ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 26, 2005
WASHINGTON - - On the day the U.S. military death toll in Iraq reached 2,000, the president made a speech.
I watched it on TV, and then I read the transcript. The same thought occurred to me both times: It may be time for a White House correspondent to ask the Question That None Dare Ask.
Some bloggers have asked it. But, as far as I know, no White House reporter has ever asked it of the president.
It is a sensitive question and one that may make the president angry.
But after his speech Tuesday to the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' Luncheon, I think the president has begged the Question.
The speech was not extraordinary. It was yet another well-written, well-delivered repetition of why we are in Iraq and why we are going to stay there. (CNN got
so bored, it broke away before the president was finished.)
But two parts of the speech caught my attention:
Bush attacks Osama Bin Laden for deluding his followers into becoming suicide bombers. "He assures them that this is the road to paradise," Bush says,
"though he never offers to go along for the ride."
The audience laughed and, you have to admit, it is a pretty nifty line.
The rest of the speech is very serious. Bush thanks the officers' wives for the sacrifices they and their "loved ones in uniform" have made in the war effort.
"All of you understand that sacrifice is essential to winning war," Bush says, "and this war will require more sacrifice, more time, and more resolve."
So these are the two points: That leaders should not ask followers to do that which they themselves are not willing to do, and that sacrifice is "essential" to winning the war in Iraq.
So what is the Question That None Dare Ask?
Cindy Sheehan put it this way when she was camped outside Bush's Texas ranch in August, trying unsuccessfully to get a meeting with him: "(I)f the cause is so noble, when are you going to send your daughters over there and let somebody else's son come home?"
Given the president's speech this week, I think that question is worth asking, though not quite the way Sheehan put it. The Bush twins are adults (they are 23), military service is voluntary in this country and it is not the place of the president to "send" his daughters to Iraq.
And even though the two made themselves public, political figures by actively campaigning for their father's reelection in 2004 (you may remember their little talk at the Republican Convention), I think they should be allowed a degree of privacy that the president is not entitled to.
Whether they want to serve in the military is their business. But the question is: Has the president ever discussed with them the idea of enlisting and making the "sacrifice" that he asks others to make?
If so, what did he say? And, if not, why not?
I think those are fair questions because they involve only the actions of the president and not his children.
Normally, what a president discusses with the members of his family should be private.
But when on the one hand Bush attacks hypocrisy and on the other he urges others to sacrifice, then that discussion - - or the lack of it - - should be public.