First we get this from the Washingon Post: U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq.
By Robin Wright and Ellen KnickmeyerThen from the New York Times Frank Rich tells us:
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.)The Bush administration handled the war in Iraq badly at two points. First they handled the decision to invade Iraq badly. Second they handled the invasion and occupation with utter political incompetence.
On the decision to invade Iraq, this was a war of choice. It was clearly something Bush and Cheney wanted well before 9/11. Whatever the real reasons they may have had for starting the war in Iraq, they never bothered to honestly share them with the American public. No doubt they feared the return of the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome" against use of American troops in war. Had Iraq been a low casualty rapid in-and-out operation like Reagans' invasion of Grenada, this weakness might not have been too important. Iraq, however, has not been a low casualty rapid in-and-out operation.
The Vietnam Syndrome is a conservative fantasy, based on refusal to recognize that there was no valid reason for Americans to escalate the war in Vietnam as they did. To the extent that there is any truth behind the idea of a "Vietnam Syndrome" it is that the American people do not see good reasons for major wars that are not directly and clearly connected to American security. There was never any real objection to American involvement in Bosnia-Herzogovina, Kosovo, or Afghanistan. The first two were low involvement wars by a professional all volunteer force, and Afghanistan was a failed state that harbored al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and was instrumental in the 9/11 atrocity.
Contrary to this, Iraq seems to have been a chess move in international political moves surrounding strategic control the Middle Eastern oil fields (not financial control) and the growing and antagonistic power of Iran. Had it remained low-cost as Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzigovina did, this would not have run afoul of American resistance to use military force. And it might have remained low-cost, except for the second problem the Bush administration had. They have handled the invasion and occupation utterly incompetently.
The Bush administration politicians have ignored the advice of the military and State Department professionals as well as the professional Intelligence Agency personnel on how to conduct this war-of-choice-for-no-known-reason. Instead they depend on amateur political hacks like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who substitute tough rhetoric for experience and decent leadership.
The result has been a demonstration of utter political incompetence. Beginning with the fact that the Bush administration was unable to get international support (as had Bush I in the Persian Gulf War), they then ignored military experts and sent in too few troops to prevent the initial looting. Then they have repeatedly demonstrated that they did not understand how to provide a stable occupation in Iraq, starting with firing the first Iraq administrator, Jay Garner, after he had been on the job only seven weeks in Iraq.
Instead of identifying real problems and addressing them, they got sidetracked in things like an official policy of torture that has only inflamed the Iraqi population, the Muslim world, and the sensible American population. This policy was not a response to real problems in the ground. It was a part of conservative ideology and was intended to show that being tough on the enemy was more effective than actually using trained interrogators. Talking tough and acting mean is more important to a conservative than is actually learning what is going on and solving the problems. The blow-back from Abu Ghraib is clearly expressed by the fight the Pentagon is putting up against the lawsuit by the ACLU to publish the pictures from Abu Ghraib. The administrations' torture policy (which they still refuse to admit to, even though the very specific practices it prescribed have been used in a number of separated locations) is has been, to say the least, an extremely high cost policy with little or no return of any value.
The entire occupation has been filled with such idiotic decisions based on (at the very least) hubris, a failure to comprehend the modern world, lack of respect for the Iraqi people, an unrealistic conservative ideology and a silly NeoCon agenda, and an apparently pathological fear of taking the advice of experts.
So what will they do now?
Think reality is sinking in to the Bush administration? Not really. They haven't been wrong. Just ask them and their supporters. It is just that their political enemies are working hard to thwart them.
When expectations for success in endeavors like war in Iraq have to be lowered, what do Republicans do? Blame the Democrats, of course. Watch for it. This is all going to be the fault of Clinton and the Democrats.
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