Gone Fishin'
You can tell the situation in Iraq has really started to stink when even the White House stops claiming credit for progress there. Presidential posture on Iraq has swung wildly in the past few weeks, but never once to the point of claiming responsibility, either for causing past problems, or the need to make some painful choices to fix them. It feels to me like desperate fishing for a face-saving exit.
A couple months ago, Bush sought to enlist the UN, and specifically western Europe, to pitch in and do their part. Presumably, the world community will have forgotten his flagrant disregard for world opinion on how and even whether to go in when the war started. Presumably, too, the world community hasn’t noticed that hope for success—however that has failed to be defined—continues to diminish, with or without additional troops, so they’ll be happy to jump in. And if they don’t, it could be a face-saving exit: if American voters can be persuaded to think the war effort was sabotaged by some mean-spirited Frenchies, it’s hardly a surprise that Iraq is such a mess.
A couple weeks ago, Bush sought to blame the problems on the government we installed there, insisting that American support for the war would be greater were the Iraqis to show some sincere public gratitude for what we’ve done, whatever that is. This could be a face-saving exit: their parliament can’t afford to appear too grateful for wrecking the country’s material well-being and creating the environment for violent unrest to incubate into civil war; they’d look like a puppet government installed by American imperialism. (And so they would be.) If American voters can be persuaded to think Iraq owes us something for wrecking their country while pursuing our own safety, maybe it won’t matter so much if we pull out and leave the mess behind. It’s Iraq’s fault.
Last week, Bush kept asking for the American public, and especially for the Congress he drove into the Democratic party’s hands, to give his proposed troop deployment—the “surge”—a chance, as though Iraq is just now becoming an ugly situation, and as if he hadn’t already had five years to work on things. And as if we’re not so short on troops because the White House tried to go in on the cheap in the first place, keeping costs and body counts palatably low. This too might be a face-saving exit to take: if the war doesn’t get ever-expanding support, Bush can claim he could have made everything all right, had not those naughty Democrats and their allies, the voters, sabotaged their leader. It’s our fault.
A couple days ago, Bush tried not even talking about Iraq at all. His appearance at the Caterpillar plant this week looked so desperate, an attempt to claim credit for the company’s turnaround, built on someone else’s hard choices, and to keep the conversation off of Iraq entirely. This could be the final refuge of face-saving, and one the current administration has always been fond of: pretending there is no problem, and that anyone who wants to discuss one is just making trouble. So Bush will just hang in there until his term ends, and somebody else has the painful job of cleaning up his mess.
I suppose it’s only appropriate to see our leader fishing for an excuse he can sell. That’s how we went in in the first place, fishing for a casus belli. It wasn’t about oil, or imperialism; it was all about 9/11, until no link could be shown. Then it was about spreading democracy, until other countries were shown to have just as great a need for democracy. Then it was really about saving a country from a brutal dictator committing genocide against his own people, until people began mentioning other countries where dictators committed genocide. Then it was about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a rogue state, as long as we didn't discuss North Korea. And the American public took the bait, and Bush got his war.
I wonder whether Bush will speak so loudly and proudly about our exit as he did about our entrance.