Turning The Corner

May 2003: Mission Accomplished
May 2006: Bush Sees 'Incremental' Progress in Iraq

What a difference three years makes.

Now, as President Bush issues new assurances on the war based on the new steps their government has taken, the U.S. military is severely downsizing what it will define as 'victory' in Iraq-

An old word is gaining new currency in Washington: containment. You may be hearing a lot more of it as the Bush administration hunkers down for its final two years. Containment of Iraq’s low-level civil war, which shows every sign of persisting for years despite the new government inaugurated this week. Containment of Iran’s nuclear power, which may lead to a missile defense system in Europe. Containment of the Islamism revived by Hamas and Hizbullah, by the Sunni suicide bombers in Iraq, as well as by the “Shiite Crescent”—as Jordan’s King Abdullah once called it—running from Iran through Southern Iraq and into the Gulf...

...On Monday, Bush again appeared to sidestep the realities, calling the new “free Iraq” “a devastating defeat for the terrorists.” Back in Iraq, however, it was just another typical day: some 20 Iraqis died in bombings and drive-by shootings, with few or no arrests.

So today’s containment is a furtive policy being developed willy-nilly behind the scenes, as Bush’s pragmatic second-term officials seek to clean up the vast Mideast mess left by the ideologues who dominated in the first term. A series of cautious concepts similar to those that came to dominate the cold war are emerging as the least worst way of holding off powerful forces that are also going to be around for along time: disintegration in Iraq, expansion in Iran, Islamism all over...

...The U.S. military is already gearing up for this outcome, but not for “victory” any longer. It is consolidating to several “superbases” in hopes that its continued presence will prevent Iraq from succumbing to full-flown civil war and turning into a failed state. Pentagon strategists admit they have not figured out how to move to superbases, as a way of reducing the pressure—and casualties—inflicted on the U.S. Army, while at the same time remaining embedded with Iraqi police and military units. It is a circle no one has squared. But consolidation plans are moving ahead as a default position, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has talked frankly about containing the spillover from Iraq’s chaos in the region....

I think that these passages sum up what an awful 'project' this war was and what a colossal mess it will continue to be for many years. And that almost all of the architects of this war still work for the government is criminal in and of itself.

Matthew Yglesias perfectly summarizes why pessimism about the outcome is just simply being realistic now-

[W]hat's the plan? And if President Bush and his team have mismanaged virtually every aspect of postwar reconstruction then why on God's earth would we expect them to suddenly implement a brilliant plan?

Nobody doubts that the best thing to happen for Iraq would be for the United States to put together a crackerjack "stability and democracy and ponies" plan and then put it into place. Iraq would end up stable, democratic, and everyone would have ponies. It'd be great. The trouble is that it's become very clear that nobody actually has such a plan on hand. And not, fundamentally, because they aren't thinking hard enough. The issue is that there are actual limits to what our troops can accomplish. They're soldiers, not magicians. They can't conjure up a sense of national identity or widespread social support for liberalism.

Bingo. And that's what many- like Rep. Murtha- have been saying for months as the usual suspects greet them with scorn. The media is, despite right-wing insistence otherwise, also to blame in that regard as well. Look at the warm reception Condoleeza Rice receives on the top news shows and you can see the media is continuingly willing to take each new proclamation of progress at its word. Out-spoken anti-war voices are rare on these programs, although that aspect of this is not as bad as it was in 2003.

In other news, another sign that the reality on the ground in Iraq is much worse than the White House would like us to believe is the fact that the Baghad bureau of Voice of America remains closed after several months. Voice of America is a government-funded media agency, similar to the BBC in England. Its closed status sends a powerful message as it undermines the administration's claims that the level of chaos the media reports is over-hyped. Guess all that 'good news' the media ignores will have to report itself now.

Finally, Robert Scheer looks at the political reasons behind the President's proclamations-

With all these turns, it’s no wonder Americans are a little “unsettled” about this quagmire, to use the commander in chief’s own delicate description of the public’s deep and bitter frustration with this war. Despite the public’s nausea over the war, hope springs eternal for a White House panicked by the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Congress with the power to investigate its mendacity. And so Bush was back in form Monday, proclaiming that the latest head honcho in Iraq has got the right stuff and that the terrorists are quaking in their sandals...

...The “turning point” Bush is actually concerned about is the U.S. midterm elections, coming up fast in his windshield. Because Iraq isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon and the troops are not coming home, the president is once again trying to sell the lie of Iraqi progress in an attempt to keep his opposition from taking control of Congress and using subpoena power to ask the right questions about how we found ourselves in such a mess. Questions such as the one Bush pointedly ignored, about the missing WMDs, raised by at least one sober delegate to the restaurateurs’ convention. Or about how come Al Qaeda was able to operate in Iraq only after the U.S. invasion and not before. The pressing test for the ideal of democracy lies not with the Iraqis, who must make their own history, but rather with an awakened U.S. citizenry finally holding its imperial president accountable.

An informed public is George W. Bush's worst nightmare. I don't think we're fully there yet (some polls continue to show about a quarter of the country still believes Iraq had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, etc), but the usual spin is getting harder for the Republicans to sell. Americans are mostly optimistic, but they're not blind, and they can only hear phrases like "turning the corner" and "making progress" so many times before they realize they are hollow. The polls reflect this. The President insists that his low ratings are just because the public is "unsettled" by war. But, to the contrary, the war (at its peak in terms of public perception) is what gave the President his highest ratings of his career. What really "unsettles" voters now is President Bush.

Of course, even though it was already obvious by then that the war was a historic disaster rooted in lies and deceit, the public failed to hold Bush and the GOP accountable for it in 2004. Will 2006 be different? I think that's less of a factor of Bush's abilities as a salesman than with the public's fatigue with caring one way or the other about it by November.





[Related articles:
-The Independent (UK): Which is the real Iraq?
-NY Times: Hold the Applause in Iraq]