Wrong Again! Bush's Logic on Iraq
Published 2007-07-16
If you take just the situation in Iraq in six-month increments,
starting with the taking of Baghdad in 2003, any reasonable assessment
would conclude that the American position has weakened and the country
grown more chaotic, dangerous, and murderous in each of them.
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt
Okay, it's another lemon, the second you've bought from the same
used-car lot -- and for $1,000 more than the first. The transmission
is a mess; the muffler's clunking; smoke's seeping out of the
dashboard; and you've only had it a week. You took it, grudgingly, as
a replacement for that beat-up old Camry that only lasted two months,
but the salesman assured you it was a winner. No wonder you're driving
onto the lot right now. Before you can even complain, the same
salesman's there. He's firm. It's not his fault. You must have done
something. Nonetheless, he's ready to offer you a great deal. For an
extra 2,000 bucks, you can have the rusted-out Honda Prelude right
behind him, the one that, as a matter of fact, has just burst into
flames -- and, he assures you, it's a dandy. It may not look so great
today, what with the smoking hood and all, but it's a vehicle for the
ages.
Would you buy a used car from this man? (Hint: He looks remarkably
like George Bush.)
Or try it this way:
When you first fell ill -- nausea and gnawing stomach pain -- you went
to that new doctor in town. He diagnosed you with stomach flu,
prescribed an acid blocker and vicodin, and told you not to worry a
bit. After that, you started vomiting up brown gunk. So you dragged
yourself back to the doctor, who added an anti-nausea drug and a
cathartic to your regimen. Two days later, you blacked out. You wake
up to find yourself in a hospital bed, blood transfusing into your
arm. The same doctor is at your bedside, insisting that you be
anesthetized and immediately operated on for a bleeding ulcer. He also
has a form he says you must sign that relieves him of all
responsibility for perforating your stomach or anything else that may
occur in the course of the procedure.
Would you take the advice of this man? (Hint: He looks remarkably like
Dick Cheney.)
In fact, no set of images from elsewhere in life can do real justice
to the Bush administration and the Washington it exists in. In our
normal lives, no one could get it so wrong so often and still be given
the slightest credence.
And everything in the world of opinion polls points to Americans
having reached exactly this conclusion about the President and his
team. Call it the American consensus. Recent polls indicate that most
of the public has simply stopped listening to George W. Bush and other
administration figures who have proven incapable of predicting which
policy foot will fall where in the next 60 seconds, no less what might
happen, based on their acts, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or anywhere
else.
The polling figures also indicate that there are essentially no
Democrats left to be moved from the presidential approval to the
disapproval columns; that hardly an "independent" remains on the
approval horizon; and that what's always referred to as the
President's Republican "base" is delaminating by the week. The latest
Harris poll, for instance, has the President's approval ratings at 26%%
and so in a tie with Richard Nixon's Watergate-worst Harris low; and
the Vice President has hit his own new low at 21%%; while, in the
cumulative average of polls at
Pollster.com, Bush's approval rating
has dropped under 28%%. In the last six weeks, if you check out the
long-term arc of such ratings, it looks as if George has taken a
nosedive off a disapproval cliff.
The latest Gallup poll has, for the first time, breeched 30%% on the
twisting, downward road away from presidential approval and has also
registered a record high in opposition to Bush's Iraq policy. In
addition, only 24%% of Gallup's respondents claim to be "satisfied with
the way things are going in the United States at this time" (27%% in
the latest Newsweek poll, and a mere 19%% in the last NBC/Wall Street
Journal poll). Other polls show similar results.
In fact, the American people have so stopped listening to this most
chaotic and tin-eared of administrations -- once proudly billed by the
media (and itself) as the "most disciplined" in our history -- that,
according to a recent ARG poll, a stunning 54%% of Americans now favor
the launching of impeachment hearings against Vice President Cheney
(only 40%% oppose) and 45%% favor it against the President (46%% oppose).
For an idea that was, nine months ago, on the frontiers of political
discussion and the far edge of unmentionability, this is nothing short
of remarkable. Now, outside of Washington, it's evidently starting to
look as American as apple pie for a public that has had it and may not
care to wait for election 2008.
On the other hand, Washington, or that part of it made up of pols,
inside-the-Beltway journalists, think-tank pundits, and assorted
lobbyists, is quite a different story. The Washington consensus is now
way behind the American one. In the rest of the country, the verdict
is in on the President and his administration. He's so long gone and
Iraq should be so over that there's a massive rush for the exits. In
Washington, capital of the universe, where the imperial presidency and
what passes for American "interests" abroad still hold sway, this
administration, however tattered, continues to stagger along the
heights of power. Remarkably enough, the President and his top
officials, civilian and military, still manage to frame the Iraq
"debate" inside Washington's corridors of power, to define what issues
should be at stake and which things are to be discussed.
As Peter Baker of the Washington Post put the matter last Friday,
President Bush "still holds the commanding position in his showdown
with Congress over Iraq. Even with Republican defections, as votes in
both houses made clear this week, opponents do not have anywhere near
the veto-proof majorities needed to wrest leadership of the war."
Headlined "As the War Debate Heats up, Stagnant Air Is in the
Forecast" and reflecting the political mood of the moment in the
capital, the piece was littered with words like "stalemate" and
"gridlock." It described a President "pummeled yet defiant" and
predicted "at least two more months of anger and posturing but no
change in direction." In all this it was typical. A New York Times
front-page piece the same day had the headline: "A Firm Bush Tells
Congress Not to Dictate Policy on War"; a Los Angeles Times headline
went: "Bush Quiets Revolt over Iraq"; and U.S. News in a piece
headlined, "Defiant Bush Holds Firm on Surge," had the horserace line:
"Most analysts believe the President gained little ground yesterday."
Indeed, all of this is true, after a fashion. Congress is deep in the
big muddy of whether the President's surge plan in Iraq has met its
"benchmarks" (suggested by the White House), of whether or not to wait
for the President's general, David Petraeus, to report back in
September on "progress" before insisting on what is likely to be a
relatively modest change of strategy, and about whether, by the
President's standards, there is, or is not, "progress" in Iraq.
When you think about it, that's little short of a miracle for the Bush
administration. After all, you have a President rounding in at 27%%
"approval" in a nation where about 70%% of the public now believes we
are on "the wrong track" and yet Bush and his people are still,
however desperately, capable of setting the "benchmarks" for -- and of
framing -- the debate in Washington.
Short, perhaps, of Jefferson Davis, has any American leader ever been
more relentlessly wrong? Since September 12, 2001, hardly a single
move this administration has made in foreign policy hasn't turned out
-- and relatively quickly at that -- to be the equivalent of a
roadside bomb, exploding under the Humvee of American foreign policy.
For the benefit not of the public, but of our Congressional
representatives who may have been in Washington a little too long and
spent a little too much time reading the Washington-inspired press
corps, here, at a glance, is the actual record of the President and
his administration on Iraq (and allied topics) since 2001.
Top administration officials, the President, and/or Vice President
claimed that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program;
that he was searching for yellowcake uranium in Niger; that the Iraqi
dictator had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (and that they
knew where these were); that he had "mobile biological warfare labs";
that he had unmanned aerial vehicles capable of spraying the East
Coast of the U.S. (hundreds of miles inland, no less) with deadly
toxins, including anthrax; that he was allied with al-Qaeda; and that
he had something to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
Top administration officials, the President, and/or Vice President
claimed that the Iraqis -- the previously oppressed Shiites, in
particular -- would welcome us as liberators ("I really do believe
that we will be greeted as liberators" -- Dick Cheney); that they
might strew "bouquets" of flowers at the feet of our troops; that the
war would be a "cakewalk"; that the war and occupation would cost
perhaps $40 billion or, at most, $100 billion (actual cost so far: at
least $450 billion); that the occupation could easily be funded thanks
to the "sea of oil" on which Iraq "floated"; that the neighbors in the
region, especially Syria and Iran, would be shock-and-awed into
submission or would fall before our might -- as some neocons then put
it: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.";
that, by August 2003, American troop strength in that country would be
down to 30,000-40,000 troops.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
On September 14, 2001, George W. Bush stood on a pile of rubble in
downtown New York City, a megaphone in his hands, and swore that "the
people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon"; not
so long after, he claimed that Afghanistan had been "liberated" from
the Taliban and al-Qaeda; soon after, he ordered American military
attention (and crucial forces) shifted from Afghanistan and those
al-Qaeda remnants to Iraq, where plans for a much-desired invasion
were already in progress; on May 1, 2003, speaking under a "mission
accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, he proclaimed "major
combat" in Iraq "ended"; in July 2003, he challenged the Iraqi
insurgency ("bring ‘em on").
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
In the ensuing years, the President promised "victory" in Iraq again
and again, and he has indicated that "progress" was being made there
in just about every speech or news conference he's ever given on the
subject. On November 30, 2005, the President announced that he had a
specific "strategy for victory in Iraq" in a speech in which he used
the word "victory" 15 times and "progress" 28 times; until the Golden
Mosque in Samarra was bombed in late February 2006, he and his top
officials and military commanders continued to insist that Iraq was
not in a state of incipient civil war; throughout all these years, he
and his Vice President have repeatedly indicated that the press was
simply feeding bad news to the American public and avoiding the "good
news" in Iraq.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
Top administration officials, the President and/or the Vice President
claimed that the following were "milestones" and/or "turning points"
in Iraq: the killing of Saddam's two sons in July 2003; the capture of
Saddam himself in December 2003 (The President even accepted Saddam's
pistol from some of the American soldiers who captured him as a
memento and placed it in a study beside the Oval Office, near a bust
of Winston Churchill. "He really liked showing it off," according to a
visitor); the official turning over of, as the President put it,
"complete, full sovereignty" to an Iraqi "interim government" in June
2004; the "purple finger" election of January 30, 2005 that led to the
writing of the Iraqi Constitution; the nationwide voting of December
15, 2005 that elected a national parliament; the killing of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi in June 2006 (about which the President felt so strongly
that he personally congratulated the pilot of the plane that killed
him on a trip to Baghdad and returned home reportedly feeling
"buoyant").
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
When, before the invasion of Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric
Shinseki testified before Congress that "several hundred thousand
troops" would be needed for an occupation of Iraq, Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz called him "wildly off the mark" and Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared him "far off the mark"; when a
relatively small American force took Baghdad in April 2003 and stood
by while the Iraqi capital and its cultural treasure houses were
looted, the Defense Secretary declared "freedom's untidy" and "stuff
happens"; in June 2004, Wolfowitz denied that an insurgency was even
taking place in Iraq ("An insurgency implies something that rose up
afterwards ... [This] is a continuation of the war by people who never
quitÂ…"); by that June, the administration's viceroy in Baghdad, L.
Paul Bremer III, had already officially dissolved the Iraqi military
and issued 97 legal orders, "binding instructions or directives to the
Iraqi people" (to remain in force even after any transfer of political
authority), meant to control practically all Iraqi acts down to how
you drove your car; in these years, the administration's
representatives refused to deal diplomatically with Iraq's neighbors,
Syria and Iran.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
The Pentagon arrived in Iraq with plans to build four vast permanent
military bases; later, the administration embarked on the construction
of the largest embassy on the planet ("George W's Palace," as Iraqis
sardonically dubbed it) in the heart of Baghdad's heavily fortified
Green Zone; American officials, handing out enormous no-bid contracts
to crony corporations, promised that Iraq would be "reconstructed,"
that electricity service would be suitably restored; that potable
water would be delivered; that damaged sewage systems would be
repaired; and that the oil industry would soar above the production
levels of the end of the Saddam era.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
This January, in a speech to the nation, the President announced a
"new way forward in Iraq" and assured Americans that his new "surge"
plan would: "change America's course in Iraq," "help us succeed in the
fight against terror," and "put down sectarian violence and bring
security to the people of Baghdad"; that "America would hold the Iraqi
government to the benchmarks it has announced"; that "the Iraqi
government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's
provinces by November"; that "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil
revenues among all Iraqis"; that "Iraqis plan to hold provincial
elections later this year"; that "the government will reform
de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering
amendments to Iraq's constitution"; that the administration plan would
use "America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq
from nations throughout the Middle East," "bring us closer to
success," and "hasten the day our troops begin coming home."
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
And the flood of misstatements, mistakes, missed predictions, and
mistaken assessments of the Iraqi and global situations continue to
pour in. To take just a few examples from the last week of news:
*Since 2005, the President has been repeating the ad-jingle-style
mantra about the Iraqi military: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand
down." In fact, $19 billion dollars has already been poured into
training, advising, and equipping that military and the Iraqi police.
Yet, according to the White House Progress Report, "Despite stepped-up
training, the readiness of the Iraqi military to operate independently
of U.S. forces has decreased since President Bush's new [surge]
strategy was launched in January." Outgoing Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs Gen. Peter Pace, in fact, claims that "the number of Iraqi army
battalions that operate independently, with no assistance from U.S.
forces, has dropped from 10 to six over the last two months."
*The President promised in January that, in areas touched by his surge
plan, American and Iraqi troops would begin to establish real
"security," end sectarian cleansing, and allow no place to be a "safe
haven" for militias. However, Julian E. Barnes and Ned Parker of the
Los Angeles Times, reporting from a militia-controlled Baghdad
neighborhood, write: "[A]s the experience of the troops in Ubaidi
indicates, U.S. forces so far have been unable to establish security,
even for themselves. Iraqis continue to flee their homes, leaving
mixed areas and seeking safety in religiously segregated
neighborhoods. About 32,000 families fled in June alone, according to
figures compiled by the United Nations and the Iraqi government that
are due to be released next week."
*The President began his global war on terror by swearing that the
U.S. would be eternally "on the hunt" for al-Qaeda and has claimed
ever since that U.S. forces have radically weakened Osama bin Laden's
organization (though, just recently, a frustrated Congress raised the
price on Osama's head from $25 million to $50 million). At his most
recent news conference, Bush offered the slippery formulation:
"[B]ecause of the actions we have taken, al Qaeda is weaker today than
they would have been." But a new administration intelligence report
from the National Counterterrorism Center entitled "Al-Qaida Better
Positioned to Strike the West," reportedly claims that "the terrorist
network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote
tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks."
*The President has constantly pointed to "progress" in Iraq. As Bob
Woodward just revealed in the Washington Post, however, CIA Director
Michael Hayden, offering an assessment of progress to the Iraq Study
Group in a meeting last November, stated that "the inability of the
[Maliki] government to govern seems irreversible." He added that he
could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this
thing around.... We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a
government that is balanced, and it cannot function." Last week as
well, a new intelligence assessment, a document signed off on by all
16 of the agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community, offered
significantly grimmer news than the already grim White House interim
Progress Report on possibilities for Iraqi national reconciliation and
so "cast new uncertainty about the chances of success for President
Bush's plan to contain the war through the deployment of an additional
28,000 U.S. troops, mostly in and around Baghdad."
But why go on? Only in Washington would such a consistent record of
woeful failure lead to "stalemate." Only in Washington would a group
of officials with such a record still be able to set the basic ground
rules for debate. No individual would go back to the lot that sold you
a string of automotive lemons, or let the doctor who had repeatedly
misdiagnosed your disease (and maybe killed your neighbor with an
overdose of anesthetic), operate on you.
In relation to Iraq, the situation can be summed up this way: The
greatest gamblers in our history rolled the dice for a long-desired
invasion, based on a dream of dominating the oil heartlands of the
planet. This vision of a Pax Americana planet was based on the vaunted
ability of the highest-tech military anywhere to dominate all in its
path. (Domestically, a high-tech, well-oiled, utterly disciplined
Republican Party was to establish political and lobbying dominion -- a
Pax Republicana -- over Washington and the nation for a generation or
more to come). On both imagined dominions, as on everything else, they
were wrong. They were, that is, wrong in their expectations at the
planetary level, and they have been wrong at every lesser level ever
since. It has proven to be a cavalcade of stupidity.
If you take just the situation in Iraq in six-month increments,
starting with the taking of Baghdad in 2003, any reasonable assessment
would conclude that the American position has weakened and the country
grown more chaotic, dangerous, and murderous in each of them. There is
no reason to believe that, under the ministrations of this President,
this Vice-President, these officials, and this set of military
commanders anything could possibly change for the better as long as we
remain stuck on the idea of occupying Iraq.
That's the logic of recent history. If you prefer the logic of dreams
and of an empire of stupidity, then do stick with the present
"stalemate."
Otherwise, it would make more sense to play an opposite's game with
whatever positions the President and his officials take. Your odds on
being right are guaranteed to be phenomenally high. Why, in fact,
listen to them for one more second? Why be forced to look back and say
"Wrong again!" one more time?
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's
Tomdispatch.com ("a
regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the
American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission
Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and
Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch
interviews.
