Is it Groupthink or Something More Nefarious?

Bill Safire’s column today in the New York Times chalks up to “groupthink” the reasons why both the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee found there to be no “formal” relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Safire points out quite rightly that of course there wasn’t – that’s not how terrorism works.

Safire wryly says, “Think about that. Do today's groupthinkers believe that Osama bin Laden would sit down with Saddam in front of the world's cameras to sign a mutual assistance pact, establishing a formal relationship? Terrorists and rogue states don't work that way. Mass killers collaborate informally, without a photo op, even secretly.”

Well, these so-called groupthinkers are the same types of people who fill the State Department, believing diplomacy is manifested in treaties signed at Camp David between relaxed looking foreign leaders donning their leisure suits. And sadly, this group also includes so-called paleo-conservatives who believe the Cold War was won by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sitting across some long table from each other bargaining over each missile in the arsenal. Hell, they couldn’t even speak the same language.

Reagan won the Cold War not through words alone, but through action. He ran guns to the Afghani rebels and Contras in Nicaragua, he overthrew (by force, I might add) a Communist government in Grenada, and he installed Pershing missiles in Germany. Gorbachev wouldn’t have believed Reagan’s threats to implement a missile defense system if he had not done the military build-up in the first place.

But is groupthink really to blame for the newest national past time of American punditry: hurl lies, accusations, and conspiracies at President Bush and see what sticks? Or is it something considerably more nefarious: a willingness to shirk the truth for power (whether the prize is the presidency for the Democrats or control of the conservative movement for the paleo-conservatives by deposing a president who has left them behind). No, Mr. Safire “groupthink” isn’t winning the day in American politics, nihilism is.