LOS ANGELES, 10 September 2003 — President Bush never wanted to give that speech Sunday night, and it showed on his face.
He was much happier in May, when he landed on an aircraft carrier and gave an upbeat victory talk, all in front of a banner proclaiming, “Mission Accomplished.” But now four frustrating months later, he had to concede that the ongoing mission in Iraq “will take time and require sacrifice.”
Yes, reality sometimes contradicts rhetoric. And while the actual military campaign was a comparative cakewalk, the occupation has been a big cowpie. Last week, The Washington Times, an avowedly conservative newspaper, revealed that an internal Pentagon report gave the military a failing grade for post-Saddam Hussein nation-building.
One might consider the litany of miscalculations: How many troops? How much the cost? How long the stay? Indeed, in Great Britain, another right-of-center newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, broke the news last week that the Ministry of Defense believes that the Anglo-Americans risk “strategic failure” if they can’t immediately improve conditions in Iraq.
Surely the most teeth-grinding moment for Bush last night came when he said, “Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.” Oh, the irony. On Feb. 14, Bush warned that the United Nations must help him invade Iraq or else it would “fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society.” The United Nations said “no,” and now the president finds his own popularity fading. One poll shows his approval rating down to 45 percent. And so Bush is back on the world stage, proclaiming, “We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties.” But there was nothing really in his talk or tone that communicated conciliation. So now the price of international cooperation will be even higher. The countries that opposed the war feel vindicated; they are likely to take their sweet time in evaluating W’s request to “share the burden.”
Two years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, a wave of pro-Americanism swept the world. The French newspaper Le Monde ran a front-page headline that read, “Nous sommes tous Americains” — “We are all Americans.” But then came the tussle over Iraq, and French sympathy dissipated. Sunday’s edition of Le Monde chortled that the Americans had failed to find weapons of mass destruction and had failed to quash Iraqi resistance. And so, the paper continued, Bush, finally cognizant of the “contradictions” undermining his policy, is now seeking the help of what the administration once disparaged as “Old Europe.”
OK, that’s the French. A poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund — an entity created by Germans to preserve the memory of the Marshall Plan — found that just 16 percent of Germans approve of the way Bush is handling international relations. Indeed, the chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, won re-election in 2002 because he played the anti-American card. So how will Bush and Schroeder break the ice when they meet in New York City later this month?
And what about the Russians? Didn’t Bush and President Vladimir Putin bond a couple of years ago? Maybe, but Bush has been disappointed by Russia’s siding with France and Germany. And what of other friends? Turkey, for example, is a democracy — so democratic that popular opposition forced the Ankara government to cancel its tentative support for the Iraq war. And now, per a Pew Center poll, the most popular international political figure in that Muslim country is Yasser Arafat. Next.
Sunday night, Bush went through the motions of asking for international support, but he offered the world little in return. The British will chip in more, at least as long as Tony Blair is prime minister. And a few other countries will be cajoled or bribed into putting something into the kitty.
Of course, what Bush really needs is national support. First, he needs the $87 billion from Congress. Second, down the road, he needs to get re-elected. So Bush concentrated on persuading Americans that we are making “great progress” in Iraq. After all, it’s this country that will be providing the money, votes and the blood that Bush needs. That was worth a speech on a Sunday night, even if he didn’t look particularly happy, or sincere, or even optimistic.
