Bush's Speech Buys Him Time

When the president spoke last night at Fort Bragg, the whole country was his audience. With support for his war in Iraq collapsing, it was time to rally the nation. In a speech that could have been delivered by Lyndon Johnson, the latest Texan in the White House managed to buy himself a little time, but he didn’t change the tide. Americans are tired of the Iraqi war, and it is only a matter of time before the political pressures force the president’s hand.

Most striking, Mr. Bush offered a third justification for his war last night, and it seems to hold less water than the first two. The first pretext for the war was the Saddamite arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The administration either lied or blew the intelligence assessments, but even a bent LA cop knows that a knife can always be planted on a dead suspect – the neocons didn’t have enough sense to fly in some mustard gas to be “found.” The second excuse was to topple a dictator and replace him with a democratic regime, which is a noble sentiment, but if enacted as policy would have US troops serving in 50 nations by month’s end. And so the terrorism card came out of the deck.

So, Mr. Bush mentioned the Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington no fewer than 6 times as he spoke about the war in Iraq. "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us,” he said. About forty years ago, President Johnson explained to America, "If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco." But nations are not dominoes, and if Al Qaeda wants to try hitting Americans in America, Iraq is irrelevant to the calculation.

Mr. Bush also said last night, “We will prevent al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban - a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends.” But just about the whole planet knows that the Saddamites and Al Qaeda had nothing to do with one another -- except perhaps Mr. Bush and his advisors. There are terrorists in Iraq now where there weren't any before because of his war and the blundering that went with it. It is said the George Washington couldn't tell a lie, and Richard Nixon couldn't tell the truth -- could it be that Mr. Bush can't tell the difference?

The president likes to say that he’s "working hard", that things are "difficult," and "it’s hard work in Iraq." All of which goes to prove that he isn’t working smart. His speech was littered with business school jargon, American units are “partnering with” Iraqi units, there are "transition teams" of US officers essentially commanding Iraqi soliders, and “we are working to improve basic services like sanitation, electricity, and water." The lights in Baghdad are on only 6-8 hours a day, and water runs through the pipes intermittently some two years after "Mission Accomplished". Now, it's "Mission Impossible," and the people of Iraq don’t care if the Yanks are working to improve the situation; when they hit a light switch, they’d like some light. Just their luck not to be invaded by a nation that still produces engineers instead of MBAs.

Mr. Bush said that as the Iraqis stand up, America will stand down. That makes it a race. Can the Iraqi government develop its security apparatus before the opposition delivers one blow too many? The speech last night bought his side a little time, but that is all. He has said that America will leave when the security picture in Iraq improves. But some Arab commentators maintain that the security picture can’t improve until the Americans leave.

This unnecessary war was winnable two years ago, but bad decision-making before, during and after the fighting began has indeed made it hard work. The two good things in the speech were a commitment not to permanently keep US troops in Iraq and not to send more troops. It’s too late to send an adequate occupation force, the few hundred thousand General Shinseki said America needed, and for which he was fired.



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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