"Arrogance and stupidity": the fallout from an honest statement

In a story that is exploding in the media and blogosphere is this statement: A senior US state department official has said that the US has shown "arrogance and stupidity" in Iraq (see BBC Today and the AP Baghdad translation from IHT here), the BBC reported on the Aljazeera interview with Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the bureau of Near Eastern affairs at the US state department, in which Frenandez apparently spoke honestly.

Marc Lynch looks at Fernandez's comments in the context of the entirety of what Frenandez was saying. While many miss Fernandez's point entirely through their own myopia (most likely these are the same people who feel Paul Bremer and Tommy Franks deserved their Medals of Freedom), these same naive reactionaries are probably right to suggest Fernandez should begin his job search: there is no room in this Administration to admit anything but 'mission accomplished'.

Staying on the talking points is crucial, especially in a Bush White House that has had a legendary minimum amount of dissent, even if the talking point clashes with reality. To this and remaining focused on the State Department, I suggest reading Jason's calling out of Secretary of State Rice in this regard (I also recommend his other post's here, here, and again here).

Surely we'll see the Administration return to ignoring Arab media. At one time, earlier in this "War on Terror", it was unheard of to talk to such partisan and biased outlets as Aljazeera. Heck, even little things like State's formerly publicly available Foriegn Media Reation website were killed because State, personified in this case by Karen Hughes, didn't like bad news. (The FMR, by the way, used Embassy personnel actively monitoring local news and was pulled off the public website after GQ Magazine cited State's own FMR product skewering Karen Hughes after her failed Listening Tour. FMR sorta lives on in, but nothing public and not like the FMR that systematically and more proactively monitored foreign language media. More importantly, nothing on the same scale and utilizing the global resources of an organization as diverse as State.)

Instead of denying the words were actually uttered, as the State Department is doing, we should leverage this. Remember when Hezbollah's Nasrallah admitted that if he knew how the recent Israeli-Lebanon War would turn out, he wouldn't have started it? What if, we let this one, the Fernandez interview, go the same way? Drift (or slam) into foreign media, influencing public opinion. It would give the US an air of contrition and understanding, and score major points.

People like Michelle Malkin shouldn't worry about this horrible scenario because it just won't happen. It won't happen because of ardent beliefs to the contrary that we're absolutely right and nothing that has transpired has been the result of our strategies and tactics despite evidence to the contrary and ignored lessons learned from the past. No, the Administration won't go this way because of US domestic politics and nearly all that the Republican Party relied on for the last half decade. The media maelstorm in the US would likely be severe, especially now as media continues to 'defect' from the President, and the Republican Party won't stand for it. Security be damned, it's about securing power domestically.

In the end, the fallout won't be significant because the Administration will try quash, redirect, and divert. At most, the foreign media will see this like the Mutiny of the Generals against Rumsfeld. More than likely, foreign media and foreign publics will see a White House scrambling to say that it has always been on course and on target with its goals in Iraq. We will not see any appreciation as to how we got to the point we're at today.

UPDATE: From the AP comes word of the apology from Fernandez:

...A day after his remarks in an interview were broadcast by the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, Alberto Fernandez issued a written apology through the State Department press office.

"Upon reading the transcript of my appearance on Al-Jazeera, I realized that I seriously misspoke by using the phrase 'there has been arrogance and stupidity' by the U.S. in Iraq," said Fernandez...

"This represents neither my views nor those of the State Department," Fernandez added. "I apologize."

U.S. officials had sought to play down Fernandez' assessment of the security situation in Iraq.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Saturday that Fernandez said after the broadcast he didn't think reports of his comments were an "accurate reflection of what he said." Asked whether the Bush administration believed that history will show a record of arrogance or stupidity in Iraq, McCormack replied, "No."