ON one level, US Congress’ decisive rejection of President Bush’s plans to send 21,500 more US troops to Iraq is a blow to the White House. On another, more subtle level, however, it actually gives support to the administration’s exit strategy from its bungled and ill-considered invasion.
Victorious Democrats warned that Iraqis must sort out the violence in their midst and cautioned that US patience was not inexhaustible. This echoes the White House’s own policy which is well into the steady process of shifting the blame for the Iraqi debacle squarely onto the Iraqis themselves. All US politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, are therefore guilty of a deplorable and cynical attempt to rewrite history.
This must not be permitted. The Bush administration’s utter lack of a postinvasion strategy saw the firing without compensation of disaffected Baathist soldiers and police while Al-Qaeda killers flooded into the country, eager to begin a campaign of ruthless terror. The two groups produced lawless chaos in which criminal gangs also flourished, kidnapping and murdering anyone, mostly Shiites, they could get their hands on. In the face of a rising tide of violence, radical Shiites were able to recruit militias. All of these things happened on the US watch.
And while this catastrophic series of US-dictated errors was being played out, Democratic politicians were front and center with their Republican colleagues in Congress, backing the Bush policy without demur. As long as it seemed that American military might had a chance of prevailing, there was hardly a voice raised against the folly and shortsightedness of the invasion. Even when it became clear that the WMD justification for Saddam’s ouster was a pack of lies, the Democrats still stood full-square behind Bush. The rare dissenting Democratic voice, such as that of presidential hopeful Barack Obama, was never raised very high. Those who questioned the Iraqi policy were accused of being unpatriotic and letting down US troops fighting the insurgency.
Now the abject failure of this undistinguished president has changed so much. Democrats condemn and excoriate the very policies that they once backed so enthusiastically. But even as they betray their old opinions and alliances, they cannot quite bring themselves to admit that it was US incompetence and arrogance that brought about this disaster. Instead, they remain at one with the president in blaming the Iraqis for all that has gone wrong. And therein lies both hypocrisy and dishonesty that bodes ill for Iraq in the last 18 months of what may be the most tragically ignorant of US presidencies. Democrats will want the Republican Bush to make all the craven decisions to abandon Iraq before their own presidential candidate walks to victory next year as currently seems highly likely. They will therefore back the lie that ungrateful and murderous Iraqis are responsible for the calamity in their country.
