ANALYSIS
Washington – If President Bush’s plan to dispatch more U.S. troops to Iraq is not America’s “last chance” for victory, “it is as near to the last chance as anything I can think of,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
“If we increase our support at this crucial moment and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home,” Bush said in his 20-minute speech to the nation Wednesday night, outlining a new approach to the war.
The White House has insisted that America’s commitment to a stable, secure and democratic Iraq – to victory – is unconditional.
But in Bush’s speech, and in background briefings earlier Wednesday, he and his aides acknowledged that the U.S. effort is reaching its limits.
“There is no indefinite commitment,” said a senior administration official. “It is time for the Iraqis to step forward. Quite frankly, the patience of the American people is running out.”
In recent months, the administration has prodded the Iraqi government to confront sectarian militias and death squads, and to accommodate religious and ethnic differences.
Bush, whose aide Donald Rumsfeld resigned as defense secretary in November, has replaced the U.S. military and diplomatic leaders in Iraq. Now he plans to send an additional five Army brigades and two Marine battalions to help the regime maintain order.
“The basis of this plan from the outset has been, fundamentally, ‘In case of emergency, break glass and execute this plan.’ We think we are there now,” said analyst Frederick Kagan, one of a team of conservative scholars at the American Enterprise Institute who have joined the administration to push for a military increase in Iraq.
Democrats oppose the policy but draw back from a constitutional confrontation with the president, fretting openly about the political risks of opposing a commander-in-chief while U.S. troops are in the field.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who has been setting Democratic hearts afire as a potential presidential candidate, spoke for many of his colleagues this week when he declared his opposition to a temporary increase in U.S. troops, while voicing wariness of cutting off funds to halt the escalation.
“I met with the president last week and expressed my clear and unequivocal opposition,” Obama said. “But what I’ve also said is that I’m not willing to create a situation in which troops who are already in Iraq might be shortchanged in some way because of … restrictions on appropriations.
“It creates a difficult situation for Democrats,” Obama said.
Senate Democrats launched public hearings with which they hoped to pressure Bush to change his mind. Democratic congressional leaders promised to schedule debates and votes on resolutions of disapproval that might attract Republican votes and embarrass the president.
But that was not enough for the administration’s fiercest critics, who favor a more confrontational approach – with Congress repealing Bush’s authority to wage war in Iraq, or banning funds for additional troops.
“If the Democratic Party cannot do what is morally right today … and that is to protect our servicemen and women, … we don’t deserve to be successful,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who introduced a measure to cut off funds for any boost in troops.
“Tens of thousands of additional American troops will only make the Iraqis more resentful of America’s occupation,” Kennedy said. “It will also make the Iraqi government even more dependent on America, not less.”
Bush’s supporters were as insistent in casting the stakes as high, and historic.
Political accommodation in Iraq “cannot happen if most of the population has to wake up every morning wondering if it will survive till the evening, … wondering if it will not be brutally tortured and executed,” said Kagan. “People in that situation do not talk to each other. We have gotten into a situation where too many Iraqis are saying it with AK-47s. We need to take that away. We need to get the violence under control. … We have to step up now and buy time.”
With or without the additional troops, “2007 is going to be a bloody year” for U.S. forces in Iraq, Kagan said. But if Bush’s plan succeeds, “the world will move in a very different direction.”
But on Capitol Hill, and around Washington, American political leaders are facing the reality that U.S. choices are limited, if not lost.
“Failure is not an option here,” said Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Yet “there is only so much that Americans can do,” he said. “The Iraqis have to want it far more badly than we do, and be willing to sacrifice for it.”
“Bush is a little like the poker player who finds himself losing gradually and decides to stake everything on the next card he draws by going ‘all in,”‘ David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said in an e-mail to his members. “If the right card comes up, he’ll go home a winner. But if it doesn’t, it’s all over.”
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