Conservative Advocate: Iraq is Bush’s main problem
Right now, the media are full of stories reporting the downfall of George W. Bush. His performance, or non-performance, in response to Hurricane Katrina is said to have robbed him permanently of his reputation for decisiveness.
Social Security reform — the centerpiece of his second-term agenda — was dead on arrival at Capitol Hill, and his attempt to whip up popular support for it has clearly failed. Whiffs of scandal in the Republican majorities in Congress, affecting even their leaders, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, have robbed the White House, at a crucial time, of much-needed support from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. And public opinion polls report that confidence in Bush, and approval of the way he is handling his job, have sunk to the lowest levels of his presidency.
But these are, combined, not George W. Bush’s central problem. Most of them will not manage to inflict lasting damage on his reputation. He has already made some progress in repairing the damage done by Katrina, thanks to his notably better performance in the case of Hurricane Rita. His failure to push Social Security reform through Congress will, I suspect, in the long run hurt Congress (including its Democrats) far worse than it hurts him because the American people know full well that Social Security must be reformed, and are likely to credit him with a robust effort to save it, even though he failed.
In all of these matters, Bush benefits enormously from the fact that it will be three long years before the voters have a chance to pronounce their verdict on his presidency — and even then the verdict won’t be on him, but on the Republican party’s nominee to succeed him.
Do you have any idea how long a time three years is in politics? We tend to assume that the future will be a featureless extension of the present, but that is the only thing it assuredly will not be.
The problem that Bush must solve, or be destroyed in the attempt to solve, is Iraq. It is no longer a question whether he was right to order the invasion; there are strong arguments on both sides of that issue. The brute fact is the United States is now embroiled in a battle with a powerful force of largely Sunni terrorists. They openly propose to plunge the Sunnis into a long and bloody civil war with Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish populations, and they have recently made alarming progress in that direction.
The current regime in Baghdad looks shaky at best, and neither its soldiers nor their far-better-trained American mentors seem able to contain, let alone reduce, the menaces they face.
This is, and is going to continue to be, the central problem of the Bush presidency. Here too, it is important to note that Bush has three years in which to turn the situation around and emerge as the authentic liberator of Iraq. But if the military situation in Iraq deteriorates much further, Bush’s attempt to transform that unhappy country into an authentic Arab democracy may fail disastrously.
No wonder the polls report that people are dissatisfied with Bush’s handling of Iraq. So, surely, is he. He is undoubtedly right in insisting on pressing on; there is, really, no other choice. Cutting and running, as some Democrats are beginning to demand, is a prescription for ruin. But it is far from certain that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi won’t win his bet that today’s Americans can’t stand, for long, the sight of blood.
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.