The nerve.
George Bush, it seems, still thinks he's president and commander in chief. "There's one thing I'm not going to do," he said while in Latvia for a NATO summit. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."
And it gets worse. Earlier that same day Bush rejected the notion that Iraq has descended into—hit the basso profundo anchorman's voice—"civil war."
The poor man. Hasn't he heard that Democrats have recaptured Congress and want to withdraw troops either immediately or on the installment plan? Hasn't he heard the November election was a referendum on Iraq? Hasn't he heard that Iraq's a lost cause—a 21st century Vietnam, a quagmire even—and all that's left is to negotiate the terms of our surrender and figure out a way to take care of the refugees? Doesn't he know that NBC News and The New York Times are now calling Iraq a civil war because we all know the United States doesn't win civil wars like, say, the Vietnam quagmire? Hasn't he been watching the news and reading the papers? Didn't he get the memo?
Like President Clinton after the 1994 congressional election, reports of Bush's irrelevance are greatly exaggerated. That's particularly the case when it comes to Iraq. After all, he's still commander in chief, and will be for the next two years.
Moreover, the recent elections—and even the upsurge in Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence—don't necessarily argue for an American bug-out. Yes, Iraq shaped this year's midterm elections. The war cast a pall over all other issues and contributed mightily to the Democratic win. But the elections were hardly a mandate for withdrawal without victory, immediate or phased. If they were, Ned Lamont and not Joe Lieberman would be preparing to represent Connecticut in the Senate. The Democrats were unclear on what their Iraq policy actually is, and many voters—conservatives, moderates, Republicans, Iraq war supporters—were simply unhappy with the Bush administration's prosecution of the war.
Congressional Democrats are free to believe Iraq is a lost cause and the United States should begin a withdrawal—sorry, a "redeployment"—but they're going to have to act on their own to implement their alleged mandate. Bush won't do the cutting and running for them. Defeatist Democrats will need to marshal congressional majorities or super majorities to cut off funds for troops in the field over the expressed opposition of the commander in chief.
But saying you won't pull our troops out of Iraq until the mission is complete, welcome as that may be, isn't a viable strategy for actually completing the mission. And refusing to call Iraq a civil war—or, for that matter, grandly declaring Iraq a civil war in the first place—is really beside the point. Whatever exactly is going on there is a mess. An unsustainable mess, at least in terms of U.S. involvement.
It's good that Saddam Hussein is no longer ruling over Iraq. It's also good that Iraqis have been given an opportunity for self-government. I still believe the administration's democracy project remains the only real way to alter the regional forces that led to 9/11. It's also worth noting that Bernard Lewis, the distinguished historian of Islam, thinks the effort is worth making. "Either we bring them freedom," he has said, "or they destroy us."
But the current course is simply not working to achieve this in Iraq, and Bush needs to do what he can to change that. If he doesn't—or, if he can't because nothing will work—Democrats won't have to act; Republicans will do so for them.
There's a limit to how long the United States can expend its blood and treasure while Iraqis butcher each other with great frequency and their government proves itself unable—or is it unwilling?—to stop the escalating violence. Americans of all stripes are fast approaching that limit. Whatever the cause of the increasing violence, Bush needs to set a new course. Whatever the possible cure—more troops, new operations or rules of engagement, a new Iraqi government, performance benchmarks, talks with Syria and Iran—Bush needs a fresh approach that, at least, shows some promise of success.
There's no substitute for victory in Iraq, but there's no substitute for a strategy that will produce victory.
David Reinhard is the associate editor of The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon.
