Though his generals tell him otherwise, though every day many Iraqis experience the bloody truth, though the world’s media daily record the grim calendar of carnage, President George W. Bush continues to ignore whatever illustrates a truth he does not want to hear. According to Bush, Iraq is not spiraling into sectarian conflict. Indeed, with the help of the US-led coalition, the Iraqi government is steadily winning against the insurgents. The men of violence are in the final throes of a desperate attempt to destroy the overwhelming power of US-sponsored democracy.
In the thick-carpeted security of the White House’s Oval Office, the specter of civil war is the elephant in the room. Every day, everyone who enters the presidential office sees it — except the president himself. He is still wedded to the power of rhetoric and spin over the recognition of an unpleasant reality. As long as Bush insists that the insurgency is being beaten, he can avoid any idea that America’s intervention in Iraq has been a disastrous failure, both for the Iraqi people and, in his own terms, for the war on terror.
This is a president who has only managed one apology in six years — and that was just last week to the people of New Orleans for his administration’s woeful response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster a year earlier. It did not look easy for him, nor did his promises of rebuilding the shattered city and learning the important lessons convince many.
With his bungled intervention in Iraq, apology is apparently unthinkable. Too many thousands have died and so many billions have been squandered. To accept error would carry a high risk, if only to Bush’s dubious place in the history books. Yet admitting his failure, accepting the tragic bloodbath his policies have engendered may actually be the most positive move Bush could make for the Iraqi people. At the moment the Iraqi government is being forced to live a lie. US officials have come down hard on any Iraqi ministers tempted to tell it like it is. It therefore stands to reason that any new initiative to confront the insurgency will perforce have to be based on falsehood which will hobble the effort from the first step.
In America’s humiliation in Vietnam, it was the generals on the ground who refused to admit their failures and so led the administration and the people of South Vietnam into disaster. The reverse is true in Iraq where the president will not listen to the bad news his generals are giving him. A more responsive White House could at least prepare new plans to counter civil war. Such a change could also empower Iraq’s coalition government to confront the danger directly. However as long as everyone is compelled to deny the reality of civil war, nothing effective can be done to tackle it.
If Bush continues to dwell in denial, it will be the final bloody betrayal of the Iraqis, who are now dying by the hundreds every day. Their slaughter is real. The president’s fatuous analysis is most definitely not.
