Marshall: Bush aids the enemy

I'm sad to report that Josh Marshall, who used to be one of my favorite bloggers, recently argued that President Bush "has been helping Osama bin Laden," reversing the inflammatory GOP charge that opposition to the war in Iraq aids al Qaeda:

Democrats should just hit right back on how President Bush has been helping Osama bin Laden for almost six years. Sounds harsh. But it's true. Consider the facts. President Bush had bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora. But he let bin Laden get away because Bush wanted to focus on Saddam Hussein instead. The president and the White House tried to lie about this during the 2004 election. But since then the evidence has become overwhelming. President Bush decided to let bin Laden get away so he could get ready to attack Saddam Hussein. So pretty much anything bin Laden does from here on out is on President Bush. And how about Iraq? President Bush has screwed things up so badly that he's created a whole new generation of recruits for bin Laden. He's created a whole new army for bin Laden. Not by being tough but by being stupid. And by being too much of a coward to admit his mistakes once it was obvious that the occupation of Iraq was helping bin Laden specifically and the jihadist agenda in general.

After half a decade, the verdict is pretty clear: President Bush has been the biggest ally Osama bin Laden has. He's helped bin Laden at pretty much every turn -- even if only by his own stupidity, incompetence and cowardice. And when the next big terrorist attack comes, we can thank President Bush for helping make it happen.

Note how Marshall adopts the same scurrilous tactics that Republicans have been using. He is putatively claiming only that the effect of Bush's decisions aids bin Laden, but like the GOP, he repeatedly uses language that suggests that Bush wants to do so -- "Bush has been helping Osama bin Laden for almost six years," "President Bush has been the biggest ally Osama bin Laden has," etc.

In particular, Marshall suggests Bush intentionally allowed bin Laden to escape, writing that Bush "let bin Laden get away" and that he "decided to let bin Laden get away":

President Bush had bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora. But he let bin Laden get away because Bush wanted to focus on Saddam Hussein instead. The president and the White House tried to lie about this during the 2004 election. But since then the evidence has become overwhelming. President Bush decided to let bin Laden get away so he could get ready to attack Saddam Hussein.

However, the Newsweek article that Marshall links to support this claim does not actually do so -- here is the relevant information:

[I]n a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught.

Needless to say, Berntsen's claim (which is disputed by former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks) does not prove that Bush chose to let bin Laden get away. The President was apparently warned that bin Laden might do so if US troops were not sent to Tora Bora, but presumably he simply miscalculated.

(Marshall has made a number of inaccurate or unsupported factual claims like this in the last couple of years, as I've noted here, here, here, here, and here.)

Marshall launched a similar attack against Vice President Cheney back in February, which I criticized at the time:

It's hard to imagine that there's anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney.

I know that seems like hyperbole or a throwaway line. But it's actually very true. Is America stronger now than it was before the Cheney era? Does al Qaeda have more fertile ground for proselytizing or less?

He then quickly reiterated the point in a followup:

How many American deaths is this goof [Cheney] responsible for? And who in this country has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda and make the US more vulnerable to attack?

The point here is that no one is intentionally helping bin Laden. Both sides simply disagree about how best to counter him. Instead of debating that issue, however, we're seeing more and more accusations that the other side is "aiding the enemy." To date, these have overwhelmingly come from Republicans, but given Marshall's stature, we may see a lot more of this rhetoric from Democrats in the weeks to come.

Postscript: I linked to Marshall's post at the time because he flagged White House spokesperson Dana Perino claiming that the White House doesn't play question the patriotism of its critics. As I showed, that claim is false. Marshall requested statements from readers responding to Perino. I sent him my post, but he posted anything further on the matter.

Comments

[Rob]

While I'm glad you decided to criticize Marshall, you certainly seem to bend over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt. You say Marshall "is putatively claiming only that the effect of Bush's decisions aids bin Laden" and that Marshall "suggests" Bush let bin Laden escape.

But Marshall goes much further than a mere suggestion when he says, as you quote, that Bush "decided to let bin Laden get away." Marshall's not simply talking about the effect of Bush's action, he's saying Bush made an affirmative decision to let bin Laden get away.

That's in no way comparable to either Republicans saying that the effect of Democratic proposals is to make a terrorist attack more likely or Democrats saying, as John Kerry did in 2004, "I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war against terrorism. I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror - and make us safer."

Criticizing the conduct of the war on terror is fine. Claiming one's own plan to fight terror is better than the opposition's plan is fine. Asserting without any factual support that an affirmative decision was made to let bin Laden get away is not remotely in the same league. It puts Marshall firmly in the moonbat wing of the party.

[Mark D.]

I agree that Marshall has gone too far in suggesting/asserting that Bush & co. have intentionally assisted bin Laden. We still must be able to discuss in public debate, however, whether the particular strategies employed haven't been counterproductive. Besides not only being ineffective, there are credible arguments to be made that certain actions have unwittingly "aided the enemy." These assertions should be backed up with evidence, but we can't overlook the fact that they might very well be reasonable, even accurate depictions of what's occurring.

[oliver]

While some of your criticisms of Marshall seem to me to have merit, this one does not; in context, it's pretty clear that when he writes Bush “decided to let bin Laden get away,” he means Bush decided to take an irresponsible risk that led to bin Laden’s getting away. The point is not that Bush wanted bin Laden to get away -- that's ridiculous, and anyone who reads Marshall’s blog has reason to know that Marshall intends no such implication. His language usage is clearly a shorthand form for making the argument that what you call the president’s “miscalculation” is worse than some obscure error committed while considering his options at a tricky, granular level of operational detail. It was one of the more obvious choices he faced in pursuing the head of the organization behind the terrorist attacks. How much would he decide to make capturing bin Laden and his cohort a priority, holed up as they were in a notoriously inaccessible geographic locale? Marshall, I would venture to say, expects his readers to remember this context, which has been hashed out many times, most notably during the 2004 election; when one does remember it, Marshall’s text emerges as still perhaps less than optimally clear and explicit, but it’s fundamentally reasonable.