Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other saber-rattling superhawks were on a Mission From God to democratize the Middle East, police the globe and, not incidentally, found a star-spangled imperium. And Karl Rove's psy-ops team, of which McClellan was a part, intuitively embraced the postmodern proposition that the story shapes the reality.
As an unnamed Bush aide put it in a 2004 New York Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind, there are those who still live in "what we call the reality-based community," people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality," and then there are those who understand that "that's not the way the world really works anymore. ... We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
Of course, somewhere outside the Matrix-like White House "bubble" of media spin and public perception, in what we used to call the Real World (isn't that a reality TV show?), there may be collateral damage. About two-thirds of the way through "What Happened," McClellan recounts a wrenching scene, one of the few times a shadow of self-doubt flickered across Bush's mind. During one of his visits with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in a dimly lit room, the president meets a woman and her 7-year-old son sitting beside their husband and father, a veteran with a brain injury so severe he is "clearly not aware of his surroundings." Bush hugs the mother, tells the boy his dad is "a very brave man" and whispers in the shattered soldier's ear, "God bless you." McClellan writes:
"Then [the president] turned and walked toward the door. Looking straight ahead, he moved his right hand to wipe away a tear. In that moment, I could see the doubt in his eyes and the vivid realization of the irrevocable consequences of his decision."
Welcome to the Desert of the Real, guys.
