WASHINGTON, 2 December 2003 — In London last Saturday, Asharq Al-Awsat’s Editor in Chief Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid asked President George W. Bush if he planned to visit Baghdad. Bush laughed and said, “I don’t know. I’m just trying to finish my trip here to England.”
Five days later, President Bush was serving Thanksgiving dinner to 600 American troops stationed in the Iraqi capital.
In Washington, DC, a town that can’t keep a secret, the president’s disciplined inner circle did just that. In the process, Bush succeeded in dropping the first bombshell of the war without inflicting a single casualty — collateral damage to the Democratic Party aside. He waded through a sea of handshakes, roaring applause and smiling faces in a scene that was vintage Hollywood. The “Kodak moment” came when he served Thanksgiving dinner to ecstatic men and women whose morale has been falling almost as fast as his popularity.
A picture says 1,000 words. That’s quite an advantage for a president whose verbal gaffes (“Bushism”) are memorialized in desktop calendars and late-night talk shows. Ironically, “Bush in Baghdad”, two and half-hours that is likely to define his presidency for years to come, went straight to video. Footage aired only after Air Force One was en route back to the US and just before millions of Americans (read “electoral votes”) had consumed too much turkey (which induces sleep) and the dozens of side dishes and desserts (which reduce cognitive functions).
Casually joking and dressed in an equally relaxed exercise jacket, he allowed his scripted remarks and his presence to convey the seriousness of his purpose. “By helping the Iraqi people become free, you’re helping change a troubled and violent part of the world. By helping to build a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East, you are defending the American people from danger and we are grateful.” If you doubt the president’s resolve to the campaign for an “asr jadid fi iraq”, the visit to a live combat zone — not a remote military outpost, nor a base in a third country — should have made plain the depth of his determination to prevail in Iraq. He risked his life and gambled his political future to deliver an old message, but one that has failed to resonate with Iraqis when the podium was in Washington, not Baghdad: “the regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever.”
In fact, Bush’s visit to Iraq was historic — as much for being the first US president to visit the country as for the absence of an Iraqi counterpart to receive him.
But Bush is not the first sitting commander-in-chief to visit a war zone. In 1990, his father made a Thanksgiving Day visit to the troops stationed in the Saudi desert. President Richard Nixon visited Vietnam in 1969, as did President Lyndon Johnson — twice. President Dwight Eisenhower toured US positions in Korea in 1952.
A healthy majority of Americans will never view his surprise visit to Baghdad against the historical continuum. Few even remember then President Clinton’s two equally hazardous trips to the Balkans. For most, the present and future are of far greater importance than the past. The president’s audacious trip undoubtedly dominated conversation at millions of Thanksgiving tables across the US. With less than a year to go before elections, Bush needs to be the center of conversation with voters focused squarely on his vision for America.
Depending on your own political outlook, the photo-op in Baghdad was either a reflection of the president’s genuine concern for troops and Iraqis alike or it was a shrewd political move to better position him for November 2004. Either way, that casual stroll onto center stage linked Bush’s re-election to progress in Iraq, regardless of who is in charge on the ground — Paul Bremer, Ahmed Chalabi or Ayatollah Sistani. “We will stay until the job is done,” said the president to thunderous applause.
He is undoubtedly hoping — and his advisors planning — to maintain that sort of support for a long-term campaign that weeds out insurgents and stabilizes Iraq. He can’t do that without the support of ordinary Iraqis; they can’t give him 100 percent support because, unlike ordinary Americans, history is part of the fabric of life and theirs is a cautionary tale. The specter of being as badly disappointed by the son as they were by the father undoubtedly restrains many from doing more than watching the mayhem from the sidelines.
But Bush needs the Iraqi people to win over mainstream American voters. With Saddam in the wings and dangerous instability on the streets, it seems unlikely he can do so without divine intervention or dramatically upping the ante. He may be praying for the former, but he delivered on the latter himself. As he would say, “make no mistake” this is not Bush 41’s presidency.
The two presidents were due to spend Thanksgiving together in Crawford, Texas, the former leader left as much in the dark about his son’s stealth mission as the general public. At least, that’s the official White House version of the story. If true, it would not be the first time Jr. surprised Sr.
Since assuming the presidency, Bush did more than set out to undo the Clinton legacy, he was as determined to distance himself from his father’s. Since his victory in 2000, he and his political advisors have been focused on the second term. No one wants the family name to be synonymous with “one-term wonder”. Early on in his administration, Bush shrugged off attempts by neoconservative stalwarts to attack Iraq. Perhaps his experience on his father’s campaign in 1992, and the price his father paid for winning a war but losing an election motivated him.
Sept.11 altered that political calculation, and convinced a president that Saddam and Osama were within spitting range of one another. That being the case, the rule for this administration is that nothing speaks like success itself. One of the more outlandish rationales for the war in Iraq was the theory that trouncing Saddam and reordering Iraq would lead other Arab states to look on us favorably, and other nations to join the charge. Though that scenario has not yet panned out, Bush clearly believes that America can, on its own, take charge and define Iraq’s future.
In doing so, Bush is defining his own future. After Thursday’s guest appearance, he has also raised the stakes for “thugs and assassins” and, perhaps, the domestic insurgents that the administration cannot bear to mention. If they ever had doubts before, they are now quite certain that Iraq figures largely on Bush’s political horizon. They need not take aim at Air Force One. They can go straight for his political artery and bleed Iraq — and a president’s career — slowly to death.
