Bush's 'Total Confidence'

No Second Thoughts

In a prime-time news conference in April 2004, Bush was famously unable to come up with a single mistake he had made, or lesson learned.

He has acknowledged a few mistakes in Iraq -- Abu Ghraib, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, among others -- but has blamed them on others.

The closest thing to remorse he's expressed for his own actions came in January 2005 and May 2006, when he said he regretted using the phrases "Bring 'em On" and "Dead or Alive" (in referring to Osama bin Laden). But those were matters of style, not substance.

Does he really believe he's done nothing wrong? (See all my musings on Bush's Bubble.) Is he just too stubborn to admit mistakes in public? Is he putting up a brave front? It's a mystery.

On Good v. Evil

I suppose one possible explanation is that Bush has a comic-book like view of himself as the protagonist in a battle between good and evil -- and sees his every action in that light.

Here he is, for instance, in California yesterday: "You know, we're in this ideological struggle against, I called them [during the State of the Union address] 'evil men,' and I meant what I said. There are people that murder the innocent to achieve political objectives. And the only way they can sell their ideology is when they find hopeless people, and you can find hopeless people in places where there's no hope because the economies are sick. The best way to help people is not to give people your taxpayers' money, but to encourage enterprise through commerce and trade."

By contrast, Greg Krikorian writes today in the Los Angeles Times about terrorism expert Brian Jenkins, who believes that "in the war on terrorism 'we have to have a better understanding of what we're up against.' Demonizing terrorists as 'wicked and evil' plays into their hands, while learning about 'their quantifiable goals and understandable motives' demystifies them.

"Knowledge, he says, is the antidote to anxiety."

Speaking of Evil

Philip Shenon writes in the New York Times: "Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that while he would consider it torture if he underwent the harsh Central Intelligence Agency interrogation technique known as waterboarding, the practice was not necessarily illegal, and he would not rule out its use in the future.

"Under sometimes angry questioning from Democrats at his first oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey found himself caught in the debate that nearly derailed his confirmation last fall: whether waterboarding is torture."

Here's part of Mukasey's exchange with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.):

Kennedy: "So, let me ask you this: Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?"