Denial or Deception
May 21,2007

“Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in Denial.”
- Robert Fisk

This week saw Fatah and Hamas killing each other in Gaza, the Lebanese Army and Islamic militias killing each other in Lebanon, and Sunni and Shia forces killing each other in Iraq. Is this planned chaos?

PurpleThink has been very clear that we believe the Iraq war was wrong. Tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and millions plunged into chaos. Further, our continued occupation and recent “surge” strategy doesn’t appear to stem the tide of continued violence.

The word de jour is “denial.” Bob Woodward, Harry Reid and others have clear opinions -- Bush is a moron and shelters himself from reality.

This is a very lazy argument. It may be accurate, but it is awfully convenient. To accept Bush is in denial is to absolve oneself of the need for continued critical thinking. It dismisses any potential defense as irrelevant. As a cynic, we dismiss this dismissal and think it adds no value to the debate.

If Bush opponents truly wished to add value, they would offer solutions that had a potential for a better outcome. Instead, the timeline for withdrawal has no apparent goal other than getting our troops home. For many, that’s enough of a justification. For most, its simply more politics.

Thus, we offer an alternative to the belief that Bush is simply in denial. PurpleThink believes Bush has been deceiving us. “Duh,” you say. Well, we don’t believe the “Bush lied” mentality quite hits the mark. Rather, we give Rumsfeld, Condi, Cheney, Powell, Blair, and Bush a good deal of credit. Call us naïve, but we don’t believe this is a stupid bunch.

Could it be that they knew all along there was a substantial possibility of a civil war and in-fighting on a grand scale? We first alluded to this theory here. Of course the best result would have been for peace and prosperity to flood the Middle East as a result of the U.S. led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, this smart group of individuals with incredible intelligence resources had to know that failure was very possible. More importantly, they had to know what failure meant.

By taking the fight to the Middle East, those that would otherwise have the freedom and resources to launch jihad on the West now find themselves fighting for the soul of Islam itself. Instead of multiple 9/11s, we’ve had a relatively benign 7/7, Madrid bombings, and splintered disorganized cells with little direction and funding.

Consider that Bush deceived us by hoping for success while knowing that even failure means Western values are more secure. If true, of course no one could admit to this approach. (So this theory is equally convenient in that it can't be validated -- cool!)

We still disagree with the original decision for war, but think this theory deserves more attention. We find it far more plausible than the argument for simple denial.

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