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Bush Will Let Iraq Keep Drifting
President Bush removed any doubts in Cleveland on Tuesday: It will be up to someone else to face up to the damage done in Iraq.It's someone else's problem that the world's most powerful military is about to run out of forces to carry out missions that no longer make much sense.
Those U.S. generals in Iraq struggling to figure out a workable U.S. strategy when they have no durable allies in Iraq? They should call their own shots on the war. Far be it from the commander in chief to interfere.
Let's just call President Bush the undecider in chief.
The president explained in Cleveland that the 9/11 terrorist attacks made him implacable about carrying the war to the enemy.
"I realized the biggest responsibility government has is to protect the American people from further attack, and that we must confront dangers before they come to hurt us again," the president told business leaders at the Intercontinental Hotel.
He didn't mention that the 9/11 enemy, al-Qaida, didn't prosper in Iraq until the U.S. attack and occupation gave it the foothold it could only dream about before.
So where is the decider in chief when he's needed?
White House planning for a phased withdrawal will not eliminate the likelihood that U.S. troops will face years of exposure to violence in Iraq as garrison forces or regional peace-keepers. However, it will make less likely a pell-mell withdrawal that could lead to Iraqi implosion and widened regional war - the very disasters the president seems most fixated upon.
Yet even as President Bush resists leadership on Iraq policy, his administration has quietly dialed back on an earlier foreign policy fiasco to a far less ideological, more pragmatic place.
The U.S. confrontation with North Korea was an idea President Bush devised early in his first term, well before 9/11 and the post-9/11 military offensives, that was motivated by similar ideas of a more muscular policy.
Bush sought to trash arms-control treaties he saw as inadequate to containing rogue states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq and instead pushed the untested multibillion-dollar boondoggle of missile defenses.
The consequences have been just the reverse of what was intended.
The collapse of a 1994 plutonium freeze with North Korea drove Pyongyang to obtain nuclear weapons - one bomb tested and eight or more on the shelf. Iraq became the failed centerpiece for the notion that military force alone could eradicate rogue threats. Iran was pushed onto the fast track for industrial production of enriched uranium fuel.
Even previously pacifist Japan now wants to spend $1.3 billion a year building U.S. missile defenses that will change the balance of power in Asia.
On North Korea, the Bush administration has seen the light: The prior freeze on plutonium production is back and U.N. weapons inspectors booted in 2002 are about to turn on their surveillance cameras again.
President Bush also spoke at length in Cleveland about the need to continue "the march of democracy" as an antidote to the sort of hopelessness and oppression that breed terrorism. He's right. Yet from the Palestinian territories to the former Yugoslavia, Washington repeatedly has shown its allergy to democrats with a small "d" who vote for candidates America doesn't favor.
North Korea may be the world's single greatest abuser of human rights - a place where prisoners can rot in detention camps so long that generations of their emotionally stunted children are born there. Yet it's also true that the most pragmatic approach to containing the threats of big war may be to start small, by substituting diplomacy for threats, and maybe then being able, gradually, to pull a paranoiac regime in from the cold.
It may not work. But at the very least, it's a recipe for leadership to try.
Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages. To reach Elizabeth Sullivan bsullivan@plaind.com.
© 2007 The Cleveland Plain Dealer
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8 Comments so far
Show AllIf your intention was to steal your neighbors car, would you tell everyone at the block party? Or would you turn every conversation into one about neighborhood safety? And then, after you've been selected Safety Leader for your street would you then do everything you could to protect folks from car theft?
President Bush is adamant in staying the course and is dead against pulling the troops out, and you cannot blame him. Just put yourself in his shoes, not all of you, but just your foot. What do you think would happen if he says, "OK, let's pull 'em out."
His meager 23% poll numbers would immediately plummet to zero. It would be tantamount to admitting his mistake after a long period of stubbornness, and after so much sacrifice in human life and financial losses.
He is either hoping the Congress to stop him, or he will just let the war drift until his term is over, after which he can always claim that he was right, if they just let the troops stay a little longer.
You cannot deny that you would have done the same if you were him. And by him, I mean a deranged war criminal.
A super-bold, never before in our history show of good faith to the world, proving that America is determined to right recent incredible wrongs, is the only way we'll rally global support for an Iraq solution. Something like, say, a Cheneybush perp walk, or a temporary military coup to cleanse our White House of domestic enemies of our Constitution, for example. Public chemotherapy aimed at eliminating the cancer in DC with massive arrests, show trials, and, of course, hookers' phone records.
Understanding the U.S. mission in Iraq is not rocket science.
The Bagdad operations campus (disguised as a 120 acre U.S.embassy) and multiple military bases will facilitate the extraction of oil from the Asian continent. In addition to Iraq and Iran, there are many former Soviet Union countries with great oil reserves.
None of these nations are likely to give up their oil without a fight. The U.S. military will keep fighting there for many years until all of the oil is extracted.
I ask the non-Americans posting: What exactly are we supposed to do? We elect a new congress expressly intending to end the war and impeachment is immediately "off the table." Next they procede to refund the war without condition. What do we do now? Huh, braniacs? Great, you're sitting far away in your absconsed nests of deniability. You're in as much a position to do something as we are. So shut the hell up, already.
I "could" have re-edited the last post but I think it's illustrative to let it stand. Actually, you guys are right. If you view Moore's new movie "Sicko" the view expressed is quite correct: "In America we are afraid of our government." There should be mass marches, there should be overwhelming dissent. There isn't. We trust government too much. We have a long tradition of going along. You won't hear many Americans say that because we've been sold the John Wayne package (so has the rest of the world). The truth is that Americans sheepishly go along to get along. It's embarrassing. Your average Frenchman has more fire in his belly than any American cowboy. The international image is that if there's a right wronged we'll go in with six-guns ablaze, but it's all bunk. It's all Hollywood. I have personally stood up to US traffic cops who on the exterior are ferocious bluster. The moment you demonstrate any balls whatsoever they turn to jelly. Why? Because the average US male is conditioned by "strong father" to submit to authority without question. Much can be explained by this.
So your outrage IS justified, but it's still hard to take.
Lpenek,
Hi, I read your first post and was about to start telling you hey, look, you guys messed it up, and you expect people on the outside to clean your shit?
But then, I read your second post and decided to stop.
Actually, there are some people on the outside that are standing up to your government with their seat and blood. I'm sure you read about the daily resistance in Iraq. To you as a real American, and there are not too many of you, I can only offer you my sympathy, for whatever it is worth.
However, I would at least do one thing if I were you. I would never vote for career politicians. Vote for fresh faces and voices. Kick all them AIPAC-sponsored, corporate reps out, both Democraps and Repugnants.
I think Saila's depiction of Bush as a "deranged war criminal" may not be perfect but it is not incorrect.
Mr. Bush has lost touch with reality. He cannot seem to face the international catastrophe his policies have created in Iraq. But what is disconcerting is the number of people who are entering into this fantasy world with him: his cabinet, his party's leadership, powerful Republicans in the house and senate.
The nominal Democratic majority does make some effort to talk about the catastrophe but even they do it in surprisingly aloof terms. They are limited by their bare majority.
I think this means that we the people have got to find ways to act. Certainly the somnolent press does not help.
There has to be some way to express and activate the common concerns of all of us in a way that means our leaders can no longer ignore them.
We often say about cable TV, "All these channels and nothing to watch." Well, alternately, "All this communication capacity and no discussion, no dissent."
How to overcome the lassitude?