Virtually anyone with the slightest understanding of Iraq’s unfolding and worsening tragedy must have listened to President George W. Bush’s address to the United Nations with utter disbelief and incredulity. His upbeat, optimistic analysis of the “success” of the US-led invasion bears no resemblance to the realities on the ground. However it is analyzed, Washington’s ill-prepared military blundering and lack of postconflict planning has created far more problems than existed in the first place. Nonetheless, as he addressed the UN, Bush clung tenaciously to the tissue-thin camouflage concerning the scheduled Iraqi elections as proof that the country is firmly on the road to freedom, peace and prosperity. On the other hand, no longer in the hectoring war-leader mode of demanding the international community back his planned invasion, this week Bush appealed to UN members to back the war against oppression and violence. Everyone, he said, had a stake in Iraq and Afghanistan, the world’s two newest democracies.
What was so breath-taking about this performance was that there was no hint of regret, no obvious awareness that what the president had done was to make much worse the problems that he set out to solve when he ousted Saddam. Far from dealing a body blow to terrorism, Washington’s invasion of Iraq has ripped open a hornets’ nest of ruthless, pitiless, pointless violence. The awful reality for America, her allies and, most importantly, for the great mass of Iraqis themselves is that the nightmare of Saddam’s regime, which people at least understood, has been replaced by a horror which in its still rising intensity is neither comprehensible nor escapable. Thus since he could not crow about real achievements, the president chose to ignore the unfolding disaster of his policies and pretend that Iraq was on course for the January elections as if he believed that once the Iraqi people have spoken at the ballot box, the men of violence and evil will shrug their shoulders, go away and give up.
His reasons are obvious. He has an election to win in November. He cannot admit to being wrong. What Bush is trying to do is simply hold things together until Americans cast their votes. Iraq and the Iraqis only matter insofar as they have the potential to trip up his re-election campaign. This is in truth the most extraordinary exercise in damage limitation and it involves the absurd pretence that there has been hardly any damage at all. Bush continues to present America as a key part of a growing solution when it has now become a major cause of a burgeoning problem.
Should he be returned in victory to the White House, Bush will assuredly change his tune. Expect then to hear about the ingratitude of Iraqis, about their failures to grasp the golden opportunities given them by the triumph of US arms, their refusals to turn in the men of violence in their midst and America’s despair at their inability to help themselves.
But that will be then. At the moment there are no real problems in Iraq. Vote Bush.
