that strikes me as particularly revealing. It's as if what happened in Iraq had nothing to do with him or his decisions -- as if all that death and destruction just kinda happened.

William F. Buckley has made the valid point that, if we were in a parliamentary system, Bush would have been forced out of office by now. It's too bad we don't have such a thing in this country as the vote of no confidence -- Bush would be toast if we did.

20,000 troops (the "surge" of cannon fodder that Bush is planning to ship off to Iraq) are a drop in the bucket when it comes to pacifying Iraq. In order to get the job done adequately, you would need 500,000 troops -- and that's not going to happen.

This is just another inept attempt by this hapless administration to paper over the ongoing disaster that is Iraq. The new SecDef has testified in words alluding to the movie Apollo 13 that in Iraq, "failure is not an option."

I think it's too late for that. Something this president will not admit -- even as he can't admit that it's his mistakes that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in a failed war that didn't have to happen.

Tom Moran