Amid growing impatience with the course of war in Iraq, President Bush on Wednesday laid out a 35-page plan he calls “our national strategy for victory.” The document is a familiar recap of U.S. policy and White House optimism, but there is more detail than in previous statements, and it sets welcome benchmarks that will allow both the public and Washington decisionmakers to assess the effort.
The report is a political necessity for the president as he seeks to quell congressional unease and buck up the democratic process in Iraq two weeks before elections. Many Americans have come to believe that the administration has bungled the war, and the White House sought to shift the conversation away from Congressman John Murtha’s call for immediate withdrawal.
Friends and critics alike have beseeched the president to map out an exit strategy. He stopped far short of offering a timetable, believing that too many specifics could abet the insurgents.
The report gives the current explanation of why the war is vital to U.S. interests and who the enemy is and how it can be checkmated. The report describes the insurgency as diffuse, with multiple factions that share little more than the short-term goal of intimidating the U.S. Each faction is said to have separate and perhaps incompatible long-term goals for Iraq and exploiting those difference, the report says, is a key for democratic success.
But that success may require faith and patience that is hard to come by. The strategy defines how “victory” in Iraq should be measured, with a long-term vision of a peaceful, stable country that’s part of the world community and a partner in the war on terrorism. It doesn’t give a date for when that can be achieved, though with the price tag of the current Iraq policy, Congress is sure to ask. Using the report’s own terms, it’s clear the U.S. is still struggling to meet what the White House deems as short-term success – standing up Iraqi security forces, building democratic institutions and making steady progress fighting terrorists.
The report says it’s not realistic to expect a fully functioning democracy in less than three years. That’s in stark contrast to the picture Vice President Dick Cheney painted before the war when he predicted troops would be greeted with candy and flowers, not improvised explosive devices.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said the new statement merely recycles the president’s “stay the course” rhetoric and “missed an opportunity to lay out a real strategy for success in Iraq that will bring our troops safely home.”Nervous Republicans hope that progress is obvious sometime before the 2006 congressional elections.
Americans and Iraqi allies are both looking for an end to the conflict. We hope the president realizes that patience is growing thin.
