Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Trying to revive his political credibility, Bush succeeded only in reminding us how clueless and reckless he has been as commander in chief.
Jun 30, 2005 | "They're just wrong about our strategy. We've had a strategy from the beginning," said President Bush on May 13, 2003. It was only 13 days since he had made his triumphant tailhook landing of an S-B3 Viking on the USS Lincoln ("I flew it"), stepped before the sailors in a flight suit and declared the conflict concluded as a large banner behind him proclaimed "Mission Accomplished."
Then he flicked off pesky congressional critics of the immediate postwar transition policy. "Jerry Bremer is running the strategy, and we are making very good progress about the establishment of a free Iraq." Appointed by Bush as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi army and was purging the Baath Party, acts that convinced the Sunnis that the United States intended to exclude them from any new arrangement. "And the person who is in charge is me," Bush continued. "Look, I just don't make decisions on polls and I can't worry about polls."
A year later, on June 28, 2004, Iraq's new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, projected optimism as the CPA handed over authority to his government. "In a few days, Iraq will radiate with stability and security," he promised.
A year after that, on June 20, Vice President Dick Cheney assured us that the insurgency is in "the last throes." But on June 26, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained that the Iraqi insurgency could last "five, six, eight, 10, 12 years." The next day, the new Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, sought to create a more upbeat assessment. "I think two years will be enough, and more than enough to establish security."
By then, the White House had announced that President Bush would deliver an address to the nation on Iraq. There was no particularly momentous event in the field to compel it -- no overwhelming offensive by insurgents, no political breakthrough by the Iraqi government. But the steady accretion of U.S. military fatalities (80 in May, 77 so far in June), the daily pictures of carnage on TV and the seepage of reports on the Downing Street memo had eroded Bush's domestic support. It was his crisis on the home front that prompted him to explain the crisis abroad. The president who earlier claimed he wasn't worried about polls needed to lift his sagging ratings.
His appearance was preceded on June 22 by a bombing run to soften up the targets by his chief political advisor, Karl Rove. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," he said. Rove's remarks signaled that Bush's strategy remains organized around control of the image of 9/11. Maintaining support for Bush's foreign policy demands relentless domestic polarization -- including defining critics as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. What worked in the campaign would continue to work.
On Tuesday night Bush marched before hundreds of troops attired in red berets at Fort Bragg, N.C. The live audience standing at attention stood in for the public before their commander in chief. Their correct silence suggested obedience to orders but also echoed hollow resonance. The only interruption for applause came at the end, when the presidential advance team began clapping to the line: "We will stay in the fight until the fight is won."
Five times Bush mentioned 9/11. Terrorism was mentioned 29 times. We are in Iraq, in short, because of 9/11. "And we fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand." Bush was not articulating a policy so much as conflating 9/11 with Iraq to restore his popularity.
The novelty in Bush's speech did not come from his militarized stagecraft. His innovation came with his approving quotation of Osama bin Laden. "Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Here are the words of Osama bin Laden: 'This third world war is raging in Iraq. The whole world is watching this war.' He says it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation."
By citing bin Laden, Bush raised him to the stature of a foreign leader. But he went further, embracing bin Laden's understanding of the war's dynamics as a crusade. By endorsing bin Laden's notion of a "third world war," the American president lent the prestige of his office to the terrorists' vision. Using bin Laden's statement to justify his own course, Bush legitimated their war.
By mixing 9/11 and Iraq, Bush jumbled the actual logic of cause and effect. In the rush to war, Bush, Cheney & Co. had suggested that Saddam Hussein was allied with terrorists, connecting the dot to 9/11. Now the CIA reports that Iraq has become a terrorist training center only since the failed postwar reconstruction.
Rather than making his case by admitting his blunders that led to the current crisis, explaining his proposed correction of course, realistically discussing Iraq's current political or military situation, or any empirical factor on the ground, Bush sought to recapture his past standing by repeating his past rhetoric.
Bush's strategy rests on more than sheer avoidance of facts, however; it depends on willful ignorance of the history of Mesopotamia.
From the creation of the Iraqi state in 1921 to the army's coup of 1958, Iraq had 58 governments. In 1968, the Baathist Party led by Saddam staged another coup. Some periods of this prolonged instability were less unstable than others, but the instability was chronic and profound. The overthrow of Saddam appears to have returned Iraq to its "natural" unstable state. But in fact the instability runs even deeper.
The Baathists, of course, were Sunnis. Saddam was a Sunni. Before him, the monarchs, beginning with Faisal I, were Sunnis. Before Faisal, the Ottomans, who ruled beginning in the 15th century, were Sunnis. Shiites have never ruled the country until now. Why should the Sunnis, after 600 years of control, accede to the dominance of Shiites? In Vietnam, the root motivation against the United States was nationalism, as it was against the French. It even trumped communism in the national liberation struggle. In Iraq, religion and ethnicity are often ascribed as the root motivations of conflict. But to the extent that nationalism may exist as a factor, its ownership does not and cannot reside in the current Iraqi state.
The present Iraqi government is a ramshackle affair of Shiites and Kurds. The Kurds have no interest in a central authority, and play the game only to solidify their autonomy. The Shiites are maintained as dominant only by the presence of the U.S. occupation army and their sectarian militias. They will never disband those militias in favor of a national army unless they can run the army like an expanded version of the Shiite militias. Prime Minister al-Jaafari and the other Shiite leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, have all been Iranian agents or allies, recipients of Iranian largess in one form or another. Shiite Iraqis are natural friends and allies of Shiite Iran. Iraq under the Shiites does not have to be remade in Iran's image to serve Iranian interests. Whether or not sharia (Islamic) law is imposed, Iraqi Sunnis will never see Shiites as Iraqi patriots or nationalists but, instead, as being in league with Iraq's traditional and worst enemy.
These suspicions are hardly abstract. The militia of the largest Shiite faction, the Badr Brigade of SCIRI (Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq), was trained and armed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and is heavily infiltrated and directed by Iranian agents today. Yet Bush has invested American blood and treasure in the proposition that a Shiite-dominated government, which now inevitably means an Iranian-influenced regime, can serve a second master in the United States and present itself to the Sunnis as national saviors.
Bush did not acknowledge this underlying assumption of his policy. Perhaps he does not know it is his assumption.
