In flames: an Iraqi police commando walks past a humvee hit by a suicide bomb which killed eight people and wounded 70 in Kirkuk on Thursday. Photograph: Marwan Ibrahim/ AFP/ Getty Images
Defeat looms for embattled Bush
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
WHEN American troops were delayed by a massive sandstorm en route to Baghdad in the spring of 2003, the first creeping comparisons with Vietnam could be heard or read around the world. That the delay was only temporary proved immaterial; the lure of the Vietnam analogy proved irresistible. Ever since then conservatives have tried to avoid any comparisons with the last war America lost.
Which made it all the more surprising that President George Bush should have told ABC News that he agreed
with the suggestion that the recent spike in attacks from insurgents in Iraq was the Jihadist equivalent of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
Conservatives - and some military historians - have argued that the US army won the tactical battle during Tet, but lost the broader strategic war as the offensive became a tipping point for public opinion in the United States.
Something similar seems to be happening now. The insurgents know they need not win a battle; they merely need to persuade the American public they cannot be beaten. "They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause government to withdraw," said Bush.
The signs are they are succeeding. With less than three weeks to go before the mid-term elections, the war has never been less popular. Polls published this week found
only 34% of Americans now support the decision to invade Iraq. Only one in three Americans think the price paid in blood and treasure remains justified. There are few true believers outside the White House any more.
In public Bush accepts that the midterms will be a referendum on the war but refuses to concede an inch to his critics. "A president must make decisions based upon principle and stand by the principles by which he makes decisions in order to achieve peace" he told Fox News. "And that sometimes people will agree with my decisions and sometimes they won't, but you cannot make decisions based upon opinion polls."
However, the White House is searching for alternative policy ideas.
Bush spent much of yesterday reviewing Iraq
strategy with senior commanders - for a second day in a row. Setting the stage for a possible announcement, however, the White House insisted all that is in question is a change in tactics, not a strategy overhaul.
In total, 73 American troops were killed in the first three weeks of October, an upsurge of violence that could scarcely have come at more politically inconvenient time for the President and his party. Republicans have enjoyed a stranglehold on power in Washington ever since Bush was elected in 2000. That is now threatened.
Though the federal government's sluggish, inefficient response to Hurricane Katrina and a series of Washington scandals have damaged the administration, the war is the issue that could gut Republicans next month.
"We don't think that there's been a flip-over point [in terms of public opinion]," said White House spokesman, Tony Snow, last week. "From ... the standpoint of this administration, we're going to continue pursuing victory aggressively."
The problem for the administration is that the seemingly endless commitment to Iraq -
or at least the administration's inability to provide a timetable for withdrawing American troops from the country - has sapped the public's patience with the administration and its supporters in Congress.
Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman says voters should be aware that by voting for Democrats they are voting for weakness overseas. Do they really "want another Taliban-like Afghanistan between Syria and Iran. Is that
acceptable?"
This line of attack, used successfully in 2002 and 2004, has, however, lost some of its potency. Democrats have countered with a simple message: time for a change.
Nonetheless, Mehlman presses on. The choice is stark he says. "Do we have an interrogation programme against guys like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad or not? Do we have a Patriot Act or not? Do we have surveillance? Do we have missile defence? A whole series of things that don't involve Iraq."
Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the 435-member House of Representatives to retake control. If the polls prove accurate they are on course to achieve that handsomely and could win as many as 30 seats from the Republicans. In the context of modern American politics that would constitute a landslide
victory.
Such is the widespread dissatisfaction with Washington politics that seats previously considered uncompetitive are now in play. This weekend the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will begin buying advertising time in seats in Minnesota, Nevada that were not thought realistic targets two months ago.
"If the vote were today, we would not hold the House," said Congressman Mark Edward Souder, a Republican in Indiana who held his own seat with 69% of the vote two years ago but expects a much closer race next month and fears that a Democratic landslide might even imperil his own seat.
Republicans are marginally more confident of retaining control of the Senate. Democrats need to take six seats to regain power. Ohio, Rhode
Island, Pennsylvania and Montana all seem likely to produce Democratic victories. That would leave the party needing to pick up two of the three remaining "toss-up" states: Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia.
Republicans have injected extra funds into those races, hoping they can act as a "firewall" to halt the advancing Democrats.
Although Republicans have traditionally enjoyed a more efficient get-out-the-vote operation, Democrats seem to be more motivated to go to the polls this year than Republicans. Even some of the Republicans' most devoted and reliable supporters are less enamoured of the party than they once were. Just 57% of white evangelical Christians currently approve of Bush's job performance for instance, down from 72% in January 2005 when he was sworn in for his second term.
Mike Franc, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington's leading conservative think tanks, says: "Republicans did a lot to soften up their own base to make it very easy for rank-and-file, conservative-minded voters to say there is not a whole lot of difference between the two parties. That has become a cancerous development on the Republican biosystem."
Each regiment in the Republican coalition blames another for the party's current troubles. "It is pre-criminations," said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. "If a party looks like it is going to take a real pounding, this sort of debate is healthy. What is unusual is that it is happening beforehand."
Factor in the impact of an unfortunately timed sex scandal involving a Florida Republican and teenage party workers
on Capitol Hill and the electoral climate could scarcely be more conducive for Democrats.
Privately, Republicans have conceded as many as a dozen seats already, ensuring that on election day, however improbably, the party will have to prevail in nearly every other marginal seat across the country. Few political observers in Washington believe there's any chance that can happen.
The more Bush tries to help the worse he makes it. The last thing any Republican locked in a too-close-for-comfort race wants right now is a visit from the Commander-in-Chief whose mere presence tars local candidates by association. In Maryland, for instance, the Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele does not even mention his party affiliation in TV advertisements.
Keeping the focus on the President helps Democrats nationalise the election, turning it into a referendum upon the President and the Republican Congress.
Senior Republican strat-egists argue a vote for the Democrats is a negative act, not a positive endorsement.
Republicans last week unveiled an advertisement featuring the image and words of Osama bin Laden and a warning that "these are the stakes" in the November 7 election.
Though Republicans received a small lift around September 11, as America remembered the 9/11carnage five years on, continuing violence in Iraq has washed that advantage away. Republicans cling to the hope there is still more than a fortnight until polling day and that a lot, perhaps even a miracle, can happen before then.
Related topic
- Iraq
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Last updated: 21-Oct-06 00:44 BST
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