Josh Marshall raises a good point in calling out President Bush for invoking race when discussing Iraq.
At last month’s press conference, Bush pontificated:
Some of the debate really center around the fact that people don’t believe Iraq can be free; that if you’re Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can’t be self-governing and free. I strongly disagree with that. I reject that, because I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul, and, if given a chance, the Iraqi people will be not only self-governing, but a stable and free society.
I thought this was just one of those weird comments he makes when not reading off the teleprompter. But he raised this point again yesterday:
There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.
Last time I checked, America, or India, or a host of other countries where the citizens govern themselves aren’t just white. But as for his point, who is criticizing our nation-building foray into Iraq on the basis of race? I’ve heard plenty of people who are skeptical on our chances of establishing a full democracy in Iraq, but the difficulties they always discuss are (1) the fact that Iraq has never been a democracy, or (2) how the rival factions make it difficult to construct a new government. I don’t hear any one playing the race card . . . except for Bush.
Seems like this is another way the administration is going after those who question it’s policies–brand them as racists.
I thought about writing something about this, but it made me too angry, and I had very little to offer that Josh Marshall or you hadn’t said.
The irony, of course, is that Bush belies his own subtle racism by referring to us as a “white” nation.