The President’s Dilemma
This article originally appeared in Counterpunch
“Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?” is the title of a 1970 anti-Vietnam War movie whose overuse nearly rendered it trite before that war ended. As a result, when Iraq war opponents invoke it today, the question carries little gravitas. In fact, it seems absolutely lightweight if not lighthearted.
President Bush faces an equally vexing communications problem. He sees himself as a war president forced to confront a dire threat to the continuity of U.S. dominance in vital regions of the world – hence the Iraq war – and to western values and civilization – thus the global war on terror. His problem, unlike that in the movie on Vietnam, is that the U.S. public has been so uninvolved in both wars for so long that the president must keep reminding the country that there is this activity called “war” going on in their name and he is warrior-in-chief.
This chasm of day-to-day disinterestedness separating the public from the president’s conduct of the war has slowly but inexorably changed qualitatively over recent months into opposition – and has steadily grown. Latest opinion polls find 54% say that invading Iraq was a mistake. Only 34% believe Bush is handling Iraq well, while 60% say the results in Iraq have not been worth the cost in lives or the price in national treasure. The latest headlines in the papers are likely to maintain the downward pressure on these percentages. After all, having to “lower sights on what can be achieved in Iraq” and editorials pleading that “someone tell the president the war is over” (Washington Post and New York Times, respectively) hardly inspire confidence.
Bush is even having difficulty of late in keeping the top ranks of the administration “on-message.” In late July, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, stopped referring to the world-wide anti-terror effort as the “global war on terror,” substituting instead the “global struggle against violent extremism.” Their objective, reportedly, was to reinforce the idea that ending terror attacks and rebuilding Iraq – as opposed to destroying it – involved many skills and programs that were within the purview of other departments and government agencies.
No dice. “War” doesn’t appear anywhere in the new formula, although “struggle” and “violent” do. On August 3, in a speech in Texas, Bush steadfastly “stayed the course” by speaking five times the words “war on terror” while disdaining to pronounce the Rumsfeld-Myers alternative.
The next day, during a brief press conference, Bush dismissed as “rumors” and “speculation” suggestions by, among others, General George Casey, the senior U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq, that U.S. troops would begin to be pulled from Iraq in 2006. This is not the first time the administration has repudiated the considered judgments of those who are experts on matters of war. There is the infamous pre-war rebuke by Secretary Rumsfeld of the Army Chief of Staff who had estimated that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq. And Bush himself rather cavalierly dismissed a July 2004 CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq’s political, economic, and security situation at the end of 2005 with the remark that “The CIA laid out several scenarios….And they were just guessing….”
Understandably, Bush has consistently refused to talk about timelines for withdrawing as that would signal the possibility that the Iraq war – or at least the U.S. involvement in the war – conceivably could end before his second term expires in January 2009. After all, Bush has also declared that Iraq is the central front in the global war on terror, and if the central front collapses, the global war itself may fade away or morph into a concern of national and international law enforcement agencies and courts.
As it is, the war that Bush gave the U.S. public and the world is losing adherents at home and abroad. In July, the Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Navy Reserve, and Air National Guard missed their monthly goals for new recruits and, for the first ten months of Fiscal Year 2005, are running 16-23 percent below their quotas. Among allies, one of Bush’s staunchest – Italy – is already pulling troops out of Iraq – well before the expected timeline.
What is becoming clear is that, except for those whose lives have become entwined with the fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other unnamed places, the U.S. public’s commitment to the Iraq war has always been emotionally shallow and intellectually tepid. Emotionally, the overwhelming majority of the public has never become vested or engaged because it has never been asked to sacrifice directly. Yes, for many months a majority expressed support for the administration’s policies in Iraq, but much of this was the “normal” emotional response of “rallying to the flag” and supporting the troops rather than rallying to the policy and the necessity of war. Intellectually, every justification given in 2002 and early 2003 for invading Iraq and throwing Saddam Hussein out of power – including now even the creation of a democracy in Iraq that would serve as an example to the rest of the region – has completely unraveled.
What is emerging from the ashes of the administration’s flagging war “policy” is the public’s realization that the White House never had a coherent domestic political program that addressed the nation’s non-defense needs and priorities. The demands of wartime served to hide this omission in Bush’s first term, but the burgeoning public opposition to the Iraq war may force the administration’s hand on the timing and extent of U.S. military disengagement – and undercut the president’s cherished war image.
In the end, the president’s conundrum is how to re-engage – make that “engage” – the U.S. public in a misadventure based on overestimating the power of politicians to manipulate public sentiment and force events to conform to their “vision” of themselves in the world and in history.
How can one be a leader if no one wants to follow?
How can one be commander-in-chief if no one wants to join the military?
How can one aspire to be – and be remembered as – a warrior president without a war?
This
analysis was prepared by Col. Dan Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.). Dan,
a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, is FCNL's Senior
Fellow on Military Affairs.
Reviewed:
12/04/2006
More on Alternatives to War |
