Bush World v. The Real World: Deconstructing Progress in Iraq

Do you, like me, have trouble distinguishing the truth between the various statements administration officials make regarding the status of the war in Iraq, and information published or broadcast elsewhere in the media or on the Web? It makes it difficult to to know if what you're reading is the truth, or merely a facile canard. Who to believe: Bush and his boyos, or those who dispute the Bush spin on Iraq? Often, many of us are forced to choose sides. Either we join the True Patriots who believe every word that is uttered (for approbation or anonymously) by the Bush administration, or we find ourselves in the camp of the Surrender Monkeys, who think Bush and all his followers have a wee bit of a problem with the virtue of honesty.

The problem, however, may be merely a matter of perspective. What we have here may not be a question of truth or falsehood , but instead more the result of the narrative we choose to construct or accept from the information available to us. How one interprets information is often more critical than the information itself. I know, another French Intellectual argument, but Republicans do seem open to them these days. See, for example, the arguments employed by defenders of the theory of Intelligent Design. For lack of better labels, I've chosen to call the Bush administration narrative "Bush World" and the narrative of all of us surrender monkeys the "Real World." I know some conservatives might dislike that particular nomenclature for the narrative I happen to espouse, but hey – if you want to play postmodernist games about truth, and conservatives seem all too willing lately to employ this philosophical approach when making (up) their own arguments (cf. Jonah Goldberg) you have to accept that sometimes your opponents may get in first with their own “framing” devices rather than yours.

So with that in mind, let’s examine these two "world narratives" and see if we can get a better understanding of where the differences between them arise in the case of, say . . . Progress in Iraq?