At first glance, the new plan announced by President George W. Bush for Iraq, may appear as a move to achieve several political and military objectives.
One of those objectives, in my opinion the most important, is to deal with the opponents of war, who now have a theoretical control of both houses of the Congress in the United States.
By offering what is presented as a plan for victory, the president is putting the Democrat hawks in a complicated position. In theory, the Democrats can sabotage Bush’s plan by refusing to vote the extra resources required. This is what they did in 1974-75, when they forced President Gerald Ford to end commitment to South Vietnam and organize the stampede, forever symbolized by the image of the last helicopter leaving from Saigon.
Iraq, of course, is not Vietnam and even if the Americans were to flee in another last helicopter, Baghdad will not fall to Al-Qaeda and its Saddamite allies. The reason is that, unlike South Vietnam, where the regime in place was not supported by a majority of the people, the current Iraqi government represents at least 80 percent of Iraqi citizens.
The worst-case scenario in Iraq would be for the US to leave before the new Iraq can defend itself against internal foes and predatory neighbors. That could open the way for intervention by the Islamic Republic in Tehran that, in turn, would suck at least some of the Arab countries into the Iraqi imbroglio.
Thus, the Democrats would be blamed for having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and creating an even more tragic situation. Since giving up the position of the major power in the region could be the end of the United States’ “superpower” status, the Americans would have to return to Iraq and fight an even bigger war.
Logically, the Democrats should have no interest in seeing the US fails in Iraq, although their desire to see Bush meet his comeuppance may be overwhelming. The Democrats hope to capture the White House in 2008. Therefore, it should be in their interest to see the situation in Iraq stabilized before then.
Logic, however, is not always the best measure of how American politicians behave. In every democracy, politicians are keen to advance their careers and, at times, are prepared to ignore broader national interest in favor of their own future. In the US, however, this natural tendency of politicians is, at times, taken to excess. Some American politicians are convinced that their country is so big and powerful as to not be harmed by setbacks they might inflict on it in the interest of their party or their individual careers.
The key reason for continued violence in Iraq lies in Washington. The Saddamites and Al-Qaeda keep fighting not because they hope to ride in triumph in Baghdad — something they know is impossible — but in the hope of strengthening the anti-war lobby in the United States. It is no accident that the bulk of the anti-war propaganda, used by the Saddamites, Al-Qaeda and their sympathizers in the Arab world, comes from American politicians, academics, analysts and journalists who opposed the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
The key task that Bush faces is to de-partisanize the Iraq issue as much as possible. He tried to do that in his speech Wednesday by admitting that there had been mistakes, and taking personal responsibility. But was that enough? Not at all. The US cannot win complete victory as long as a substantial segment of its elite do whatever they can to ensure failure in Iraq.
Equally important is the need for the president to unite his administration and make sure that his military commanders and political aides believe in his strategy. We know that the administration has suffered from a three-way split on this issue from the start, as its different sections were competing with one another in Iraq as if they represented different countries.
The solution is not a bipartisan policy, which is not possible on so divisive an issue. Too many American politicians, academics and media people, not to mention the incredibly large number of retired colonels the US Army seems to generate, have invested heavily in Iraq’s failure to simply stop their systematic work to ensure that failure. They have published hundreds of books, and thousands of articles, held countless seminars, and been on endless lecture tours on Iraq as a quagmire, another Vietnam, a fiasco, a disaster, and worse, to simply come and say: OK, now let’s try and defeat the terrorists in Baghdad and allow Bush to claim victory!
A seemingly casual statement by Congressman Jack Murtha on American television last year taught more about the way US politics works than years of study.
I quote from memory: Murtha kept warning his fellow Democrats not to allow the Bush administration to “arrange things in a way that looks like they have won” in Iraq. “We want the troops brought home,” he said. “But we must not allow the White House to do it in a way that would look like victory.” In other words even if the US had won a clear victory, the opposition should do all it can to make sure it looks like a defeat. That level of cynicism would have left even Machiavelli breathless. No dose of bipartisanship could cure it.
The best that a bipartisan approach can achieve on this issue was the Baker-Hamilton report, an almost surrealistic exercise in absurdity. Asked to come up with ideas about winning in Iraq, the report proposed cutting US commitment to Iraq and increasing it in Afghanistan while ensuring the return of Golan to Syria and offering Iran a role in reshaping the Middle East.
What is needed in Iraq is a nonpartisan policy. Bush should not use Iraq as a means of humiliating his Democrat opponents who, in turn, should stop trying to ensure failure in Iraq as a means of settling scores with Bush.
A nonpartisan policy should include plans for withdrawing at least some American troops from Iraq before the end of 2008. In terms of the actual situation in Iraq, this is neither here nor there. But it would make many Democrats happy, enabling them to claim “I told-you-so” and demanding that their more radical followers tone down their campaign to produce failure in Iraq.
The president should consult more widely and more sincerely with the Democrats, gradually convincing at least some of them that winning in Iraq and defeating the jihadis is good for all Americans.
Ideally, the president could create an informal group on Iraq to include at least some of the more reasonable Democrat leaders, including such senators as Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Joseph Libermann.
The president should assume the task of explainer-in-chief, telling the American people why it was important to go to Iraq and why it is vital for the US and its Arab and European allies that new Iraq should succeed. Such explaining, however, should not be motivated by a desire to settle political scores with Democrats and other opponents of the war, regardless of their true motives.
No one knows whether the new Bush plan will work or not. But that is not the issue. To win in Iraq, and in the broader Middle East, Bush, or whoever succeeds him at the White House, must first win in the battlefield of American politics.
