This is a longer version of an analysis that appeared in the June 29 print editions of The Denver Post.
Washington – President Bush faced one of the toughest tasks of his presidency Tuesday night, persuading wary Americans, in the face of only mixed results, to continue to pay a steep price in money and lives in Iraq.
“Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed,” Bush said. “I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it?
“It is worth it. It is vital to the future security of our country.”
The United States has suffered about 15,000 casualties in Iraq, including more than 1,700 dead. To date, the war has cost $230 billion.
Just as Bush’s repeated references to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks seemed designed to evoke memories of that wrenching crisis in his first term, the audience and location of Tuesday’s speech appeared chosen to highlight Bush’s role as commander in chief and self-described wartime president.
Instead of speaking from the Oval Office, Bush addressed a crowd of uniformed airborne and special-operations forces at Fort Bragg, N.C.
He recognized the sacrifices made by military families and, at the closing of his remarks, when saying that the enemy “is no match for the men and women of the United States military,” appeared to choke up with emotion.
Bush offered no new or dramatic strategic vision in his address, but, in ways that Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the administration have not done, he acknowledged that the war is “difficult and dangerous” and that there are more “tough moments that test America’s resolve” in store.
The president dealt, each in turn, with critics who suggest that the U.S. should set a deadline for withdrawing its forces from Iraq or, conversely, add more troops to the American forces there.
“Setting an artificial timetable would send the wrong message to the Iraqis, who need to know that America will not leave before the job is done. It would send the wrong message to our troops, who need to know that we are serious about completing the mission,” Bush said, “and it would send the wrong message to the enemy, who would know that all they have to do is to wait us out.”
But dispatching more soldiers and marines “would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight,” Bush said. “Sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever.”
As in the past, Bush defended the war as a proper response in a world transformed by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bush reminded his audience of the joy Iraqis displayed in January’s election and urged Americans to stay the course until Iraq can build political institutions that deprive Iraq’s tenacious insurgents of popular support.
“The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of Sept. 11, if we abandon the Iraqi people and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like (Osama) bin Laden,” Bush said.
Bush’s speech was the high point of a week-long campaign mounted by the administration to bolster domestic support for the war and his presidency. In recent polls, Americans have been venting frustration with his handling of the war.
“Iraq continues to weigh the administration down,” the conservative American Enterprise Institute warned in its July political newsletter.
“Americans are now divided about how (Bush) is handling terrorism (50 percent to 49), the issue that has given the president strong positive marks since 9/11,” AEI concluded. “On the issues Americans are most concerned about the economy and Iraq solid majorities disapprove of the job he is doing.”
The White House should be particularly concerned about flagging support for the war among Republicans, said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg: “The problem they have is in their own base.”
Republican members of Congress have been urging the White House to “stop the erosion,” said Democratic consultant James Carville. “They can’t continue to lose public support for this at the rate they have been.”
Not surprisingly, Bush failed to mollify his critics Tuesday night. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, “The president failed tonight, as he has failed consistently since the war began, to lay out specifics for success.”
Instead, said Pelosi, “the president’s frequent references to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 show the weakness of his arguments. He is willing to exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.”
“Iraq is now what it was not when the war began a magnet for terrorism because the president invaded Iraq with no idea of what it would take to secure the country after Baghdad fell.”
“I think a lot of people in America are looking for less talk about the progress and more talk about what we’re specifically going to do to be able to be successful in creating stability and bring our troops home,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
Bush’s supporters shot back. Moments after the speech ended, the Republican National Committee sent out an e-mail blasting “Democratic Defeatism.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was dispatched to Capitol Hill with his generals last week, and then made the rounds of the Sunday TV talk shows. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did the morning shows this week.
And Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, reminded the GOP base in a New York speech of an unpalatable alternative: to turnturning command of the war on terrorism over to the liberal likes of Democratic chairman Howard Dean or filmmaker Michael Moore.
Indeed, Bush’s most convincing argument for staying the course may be the lack of a better or more popular alternative. Democrats are divided.
“Some have proposed setting a fixed date for departure,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, referring to a vocal grassroots element that has picked up allies in the House of Representatives.
“I believe that policy would give an incentive to insurgents and jihadists to simply outlast us and would also increase the chances of civil war.”
But neither is there appetite within the Democratic Party for broadening the war or dispatching more U.S. troops.
“The problem is we don’t have the capacity now to significantly increase the number of American forces,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., in a grim speech at the Brookings Institution last week, after returning from his fifth trip to Iraq.
“Some of these folks are on their third rotation” to Iraq, said Biden, noting how the war is hurting military recruitment, and pushing reserves and national guard units to their limits.
“I am very worried. Attacks are up and casualties are up,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the generals at last week’s Armed Services hearing. Yet, “this is a conflict we have to win and we cannot afford to lose.”
In the year since the United States returned sovereignty of their conquered nation to the people of Iraq, painstaking political progress has been accompanied by soaring American casualties, a wave of suicide bombings and an unabated influx of foreign terrorists.
“There are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago,” Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday. And “in terms of the overall strength of the insurgency, I’d say it’s about the same.”
