You may need high-definition TV to watch the three presidential debates scheduled to be spread over two weeks, beginning with the first session in Florida at the end of the month — for surely you want to focus on the facial expressions of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry as the one justifies the war in Iraq and the other his vote for it in Congress.
On the eve of his visit to the US, where he is expected to address the UN and the Congress this week, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that “we are squeezing out the insurgency,” which is putting on its “last stand.”
Are administration officials seeing the same optical illusion in Iraq, where insurgency attacks have numbered in the dozens each day and where the situation has gotten so out of control that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently predicted that the national elections planned for January could not be held if unrest persisted at current levels?
Let’s say instead that Washington’s swagger into the ancient land between the Tigris and the Euphrates — a land whose culture, history and politics Americans only dimly understand — has unraveled.
The sad fact is that George Bush, like Allawi, may be raising serious doubts about the professional skills of his optometrist. Example: in campaigning for re-election last week, the president not only evinced scant acknowledgment of America’s quandary in Iraq — for commentators, use of the term quagmire is now optional — but actually opted for the upbeat in his characterization of what is happening there. “Despite ongoing acts of violence,” he said, “that country has a strong prime minister, [Iraqis] have got a national council and they are going to have elections in January 2005.”
President Bush, who had unfinished family business to conduct in Iraq, and his neoconservative ideologues, who had grand illusions about spurring a democratic domino effect in the entire region, soldier on, unconcerned about the critical challenges ahead, not wanting to be proven wrong about how rebuilding Iraq did not pan out to be similar to rebuilding Japan and Germany, that ethnic rivalries in that country are too deep and the political culture too shallow for a similarly quick transfer of sovereignty.
They were clueless. Three weeks after the US military entered Baghdad on April 9, unchecked looting gutted every important public institution in the city (with the notably interesting exception of the Oil Ministry). Two days later, when asked why US soldiers did not stop the looting, Donald Rumsfeld’s response was arch to the point of silliness. “Freedom’s untidy,” he said, “and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”
To skip ahead in the story. Two weeks ago Americans registered a lot of public unease when casualties in Iraq passed the 1000-death benchmark. Yet, this is the kind of war where you either prevail — in this case, by launching extremely costly operations against the insurgents — or “declare victory” and get out, thus avoiding a repeat performance of that helicopter scene in Saigon on the roof of the American Embassy in the spring of 1975. There is no middle ground here. For, let’s face it, the Iraq offensive was an imperial venture, and imperial ventures are easy to start — a “cakewalk,” if you wish — but exceedingly difficult to finish.
To some Americans the war in Iraq appears more palatable, and more crucial to the nation’s security, than Vietnam, because they continue to believe that the fighting there is part of a global struggle against international terrorism and that multinational terrorists have congregated there to wage war against the US.
And, hey, when your enemies have all gathered in deadly concentration, most conveniently in one place, go after them.
Rush Limbaugh, these folks’ kooky, pro-war talk-show idol, observed recently: “We don’t have to go anywhere to find them! They’ve fielded a Jihad All-Star Team.”
Yes, ain’t no question about it, the American military has got ’em where it wants ’em.
