Bush broke Iraq, but can he fix it?
There is a growing conflict at the heart of President Bush’s Iraq policy. His political and military goals don’t agree.
The president wants to make sure an exit strategy is visible to voters by the time they cast their ballots in November. That’s why he is determined to draw down American troop strength while turning over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
But it’s clear the political calendar does not square with the military calendar. Policies designed to get the president past the election could blow up in his face. The deteriorating situation on the ground demands more troops, not fewer, and it will take years, not months, before Iraqis are ready to police and govern themselves.
There’s a lot of debate in Washington about whether getting into Iraq was a good idea. But there is little debate about staying there. Pulling out now would be disastrous. The real question is this: Does the president have the stomach to finish what he started, and to tell the American public what the job will really cost, in lives and dollars?
With violence against Americans growing more organized and more lethal every day, Sen. Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was asked on ABC whether the June 30 deadline was unrealistic. “It may be,” he replied. “And I think it’s probably time to have that debate.”
But instead of listening, Bush said, “The date remains firm,” the president insisted.
Particularly alarming is the emergence of private armies commanded by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders. “You have the militia that have not been disarmed,” Lugar warned, “and if in fact the worst situation comes, the militia begin to fight each other. That is civil war.”
The June 30 deadline is only the beginning of the debate that Lugar wants to start and Bush wants to avoid. Four other related questions require a similar reappraisal.
One: What troop levels are necessary? The Bush plan reduces American forces from 140,000 to 100,000, but Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on Foreign Relations and a war supporter, warns of the danger. As the American Army leaves, Biden told Fox News, there is no “trained force to replace it and none in sight.”
Two: Who will run Iraq? Power-sharing arrangements among the three dominant factions have still not been worked out. When American proconsul Paul Bremer departs in less than three months, he will leave an enormous vacuum behind.
As Biden told The New York Times: “We’re about to give over authority to an entity that we haven’t identified yet, knowing that whatever that entity is, there’s going to be overwhelming turmoil between June 30 and January, when there is supposed to be an election.”
Three: How long will foreign troops be needed in Iraq? The real answer is, indefinitely. Peacekeepers remain in Bosnia long after their scheduled departure, to say nothing of South Korea.
Four: What will all this cost and who will foot the bill? The first answer is “a lot,” and the second answer is “you.” But in the face of rising expenditures and roaring deficits, the president insists on making his tax cuts permanent. Even some Republicans are starting to gag on such a reckless and irresponsible approach.
It was the president who broke Iraq. Now he owns it and is obligated to fix it. But he’s letting his short-term political interests blind him to a military situation that seems to be spiraling toward disaster.
(Cokie and Steven Roberts are syndicated columnists.)