A Reckoning Deferred

by MERIP; Mid East Report; January 20, 2007

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? That haunting question, posed by John Kerry to Congress when he was a discharged Navy lieutenant in 1971, helped to slow, and eventually stop, a pointless, unpopular war in Vietnam. That question, in part because Kerry declined to pose it anew when he was a presidential candidate in 2004, has yet to slow the unpopular war in Iraq, if anything a more massive US strategic blunder than the Southeast Asian venture. But the question unmistakably haunts the senators who shuffle before the cameras to defend or denounce the planned "surge" of 21,500 additional American soldiers into Iraq as part of the White House's latest ploy to postpone defeat. The only politician who can dodge the burdensome query is President George W. Bush himself, who effectively announced again on January 10 that his successor will be the one scrambling to answer -- and to ameliorate the anarchy the United States will probably leave behind in Iraq.

At first glance, and at second, the domestic politics of the Iraq war are a paradox. On the one hand, the mere fact of Bush's televised recital of yet another "new way forward," like the Iraq Study Group report now resting in the Oval Office's circular file, shows that the war will never again enjoy public support. A scant 36 percent of respondents to a Washington Post poll approve of Bush's escalation, and only 40 percent continue to believe the war is worth fighting at all. The Democrats, too, scuttled to rearrange the priorities for their first "100 hours" in control of Congress when they realized their constituents demand rapid attention to Iraq policy above all else.

Yet Bush rolled out the "surge" proposal anyway. Perhaps more perplexingly, most prominent Democrats are still hiding behind the moribund Iraq Study Group's recommendations and even pleas of Congressional impotence in order to avoid acting on the public's clear desire to de-escalate the war without delay. In the Senate, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts stands nearly alone in asserting that troop level increases require Congressional approval. Few senators in either party savor the "surge" -- conservative Christian standard-bearer Sam Brownback of Kansas spoke against it from Baghdad -- but most Democrats appear content to pass a non-binding disavowal of the president's plan. In the House of Representatives, whose members must keep their ears closer to the ground, Democrats are talking about attaching myriad strings to the funding for the troop increase, perhaps as a prelude to bolder stands. Still, only a vocal minority in Congress has wholeheartedly embraced their newfound power of the purse, for fear of being called miserly when baby-faced Marines in Baquba need body armor or, worse, being held accountable for the heightened violence that could very well afflict Iraq and its environs when the US departs at last. In their anxiousness to hang the Iraq albatross exclusively around Bush's neck, the Democrats resemble the president, whose determination not to withdraw before leaving office quite possibly presages the occasional swipe at the next commander-in-chief for failing to persevere until "victory." Partisan rivalry is trumping the bipartisan duty to end a disastrous war.

This pre-positioning for the "who lost Iraq?" debate, miserably, is only the surface of the sordid spectacle that is the Iraq war and its attendant discourse.

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The Look of a War against Islam
By Tom Engelhardt
January 18, 2007 at 5:25 pm

Just five days after the September 11th attacks in 2001, in a Q and A with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, a President with a new mission, a new cause, and a new purpose in life told the American people that, though they had to "go back to work tomorrow," they should now know that they were facing a "new kind of evil." He added, "And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."

This crusade, this war on terrorism. It had such a ring to it; in the Arab world, of course, it was a ring many centuries old and deeply disturbing. And it came so naturally, so easily off the President's tongue (though it took days of backtracking by his spokesmen and prominent presidential references to "the peaceful teachings of Islam" perverted by "a fringe form of Islamic extremism" to begin to make up for it). But that little "slip" of the tongue spoke volumes. It signaled that George W. Bush was already in his own heroic dream world and, only those few days after the 9/11 attacks, had both a "crusade" on the brain and "victory" in that crusade firmly in mind. As a result, he made this promise to the American people: "It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century."

Now, here we are, just over five years further into the 21st century, and the President, who only nine months ago was still proudly (if a little desperately) trumpeting his "strategy for victory" in Iraq, now speaks vaguely about "success," or about a "victory," no longer decisive, that "will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved… [with a] surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship." And when it comes to our "children and grandchildren living peacefully into the 21st century," tell that to the 21,500 Americans about to be "surged" into the murderous streets and alleys of Baghdad.

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