| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"SFF" |
| Date: |
20 Aug 2006 11:50:52 AM |
| Object: |
Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator? |
The Sunday Times
August 20, 2006
Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator?
Andrew Sullivan
The news was buried in a New York Times story last week but it
confirmed what others in the Washington chattering classes have been
observing lately.
The context is that the White House has been inviting outsiders in to
the Oval Office to discuss strategy in Iraq. The new chief of staff
Josh Bolten has apparently been trying to pierce the intellectual
cocoon in which the president comfortably resides. Bush family
consigliere James Baker has already been asked to rescue the
president’s failed Iraq policy.
But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert”
attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration
officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering
alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is
being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this
is drifting away from democracy.”
Indeed. The number of civilian casualties in what can now only be
called Iraq’s civil war grows with each month. The thousands of
innocent Iraqis killed in the past month dwarfs the civilian losses in
Lebanon and Israel. The attempt by Nouri al-Maliki’s government to put
down sectarian warfare in Baghdad has failed, requiring more US troops
in the capital and thus abandoning the heartland of the insurgency,
Anbar, to the enemy. General John Abizaid, head of American forces in
the Middle East, told the Senate earlier this month that violence in
Iraq is “probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular”.
Last Wednesday more grim statistics emerged. The number of roadside
bomb attacks are at an all-time high. In July 1,666 “improvised
explosive devices” exploded and 959 were discovered before they went
off. In January 1,454 bombs exploded or were found. That’s the wrong
direction, and it’s after an elected unity government has been
installed.
A Pentagon official anonymously told the press last week: “The
insurgency has got worse by almost all measures, with insurgent
attacks at historically high levels. The insurgency has more public
support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active
and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”
Remember ***** Cheney’s comments about the insurgency being in its
“last throes”? Those words have become as credible as the president’s
denial of torture as an interrogation policy authorised by the White
House.
There comes a point at which even Bush’s platinum-strength levels of
denial have to bow to reality. That point may be now. Why else would
he be reading Albert Camus’s existentialist masterpiece, The Stranger,
in Texas?
Recently Bush has been wondering why the Shi’ites in southern Iraq
have displayed such ingratitude to the man who liberated them from
Saddam. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that a populace
terrorised by sectarian murder, nonexistent government and near
anarchy might feel angry at the man who rid them of dictatorship but
then refused to provide a minimal level of security for the aftermath.
And so, the frustrated born-again neocon in Bush may be ceding to the
caucus of those dubbed the “to-hell-with-them” hawks.
This conservative caucus never liked the neocon argument for removing
Saddam. They didn’t like nation building and didn’t believe that
Iraqis were capable of democracy. They wanted to remove a WMD threat
but, most of all, they wanted to strike terror into the heart of the
enemy by showing what US military might could do.
Depose Saddam, remove the weapons, install a client dictator and leave
as much rubble behind: that was the game plan. It would deter the
Iranians and leave a light military footprint. It had Donald Rumsfeld
written all over it and it helps explain a lot about the Bush
administration’s dogged refusal to add more troops in the first few
months after the invasion.
Rumsfeld and Cheney may well be the key proponents of this argument.
It is, of course, stupid. When you are dealing with a generational
struggle to defang Islamist extremism, your central weapon is winning
over moderate Muslims and Arabs. You do the reverse by bombing a
country into chaos and then leaving.
When one of the biggest threats in a terrorised world are failed
states in the Middle East, why create another one in Iraq? When
western unity and intelligence sharing is essential, why pursue a
strategy that is almost guaranteed to divide allies and unite all
Muslims under the extremist banner?
What’s done is done, however. But the Bush administration knows that
its Iraq debacle is central to its legacy and future. What’s
interesting in the latest polls — in the middle of the Israel-Lebanon
war and the foiled terror plot that shut Heathrow — is how Iraq is
still more important to Americans than the more general issue of
terrorism.
Pollster John Zogby opined: “President Bush’s numbers mainly reflect
the country’s thinking on the war in Iraq, and most people have made
up their minds that the war overall has not been worth the loss of
American lives. Terrorism is an important issue to Americans, but when
it comes to judging Bush’s presidency, their decision is based largely
on Iraq.”
Pessimism about Iraq has deepened on every front since the killing of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Last week’s Pew poll found that 63% believed
that the US was “losing ground” in preventing a civil war in Iraq.
Among Republicans, the numbers have dropped 16% on this question in
the past two months alone. More worryingly, a clear majority now
believes that Bush is not a “strong leader” and “not trustworthy”, two
key qualities Bush once had commanding support on.
And anti-incumbent feeling is stronger than at any time since the
Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. One poll last week had Bush’s
ratings at a new low of 34%. Crunch time approaches.
If the Republicans are to recover by November 2008, let alone November
2006, they have to get Iraq behind them. They have to show progress or
provide some credible strategy for victory that is not simply more of
the gruelling same. Bush doesn’t have one.
The to-hell-with-them hawks do. And they’re gaining traction. Before
too long a compliant US-backed dictator may not seem like such a bad
option in Mesopotamia. And I feel Rumsfeld will be telling himself he
knew it all along.
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