No escape from Iraq

The president’s address will follow by two weeks his January 10 primetime speech outlining the administration’s “new” strategy on Iraq. In the face of substantial setbacks in last November’s congressional elections, in defiance of the new Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, despite public scepticism on the part of many senior military officers about sending more US troops to Iraq, and notwithstanding poll numbers that demonstrate that the American people are losing confidence in his conduct of the war, the president on January 10 refused to concede his Iraq adventure was a blunder, and instead announced the dispatch of more than 21,000 additional troops to Iraq.

Early returns suggest he did not persuade many people of the wisdom of his policies. In a new poll conducted by the reputable Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 61 per cent of Americans said they oppose Bush’s plans to increase troop levels in Iraq. Even many Republicans are sceptical. The widely respected Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year, has called the president’s approach “dangerously irresponsible”, and pledged to do “everything I can” to oppose Bush’s new policy.

Even so, no one thinks the president, for whom the war in Iraq has become the signature issue of his presidency, is prepared to change course. Bush is making a huge gamble that Iraq’s political leadership, of all stripes, can be persuaded, pressured, and cajoled into submerging personal and sectarian agendas on behalf of a national ideal. This is the same Iraqi leadership whose performance up to now has been anything but reassuring. This is, moreover, an Iraqi leadership that may not even have the same political objectives as the White House.

One thing to watch for in Bush’s speech on Tuesday is how he defines US goals in Iraq. If he persists in talking about a ‘victory’ that looks much like an unqualified military triumph, most analysts will conclude that he has set himself up to fail. Few beyond the ever shrinking circle of true believers think that a traditional military victory, including the surrender and disarmament of all armed opposition, is on the cards, no matter what resources America and its allies throw into the battle.

If Bush on Tuesday continues to talk about extending the domain of freedom, with the implication that Iraq will, within a reasonable period of time, become a democratic model for its neighbours, he establishes a standard that not even the stoutest neoconservative views as realistic.

If he encourages the impression, inadvertently or otherwise, that he seeks merely to delay inevitable defeat in Iraq until his successor sits in the White House, he runs the risk of further alienating Congress and the American people and finding himself with a demoralised military unwilling to die for a hopeless cause.

Senate Democrats, supported by a handful of Republicans (including Hagel), have introduced a resolution opposing Bush’s new Iraq policy. House Democrats will soon follow with what could be a stronger resolution. While neither initiative will compel Bush to shelve his plans for sending additional troops to Iraq, substantial Republican support for either or both resolutions would demonstrate just how isolated Bush has become on the issue of the war.

Democrats, however, must be careful. It is one thing to say that the invasion of Iraq was a colossal mistake. It is an altogether different matter to conclude, therefore, that the United States can easily walk away and wash its hands of the mess it has helped create. If the consequences of abandoning Iraq prove to be as disastrous as many (and not just the White House) predict, those who mindlessly advocate such a course will be called upon to share the blame with the president who led America into this godforsaken war.

Democrats must also guard against leaving themselves open to politically motivated accusations that they are “soft on terrorism”. Notwithstanding public disenchantment with the situation in Iraq, most Americans still believe in the justice and the necessity of rooting out the terrorist groups responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks. The White House continues to insist that the war in Iraq is part of that larger struggle. Democrats must do a better job than they have thus far in explaining how Iraq has become a distraction and a diversion from the battle against the terrorists.

George Bush is fighting for his historical legacy. But beyond that, and far more important than what historians may say about his presidency, he is gambling that Iraqis will decide that creating a stable, reasonably free, western-aligned nation-state trumps personal, political, and sectarian considerations. Given the perceived consequences of failure, even the president’s American political adversaries have to hope he can pull it off. Still, one wishes he had a more promising strategy.

The writer is director, Asia Programme, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC