As the hours tick by to the Nov. 7 midterm election, the Bush administration is wriggling frantically on the butcher’s hook of its Iraq policy. The unpleasant truth is that what has happened in Iraq has always been driven primarily by domestic policy. Bush went gunning for the Iraqi bad guys who had fooled his pa. He did so in the name of his vengeful war on international terror. He was eagerly supported by an angry America. Ironically, until he crushed Saddam’s dictatorship, Iraq had never been involved in terror. Now it most definitely is.
When he gave his somber assessment on Wednesday of the degenerating security in Iraq, Bush was clearly trying to bolster electoral support for his Republican Party at the ballot box. Neocon Republicans are getting desperate. Some have already gone so far as suggesting that Democrat opponents of the Iraq strategy are traitors to the US. The spin doctors are working flat out to deny the massive failure of both the US policy and arms in Iraq. They protest that this is a battle that Washington can still win. But they add, as a precaution, that if there is to be any failure, it would be largely as a result of the shortcomings of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.
Nevertheless Bush demonstrated the sheer barrenness of his administration’s thinking when he was quizzed by a reporter over a glaring contradiction in its stated policy. How, asked the journalist, could the president reconcile his opposition to withdrawing US troops before “the job was done” with his refusal to leave US troops in the crossfire of rival Iraqi militias?
His testy response was: “You know I won’t answer hypotheticals.”
And maybe this president never spoke a truer word. He does not answer hypothetical questions simply because his is an administration that has never asked itself hypothetical questions in the first place. It is now abundantly clear that absolutely no “what-if-questions” were asked about post-invasion Iraq. The White House assumed blandly that once Saddam was overthrown, everything was going to be fine and dandy. The Americans would be the heroes of the hour, greeted with flowers and kisses by a grateful population. The citizens of a brutal police state would immediately seal their new freedom by eagerly embracing democracy. US troops would be home within weeks, to be replaced by armies of US contractors rebuilding the shattered country and being paid out of abundant Iraqi oil revenues.
Bush began his Iraq debacle with minimal planning based on a total lack of appreciation of the complex realities of Iraq. The attempt to impose the dubious Ahmed Chalabi as Iraqi leader was a classic misjudgment both of the man himself and his real standing in the country. Time and again the administration has simply rushed to a new big idea in response to a failure of an old one. Indeed, the only consistent policy that Bush has ever had about Iraq is to deny that this terrible bloodbath within a failing state is the direct consequence of US error and ignorance.
