George Bush has shuffled up reluctantly to the truth that the US military is not winning in Iraq. It was clear two years ago to all but the most blind that thanks to its total lack of post-invasion planning, control of events was fast slipping away from the United States. But this is not a president who confronts reality until it lies in a puddle of blood on his doorstep. And even now he is hinting that the strategic review due next month could see the deployment of yet more US troops.
This is because Bush still thinks, in the face of all the evidence, that his GIs can win a military victory. Beleaguered in their compounds and bombed and shot at when they go on patrol, the US military is hardly in control of the future of Iraq. The occasional big security operation with elements of the Iraqi army may interdict a terrorist attack, slay insurgents and disrupt terror organizations but as soon as the US troops withdraw, the tempo of violence resumes. Though US troops continue to take casualties, it is Iraqis who are paying the daily price thanks to bombs and death squads. Indeed the bitter reality is that at present Washington is dedicated to fighting the insurgency to the very last drop of Iraqi blood.
For three years a further tissue of falsehood has sustained a military operation that was born out of WMD lies and rhetorical conflagrations involving 9/11. Bush and his people have only listened to the reports and advice they wanted to hear. As the whole misbegotten venture turned ever more sour, the White House persisted in denying that there was a problem, let alone the extent of that problem.
Perhaps the whispering armies of America’s political spin doctors have much to answer. Repeating a lie enough times on Fox News may be effective at fooling the general American public, but the politicians who echo them are not supposed to actually believe them. Maybe the prime source of Iraq’s tragedy is that America has a president who broke the rule about believing his own propaganda.
Enmeshed in its own web of disinformation, the White House has never been able to recognize an opportunity to change course. By staking everything on the brute power of US weapons technology, Bush passed up chance after chance to understand the complexities of Iraq and the wider region and recognize clear and invaluable linkages. Had he driven hard for a Palestinian settlement, even without immediate success, he would have won significant respect and robbed his enemies of one of the most potent propaganda weapons of their own. Friends and allies in the Middle East urged this on him. He did not listen.
Now like an injured animal that cannot understand its pain, Bush is casting around helplessly for something to end his discomfort. It looks like it will be a commitment of yet more troops, “additional sacrifices,” as he said recently, because he insists that US military withdrawal will make Iraq a haven for terrorists. He is wrong. The US invasion of Iraq has already achieved that.
