Bush Is a Loser at Logic but a Winner in D.C.

I just got back from a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. Didn't ride the teacups, though, because I wasn't in Disneyland, but in Washington, D.C., where everyone is walking on air, swept away by the Beltway's latest consensus: President Bush was right on Iraq. And, as a result, Tomorrowland in the Middle East will feature an E-ticket ride on the Matterhorn of freedom and democracy.

The political and cultural establishment has gone positively Goofy over this notion. In the corridors of power, Republicans are high-fiving, and Democrats are nodding in agreement and patting themselves on the back for how graciously they've been able to accept the fact that they were wrong.

The groupthink in the nation's capital would be the envy of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.

How did this cozy unanimity come to pass? Is it something in the water, I wondered, perhaps as a result of Bush gutting the EPA? But then I thought back to my time at Cambridge, when I took a course in elementary logic, and studied the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle.

For those of you in need of a refresher on the concept, here's an example: "All oaks are trees. All elms are trees. Therefore, all oaks are elms."

See how easily you can go from point A to point Z, jumping over all the important steps between?

So: We invaded Iraq. Change is afoot in the Middle East. Therefore, the Middle East is changing because we invaded Iraq.

See how simple it is? And how illogical?

The Bush White House has been masterful at this infantile reasoning: America is free and democratic. Terrorists attacked America. Therefore, terrorists hate freedom and democracy.

And that's all anyone needs to know.

What makes this particularly seductive is the historical longing of Americans for political consensus. In this country, where the European idea of a loyal opposition never took hold, Democrats are all too eager to suspend disbelief and go along with the fairy tale Bush is telling about freedom and democracy on the march, and the happily-ever-after future of the Middle East.

But flip the page on this "once upon a time" fantasy and what's revealed is a very ugly war story -- a bloody narrative about which we hear shockingly little.

I sincerely doubt the people of Iraq are going to bed with visions of Thomas Jefferson dancing in their heads. Not when their days are filled with random bombings and checkpoint shootings and kidnappings that have become commonplace.