September 28, 2007

Stuck in Iraq

Once again, President Bush gave his much-trumpeted Presidential address on Iraq in mid-September, presenting his status report on the situation there.
Once again, there was nothing new.
This time, however, Bush did not talk of ‘victory’ – as he had so often done previously – but instead used a more ambiguous lexicon, ‘success.’ It was a lame attempt to re-define the mission in Iraq. From “Mission Accomplished”, it is now “Mission Unfinished”.
The only enduring reality is that, for better or worse, the United States is stuck in Iraq well beyond the Bush Presidency, which has an expiry date of January 2009. A key objective behind the takeover of Iraq was to showcase unchallenged US power and prestige. It is now showing neither.
The Desert Storm of the elder Bush has now become the Desert Trap of the younger Bush.
The vast majority of the American public believes that victory is no longer attainable in Iraq.
The right answers cannot be found until the right questions are asked.
The security situation in Iraq is tenuous, reconciliation appears remote, and the parallel situation in Palestine – the Mother of all conflicts in the Middle East – continues to metastasize. It is a recipe for endless strife. Thus far, the American public has been told by the politicians what it wants to hear. They have not been told what they need to hear.
Rifts have emerged within the US Army officer ranks over Iraq. In this connection, a blistering cover story, “A Failure in Generalship”, written by a US colonel and published recently in the prestigious Armed Forces Journal, created a stir in US military circles. Marine General Peter Pace, retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the military architects of the invasion of Iraq, has just acknowledged, “One of the mistakes I made in my assumptions going in Iraq is that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Army would welcome liberation.” This mistake, according to a British polling agency, ORB, has led to a civilian death toll of 1.2 million Iraqis. General Mike Jackson, who was head of the British Army during the Iraq invasion, has also criticized Washington for relying too heavily on military power and has characterized former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumfeld’s approach as “intellectually bankrupt”.
Even Hollywood is taking cognizance of the growing disillusionment over the US entanglement and continuing stalemate in Iraq. A just-released movie, “In the Valley of Elah”, carries a strong anti-war message.
Within his own Republican Party, Bush is facing increasing discord, along with its pitfalls, during elections 2008. A prominent Republican critic of the Iraq War, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, has decided not to seek the Presidential nomination (or even re-election to the Senate). Republican front-runner Presidential hopeful, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is now having his “hero credentials” of 9/11 increasingly questioned by the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, as well as by the New York City firemen who lost hundreds of their compatriots on that fateful day in Manhattan. The Giuliani camp is being advised by well-known Muslim baiters like Dan Pipes and Norman Podhoretz, which may partially explain Giuliani’s strident Islamophobic rhetoric during the Presidential debates. Podhoretz has just authored a book, “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism” in which he offers an impassioned defense of President Bush’s confrontationist policies toward the Muslim world. Bush has now nominated Michael Mukasey – a friend of Giuliani – for Attorney General of the United States.
Thus far, there is no coherent plan to end the conflict in Iraq, nor a convincing rationale to continue it. It means, in effect, an indefinite US presence in Iraq.
The Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who in 2002 voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, has yet to express remorse and has nothing new to offer.
The challenges are immense in trying to develop a new Mideast policy worthy of the United States. Thus far, the signs are not promising.
When it comes to Iraq, 9/11 still weighs heavily on the American mind although, according to the Washington Post of September 12, “every investigation has shown that Iraq did not, in fact, have anything to do with the September 11 attacks”.
According to an editorial in USA Today of September 14, marking the 25th anniversary of its publication: “Islamic extremism has replaced communism as the biggest global threat. Iraq has become the latest Mideast quagmire for US forces.”
The fact remains that Iraq has worsened the American public’s sense of security. Even the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, has conceded that “America may be safer, but it is not safe.”
The US invasion has done to Iraq what the death of Joseph Tito did to Yugoslavia – it has fractured the nation into fissiparous warring factions. Meanwhile, adding to the frustration of the Bush Administration, a new tape of Osama Bin Laden surfaced on the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity, urging sympathizers to “join the caravan of martyrs” and assailing Arab rulers as “vassals of the West”.
Assessing the six years of the ‘war on terror’ from the American perspective, Tony Blankley, outgoing Editorial Page Editor of the pro-Iraq war Washington Times, wrote on September 12: “I never imagined that six years into the ordeal, we would be so utterly confused and divided.”
Inflamed by Iraq, this confusion and division may well apply to much of the world.