The news emanating from Washington and Baghdad in recent weeks point to one clear, if not final conclusion, the Bush administration’s adventures in Iraq have been a complete failure.
What the media has eagerly dubbed as the “Republican revolt” is now reinforced by two of the most distinguished Republican senators, John Warner of Virginia and Richard Lugar of Indiana. Before the Democrats’ takeover, the two champions of Congress were in key positions. The former was the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the latter presided over the Foreign Relations Committee. Their unrivalled significance in the party in national security and foreign policy issues is simply uncontested.
Both senators proposed a measure requiring troop redeployment from front-line combat as early as Jan. 1, 2008. The measure, unveiled July 13, would require the White House to come up with a plan for realignment by Oct. 16.
One only needs to consider the timing of that proposed realignment to appreciate the seriousness of the proposal. The head of the US forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, along with US Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, are expected to furnish a report to the Congress assessing the war’s progress, and whether the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has lived up to the conditions imposed by Congress and signed by Bush. If Al-Maliki and his sectarian-based circle fail to show competence, there will be an aid cut.
Democrats, whether genuinely or knowing that the Iraq fiasco is their winning card in their battle with the president, are fuming. In their view, even the momentous initiative by Warner and Lugar seems, at best, insufficient. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid chastised the plan for not insisting on any implementation. He insists, however, on an alternative legislation that would require troop withdrawal by the spring of next year. Many Democrats are also following Reid’s line, however, they don’t have the needed majority to override a presidential veto.
Bush on the other hand, maintains that his strategy necessitates more time. He is no longer demanding but “imploring.” In fact, the latter was the precise term used in a Washington Post report on July 14, reporting on the White House’s response to the Republicans’ rebellion, “Bush implored Congress to wait for Petraeus’ assessment before trying to change strategy,” Shailagh Murray wrote.
By expecting a redeployment strategy to be drummed up by mid October, the senators’ proposal would expect the White House to start preparing the document almost immediately; by doing so, they render Petraeus and Crocker’s recommendations to be of no consequence, in advance. And why wait for Petraeus’ views, if they are already well known.
The general spoke to the BBC’s John Simpson, in Baquba, Iraq, only a few days before the development on Capital Hill. “Northern Ireland, I think, taught you that very well. My counterparts in your [British] forces really understand this kind of operation... It took a long time, decades,” he said.
Petraeus is not pessimistic to the point of eliminating the possibility of a military victory altogether, but he is talking of a long and arduous war. “I don’t know whether this will be decades, but the average counter insurgency is somewhere around a nine or a 10-year endeavor.”
Considering these views, one can only predict that the general’s report next September, which is likely to celebrate a few achievements here and there, will accentuate the duration of the anticipated war. An additional ten years to suppress an “insurgency” is too long for a nation that is already growing weary from war and its costs (to say nothing of the Iraqi people who have paid the ultimate price.)
The Bush administration’s failure to rally the Congress, and increasingly its own Republican Party members there, is being paralleled by another political storm, this time emanating from the Iraq government itself. On the one hand, Al-Maliki is alleging that his army is capable of keeping security in the county when US forces leave “anytime they want,” a top aide of his, Hassan Al-Suneid has lashed out at the US for turning his country into an “experiment in an American laboratory.”
Al-Suneid made his comments in protest of the Bush administration’s benchmarks, but also of the US military tactics, including coordination with Sunni militant groups “gangs of killers” according to Al-Suneid — to ostracize and destroy Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Al-Maliki, meanwhile is dealing with the unsolvable crisis and widening division within the ranks of the Shiite political parties, and between the latter and the Sunnis and Kurds. His coalition crisis is much grimmer version of Bush’s Congressional ordeal, although it’s fueled mostly by Washington’s policies and expectations.
While Pentagon reports continue to talk of some success here and there in justification of the 30,000-troop surge, the situation on the ground paints a different reality.
Suicide bombers, car bombings, endless US military raids and shells whizzing everywhere, are he order of the day in Iraq. The fact that Iraqis are dying by the hundreds makes all the Pentagon reports of measurable progress simply ink on paper.
Back in the US, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll — conducted July 9-11 — showed that the American public approval of the Congress performance is as low as it was in June 2006, before Democrats took over both the House and the Senate. At 24 percent, Americans are losing faith in both parties, after a temporary surge of hope that the Democratic ascension will help move the country into a new direction. President Bush’s approval rating remained at an equally devastating 33 percent.
It’s too obvious that the US policy in Iraq has failed beyond repair. That failure wouldn’t be of too much consequence if it were not for the fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have paid the price, and many more will likely die if the Congress doesn’t act forcefully to carry out the wishes of the American people and respect the sanctity of the lives of Iraqis, and their own.
