Reality Check
Let’s get one thing straight: President George W Bush will not pull American forces out of Iraq. It doesn’t matter what the Iraq Study Group, or the Democrats, or the talking heads on TV, or the editorial pages of major newspapers or anyone else says. Or what the American people want. Bush is not looking for a graceful exit. He will cling to one aim: victory. Absent a definable success he will leave the mess in Iraq to his successor.
We should not mistake this obduracy for the more positive traits of steadfastness or resolve. It is, rather, a stubbornness born of desperation, pure and simple. He may be the most hopeless president of the modern era, but he knows beyond doubt that his incumbency in that office is bound inextricably with the Iraq War. If he can salvage something resembling success (like a functioning government able to exert and maintain authority over and deliver services to the people – you know, the thing they had before we invaded) then, in his mind, he may yet be vindicated in the eyes of history. He therefore lacks any incentive to pull American troops out before “victory” is achieved. And since “victory” in any recognisable form is unlikely ever, let alone by the time he leaves office at the end of 2008, American soldiers and marines will assuredly still be in Iraq in numbers not far off their present level.
Assuming the United States forces continue to actively confront the insurgency and try to ameliorate the sectarian violence in Baghdad, we will likely have lost another 2000 troops killed and 14,000 wounded by the end of 2008.
For Bush and many on the right, withdrawal is a four-letter word for retreat, whether it’s phased over a year or starts next week. He may evoke the wrath, even contempt of the country and the world if he leaves office with Iraq in unchanging chaos whilst American forces remain caught in the maelstrom; however, nobody will be able to say he “lost” Iraq. Either his Democratic successor will win that distinction – certainly if the right wing media and Republicans have anything to do with it – or, if it’s John McCain, the US will remain in Iraq for at least another eight years and so, depending on the outcome, the blame or credit will, at worst, be shared.
So forget diplomacy, engagement, multi-lateral conferences, Israeli-Palestinian solutions, Iran and Syria, rethinking our Middle-East strategy, reduction of US forces by early 2008, Iraq Study Group and all the rest. Bush will have none of it (no matter what he says publicly) and since he has no election to face before his term of office is up, he doesn’t have to worry about public opinion. About the only thing in the ISG report he may embrace is a boost in the number of troops of 20-50,000 – an insufficient number to make any appreciable difference even for a year.
Ironically, he will be aided in this by the military brass whose prestige has taken a tremendous hammering thanks to the ineptitude of their performance in Iraq – as distinct from the soldiers and marines themselves, who have been nothing short of magnificent. The Pentagon brass fear defeat even more than the continuing degradation of the military’s ground forces from the Iraq conflict. They vowed never to fight another Vietnam-style insurgency and having neglected to prepare for one, are now faced with the prospect of a similar humiliation. They will want to “stay the course” too, until the country’s leaders say otherwise.
Bush bullied the Congress and hoodwinked most of the American people into supporting the folly that was the invasion of Iraq. He has committed the greatest strategic foreign policy blunder in modern American history and we are well and truly mired. He has set us up for the very defeat he warns us against almost daily and his only contribution from here on out will be to ensure that he is not in the White House when the reality of it can no longer be denied.
Mr Bush needs a reality check. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us.
