TPM reports that Senator Bernie Sanders (Pinko, Maple Syrupville) is asking the Smithsonian Institution to change the caption beneath its portrait of George W. Bush (rugged, rough-hewn, repugnant). The caption apparently includes the line, “the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Sanders, in a letter to the Smithsonian, takes issue with this formulation:
When President Bush and Vice President Cheney misled our country into the war in Iraq, they certainly cited the attacks on September 11, along with the equally specious claim that Iraq possessed vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The notion, however, that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, or that one “led to” the other, has been widely and authoritatively debunked … Might I suggest that a reconsideration of the explanatory text next to the portrait of President Bush is in order[?]
I think I understand Sanders’s broader point here. In the coming years, we’re likely to see endless instances in which Republican factotums will try to recast the events leading to the second Gulf War in a heroic light. If we consider the captioning of the Bush portrait as one of the first skirmishes in this coming struggle, Sanders’s position seems entirely laudable. Especially so considering the terrain on which it’s being fought. The Smithsonian is among our most important national public spaces. In this view, ceding ground on the national Mall — allowing neoconservative fantasies to be carved into stone within the Smithsonian — might be construed as a first step in surrendering control of the official memory of the last eight years.
Still, I wonder: is it unreasonable to suggest, as the Smithsonian’s captions does, that the attacks of September 11 led, albeit indirectly, to the conflict in Iraq? Put another way, it seems clear that there was no substantive link between the 9/11 attackers and Saddam Hussein. But fabricated ties between the two nevertheless formed an important part of President Bush’s spurious case for war. The caption, then, seems right enough (strictly speaking, at least) to pass muster, even if the impulse that Sanders apparently sees lurking behind it merits a stout challenge.
40 comments
January 12, 2009 at 4:42 pm
tft
No, no, no. Using your formulation, anything that preceded Iraq led to it. Bernie is right, and so were you, before you were wrong!
January 12, 2009 at 4:45 pm
ari
I’m willing to be convinced. But it seems to me that 9/11 led indirectly to the start of the Iraq War. Surely not in the way that Bush administration would have us believe, but the Smithsonian’s wording allows for the necessary ambiguities.
January 12, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Jonathan Rees
Ari:
Your second formulation is right. Without the 9/11 attack, Bush would not have been able to go to war in Iraq because there would have been no cause for him to have demagogued. Bernie is confusing the debunked Saddam – 9/11 connection with the very significant (albeit totally fabricated) connection that Bush made between 9/11 and his rationale for the war.
Either way, the Smithsonian statement is certainly ambiguous enough that this is a terrible place to trod out the anti-revisionist argument needed to make sure we don’t all get misty-eyed about George W. after he’s gone. I say let’s wait for a better opportunity, like when the Bush Library opens.
January 12, 2009 at 5:08 pm
kid bitzer
remember the maine?
January 12, 2009 at 5:09 pm
kid bitzer
also, how would you feel about the german govt putting up a plaque at the czech border, where “an attack by czech forces led to world war ii”?
January 12, 2009 at 5:11 pm
washerdreyer
Your second formulation is right. Without the 9/11 attack, Bush would not have been able to go to war in Iraq because there would have been no cause for him to have demagogued.
But lots of things were necessary conditions to the war in Iraq and would nevertheless be objectionable if the caption said, “[blah], that led to war in Iraq.” For instance, “the Middle East had lots of oil, which led to war in Iraq.”
January 12, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Ahistoricality
Without the 9/11 attack, Bush would not have been able to go to war in Iraq because there would have been no cause for him to have demagogued.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…….
Come on, Prof. Rees: Bloody Shirt, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Lusitania, FDR’s attempts to get Japanese to attack US patrol ships (and successfully provocative embargo), Remember the Maine!…
The only major conflicts we’ve been involved in for which I can’t think of a fabricated, provoked or overblown casus belli are the first Gulf War (and there’s evidence that we may have greenlighted that!) and the Korean conflict.
The link to 9/11 was one piece of the demagoguery: WMD, torture (ouch), assassination and ethnic cleansing were on the list, too, and there were plans to create false flag or provoked bloodshed to turn them into bigger deals if necessary.
January 12, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Zack
This reminds me of one of the basic rhetorical strategies of Bush & co. in the leadup to the Iraq war — assert technically true statements calculated to mislead their intended audience. Grant them no lassitude.
January 12, 2009 at 5:21 pm
kid bitzer
is ‘lassitude’ a clever pun, i.e. ‘don’t let them tire you out?’
or the kind of attitude a showbiz collie has?
or somebody getting belligerent after too many indian yoghurt drinks?
January 12, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Vance
I hesitated to jump on Zack, and a good thing too, because kb did it better.
Before reading this thread, my thoughts on the caption were more or less what Ari lays out in the post. Now I think I object more than anything else to the weirdly passive formulation — events just led to some events, nothing to do with the wizard you see painted on this curtain.
January 12, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Carl
This is a good discussion, so apparently the caption as written can lead to good discussion. Sweet. In itself I agree with Vance that it’s so causally vaporous as to be analytically useless or worse. Which is about par for the course with captions on public monuments, in my experience.
It’s going to take a book or two to sort out all the factors and agents who conjunctured up the second half of the Gulf War. If accuracy is our standard, I don’t think any captionable sentence will do the trick, but I’m open to demonstration. Without a really really good alternative that’s obviously much much better, I think fighting about this is a dumb way to spend our cultural capital while confirming the hofstadteran perception that leftie academics are clueless hairsplitters.
January 12, 2009 at 6:01 pm
andrew
weirdly passive formulation
War broke out.
January 12, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Buster
Look folks, we can compromise. We’re all post-partisan now.
Keep the caption, but switch out that bizarrely innocuous portrait for this one.
January 12, 2009 at 6:17 pm
joel hanes
I think Bernie Sanders is correct to assume that future readers of the inscription are likely to conflate “led to wars … in Iraq” with “justified wars … in Iraq”.
If I were writing the inscription, the sentence would end after “Afghanistan”.
January 12, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Ahistoricality
By the way, the portrait is quite a piece of work. You can tell the artist was trying not to put the smirk there, and almost succeeded, by transplanting G.H.W.Bush’s lips into the face. The pose — restless, undignified, awkwardly stable. The juxtaposition of the dress slacks and shoes with the white double-pocketed cowboy shirt (to say nothing of the the lack of jacket and tie) just screams “Texan of Great Wealth and Little Taste.”
January 12, 2009 at 6:38 pm
polticalfootball
I’m with Carl – this is a good discussion.
And I’m fundamentally sympathetic with ari’s view. With allowance for brevity, I think the Smithsonian’s statement is reasonable.
Anyone who wants to understand these wars needs to understand how the sinking of the Maine led to the S-A war, the Tonkin non-incident led to Viet Nam, and 9-11 led to the Iraq War.
I don’t think ari’s post suggests that he thinks Sanders shouldn’t have written his letter. Ari is merely correctly sympathetic with the problem the Smithsonian faces, especially in these early post-craziness days. With luck and vigilance, a more complete narrative will be available as time passes – as it is with the Maine and Tonkin.
By the way, has anyone figured out the actual reason we attacked Iraq? W-dreyer offers one explanation that he says we should avoid – and I agree that it is just as simplistic as the Smithsonian explanation – but “oil” seems like a perfectly good one-word explanation.
But lots of things were necessary conditions to the war in Iraq and would nevertheless be objectionable if the caption said, “[blah], that led to war in Iraq.” For instance, “the Middle East had lots of oil, which led to war in Iraq.”
What’s objectionable about that?
January 12, 2009 at 6:47 pm
JPool
If we’re replacing the portrait, per my earlier comment it could replaced with one of these and one of these for, you know balance of controversial opinions, equal time and the like, or perhaps simply the more neutral compromise portrait here.
January 12, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Buster
Ahistoricality, I appreciate your reading of that portrait, but I wouldn’t ascribe the effect described to the artist’s intent, based on the background information here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE5DC1039F93AA35752C1A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
http://face2face.si.edu/my_weblog/2008/12/portraits-of-president-bush-and-first-lady-laura-bush-unveiled.html
(Listen to artist interview at the second link.)
Rather than any transgressive work on the part of Anderson (the painter), I think it’s just Bush shining through.
January 12, 2009 at 6:55 pm
JPool
In the current portrait, I keep staring at the (painterly) ugly-ass green leather couch that (photo-realist) Bush sits on. Aside from it’s hideousness as furniture, it appears to be slowly digesting the president.
All hail! Hail to the couch!
January 12, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Russell Belding
“…the attacks of September 11, that led to war in Afghanistan, and preceded and provided a deceptive rationale for war in Iraq” seems a little awkward, but more accurate. Maybe I’m blinded by Bush Derangement Syndrome, but it seems like allowing for any “debate” about whether or not we were lied into war is as justified as “debating” the worthiness of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
January 12, 2009 at 7:26 pm
jazzbumpa
Didn’t former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil reveal that the Bush administration was hot to invade Iraq from the day they took office?
Senator Sanders is right. The portrait statement cannot even be force fit into the truth. “Led to” indicates some actual cause and effect, not simply duplicitous excuse mongering. Clearly it is one more attempt to deceive.
January 12, 2009 at 7:27 pm
raspberryaunt
Well, as a (sometimes) museum label writer, I’ve got a couple of reactions:
1. Yeah, that’s kind of sloppy writing. Not to mention a clear failure to spot and avoid the danger of political fallout. At best, it’s a mediocre example of its form.
2. OTOH, it’s only really fair to judge it in the context of its form. And museum labels can be a really challenging form. Not only do they have to avoid antagonizing any segment of the taxpaying public, they often have to do so within pretty strict word limits. Regrettably, weird passivity and vaporous causality sometimes result. (passive and vaporous construction intended).
I think Carl is on target when he says “if accuracy is our standard, I don’t think any captionable sentence will do the trick.” But I do think it’s an interesting mental exercise. In 25 words or less, can you say anything meaningful about George W. Bush, 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, that would be generally acceptable to the American public?
January 12, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Carl
@politicalfootball, oil is inadequate as an explanation among other things because if that’s all we wanted it would have been much more expedient in the short and probably the long run simply to do a deal with Saddam. We don’t like Chavez and Venezuela’s got lots of oil, but somehow Citgos keep colonizing our streetcorners.
@Russell, I and many others would be fine with your awkward phrasing, but most Republicans would not be and he was their President. We won’t want Republicans captioning Obama’s portrait later either. Also, there is genuine disagreement and historical ambiguity on the deception point, including critically whether there was any intent to deceive (and if so, by whom; Bush himself remains strikingly serene in his convictions) or instead an honest but ‘motivated’ selective interpretation of intelligence. That’s a lot to cram into a caption at this point.
January 12, 2009 at 7:50 pm
polticalfootball
@politicalfootball, oil is inadequate as an explanation among other things because if that’s all we wanted it would have been much more expedient in the short and probably the long run simply to do a deal with Saddam.
Well, yes, that’s kind of my point. No one-sentence explanation is going to do it justice, and I haven’t even heard of a really persuasive book-length explanation either. Exactly why did we attack Iraq?
But certainly 9-11 and oil were crucial causal factors. Absent either one of those, the war wouldn’t have happened. After all, we didn’t attack Rwanda as a result of 9-11, even though the Rwandans had as much to do with the attack as Saddam did.
January 12, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Jake
Well, yes, that’s kind of my point. No one-sentence explanation is going to do it justice, and I haven’t even heard of a really persuasive book-length explanation either. Exactly why did we attack Iraq?
It’s hard to say EXACTLY why, but “the Administration thought that quickly deposing Saddam and having a friendly government replace him would give the US much more influence in the region and the world” seems to fit most of the available information.
Saddam had stood up to the US and more or less gotten away with it. Sure, his military was destroyed and his country was under various sanctions, but he was still in charge and making bold statements here and there. If the US gave him an authoritative beatdown, they could that as an example when dealing to other unfriendly countries. This line of reasoning would clearly run into political opposition at home and abroad, so a cover story was needed. 9/11 was as good of a cover story as they could have hoped to get.
Now the foreign policy thinking behind the invasion was screwy and predictions about how easy it would be turned out to be a wee bit optimistic, but it’s easy to identify a world view from which invading Iraq made sense.
I don’t think “oil” really enters into it at a high level, it’s just than the concentration of oil in the Middle East means that the region can’t just be ignored.
January 12, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Ahistoricality
The caption will be changed.
January 12, 2009 at 10:41 pm
michael holloway
(Despite the new news linked by Ahistoricality that the caption will be changed, I ‘ll add this)
In the present fractured cultural diorama anything can mean what you want it to mean. Reference Defence Secretary Rumsfeld “what we are seeing is not the war in Iraq; what we’re seeing are slices of the war in Iraq”. This is relativism.
But relativism a strong thread of the Bush administrations spin doctoring. Do it, then say you didn’t do it, while jaws are left dropped on the floor, political strategist Karl Rove then leapt to the next misrepresentation.
So if the caption says, “the attacks on September 11, 2001… led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”, it is false.
P.S. Can someone please direct me to where I can read the entire text of the caption at the Smithsonian?
michael holloway
January 13, 2009 at 5:19 am
Barry
Taking it to Godwinian extremes:
“Still, I wonder: is it unreasonable to suggest, as the Smithsonian’s captions does, that the attacks of September 11 led, albeit indirectly, to the conflict in Iraq? ”
By that standard, the International Jewish Conspiracy led to the Holocaust (excuse me, ‘alleged Holocaust’).
By that standard, the Kulak Counter-revolutionaries caused their own deaths in Stalin’s purge. (and everybody who didn’t actually plot against Stalin caused their own death for being accused of plotting against Stalin).
Basically, you’ve ceded them enough of a claim to the ground to the point where they can build on it and successfully claim ownership.
It’s really odd, because (a) you’re a historian, and should understand such things and (b) you actually spotted this (’ In the coming years, we’re likely to see endless instances in which Republican factotums will try to recast the events leading to the second Gulf War in a heroic light. ‘)
There’s something that I call “Liberals’ Disease” (or I should say “Elite Liberals’ Disease”), where you don’t have to win, and truth doesn’t have to win, so long as a select few still know the truth. In this view, successfully fooling the public is not seen as a true victory.
Or, to restate it in a less true but more accurate way, liberals dominate academia; right-wingers dominate the rest of the world.
January 13, 2009 at 5:59 am
Michael Turner
By that standard, the International Jewish Conspiracy led to the Holocaust (excuse me, ‘alleged Holocaust’).
Um, except that there actually was a 9-11 conspiracy, Barry.
(Oh, wait, is this the same Barry who, over at Crooked Timber, told the world I was a New Deal Denialist, simply because I pointed out where a particular anti-Denialist argument ought to be shored up with a little more causal reasoning? I hope not. That accusation had a whole lotta weird in it. It seems the mere exercise of critical thinking skills can, uh, “lead to” paranoid accusations like those, if one isn’t careful.)
“Led to” is not much more specific than “linked to.” If it’s unacceptable here, it’s mainly in being unacceptably vague as applied to the invasion of Iraq. If someone said only that “9-11 led to the invasion of Afghanistan,” I wouldn’t have much of a problem with it.
January 13, 2009 at 6:18 am
Ahistoricality
Rather than any transgressive work on the part of Anderson (the painter), I think it’s just Bush shining through.
Buster, you’re probably right. But the painting is still the National Gallery portait of our 43rd president, and it’s got a smirk and he’s wearing ranch gear instead of business attire. It’s a finger in the eye of everyone who believes in the dignity of the office. Not that his presidency wasn’t, but even in small ceremonial ways, he can’t keep up the pretence of being serious about the presidency. It’s offensive.
To make matters worse, it’s clearly deliberate: the Yale portrait by the same artist is in jacket and tie.
January 13, 2009 at 6:51 am
Barry
MT: (Oh, wait, is this the same Barry who, over at Crooked Timber, told the world I was a New Deal Denialist, simply because I pointed out where a particular anti-Denialist argument ought to be shored up with a little more causal reasoning? I hope not. That accusation had a whole lotta weird in it. It seems the mere exercise of critical thinking skills can, uh, “lead to” paranoid accusations like those, if one isn’t careful.)
Yes.
January 13, 2009 at 7:09 am
kid bitzer
why does the caption say any more than “george w. bush”?
or maybe “george w. bush, 43d president of the united states”, if such is not obvious from context?
i sympathize with raspberryaunt’s point that the caption must be very short, and so cannot reflect historical details (such as the fact that he lost the 2000 election).
but that just makes it all the more bizarre that a caption is saying anything *at all* about various events during the president’s term in office.
i realize that the bushist dead-enders want to keep making 9/11 the excuse for everything in his presidency, but why should there be *any* mention of that event whatsoever on the label of a painting?
i’d probably know part of the answer to those questions if i saw the labels on other presidential portraits.
andrew jackson: killed a lotta indians, and proud of it.
james monroe: universally acclaimed our shortest president.
just not a business any portrait gallery should find itself in.
January 13, 2009 at 8:32 am
jazzbumpa
How about:
George W. Bush, 43rd President. Despite desperate warnings from despised Clinton holdovers, 9/11 happened on his watch, thus providing phony excuse to invade Iraq.
Fewer than 25 words.
Oh, sorry, I forgot the “acceptable to Republicans” requirement.
Dang!
January 13, 2009 at 9:10 am
Vance
Here’s some Jackson. [UPDATE: link didn't work. Go here and search for e.g. "Jackson" "president".] I find three pictures, with three different Web blurbs — not sure whether they’re the same as the wall text.
–
–
Also:
so they seem to conceive puffery as part of the mission.
January 13, 2009 at 9:14 am
Vance
Here’s a better link for the presidential gallery.
By the way, looking for a comparison, I find that the National Portrait Gallery in London has 591 portraits of Lady Ottoline Morrell, and 1687 portraits by her.
January 13, 2009 at 10:09 am
kid bitzer
um, i think it says:
“Sitter associated with 591 portraits, Artist associated with 1687 portraits.”
that means she had lots of friends (e.g. the entire bloomsbury group, who despised her, but all the same), and that her artist had a lot of commissions (and actually she was a photographer anyhow, so that’s not that many pix).
January 13, 2009 at 10:23 am
KRK
But the painting is still the National Gallery portait of our 43rd president, and it’s got a smirk and he’s wearing ranch gear instead of business attire. It’s a finger in the eye of everyone who believes in the dignity of the office.
Which solidifies my faith that there will come a day, hopefully not so far away, when people will look at the portraits of presidents 1-44 and ask “which one of these is not like the others?,” and it won’t be Obama who stands out. Instead, people will point at #43 and ask “What’s that bozo doing up there?”
January 13, 2009 at 10:31 am
Vance
True, kb, it’s not a great mystery. Not sure what you mean by “her artist”, though. Aren’t those basically her snapshots?
January 13, 2009 at 10:39 am
kid bitzer
you’re right, vance, i screwed up. the particular portrait of lady ottoline that you linked was a photo by lizzie caswall smith. but it’s not lc smith who took 1687 photos, it’s lady ottoline.
apparently one should read “artist associated with n portraits”, when affixed to a portrait, not, as i did, as “the artist who created this portrait also created n portraits”, but rather as “the subject depicted in this portrait was also an artist, and in that capacity created n portraits”.
January 14, 2009 at 2:10 am
herbert browne
Well, I’d like to see “PNAC” worked into the caption under the 43rd President portrait… ^..^