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Tonight, Pres.
Bush will deliver “an important speech”, once again from within the friendly
confines of a military base, about his Iraq war policy and objectives. Many of us, because his poll numbers
continue to drop to historical levels, anticipate it will be something like
Nixon’s I’m Not A Crook speech. It also appears that he has reached a
fork in the road moment, one calling for reflection that seems to be on the
endangered list for this administration, always blaming low level soldiers, low
level civil servants, opponents, instead of looking at the problems they’ve
created, assuming some accountability, often with constructive criticism from
within their own party. Will he
proceed as before, and go off a cliff, or stop short and demonstrate some real
leadership (he has been quoted saying leaders
don’t apologize)? Several have
taken the opportunity to rebut and refine the message Americans will hear. One,
not surprisingly, is Sen. Kerry, the “dragon slayed” by the Rove Smear Machine,
currently dba Policy Advisor but using the same playbook as the permanent
campaign chief. Another critic is
Peter Beinart, one of the signers who wrote the President encouraging a larger
military force in Iraq. Here is
Beinart’s commentary and the link to Kerry’s follows. I don’t agree with
Beinart’s assumption that Iraq isn’t already in civil war, or that it is an
established state at this time in its history, and doubt, like military experts
who’ve allowed themselves to say it, that the Iraqi Army will be sufficient to
the task created for them in approximately two years. But his comments about conduct
unbecoming make it impossible for those few diehards left who
believe every word said in the past to ignore that leadership doesn’t come in a
bottle, and it isn’t vaccinated by a born again experience, either. The charade
must end. Time For Some Humility, Mr. President By Peter Beinart, in The Oregonian, June 28, 2005, page B7 President Bush and Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California deserve
each other. Woolsey is a founder of the newly created Our of Iraq Congressional
Caucus. She recently told Roll Call that “Success for us is two words: Troops.
Home.” That’s breathtakingly irresponsible. Of course, success means
eventually bringing American troops home. But it also means ensuring that Iraq
doesn’t dissolve into civil war. Preventing
Iraq from becoming a failed state that exports a new generation of jihadists killers
is vital to American security. And making sure we don’t abandon the Iraqi
people to Lebanon-style slaughter is vital to American honor. Woolsey doesn’t
seem to understand that. But the Out of
Iraq Caucus didn’t come from nowhere. It’s the result of President Bush’s
ongoing refusal to speak honestly about the war. All but the
most die-hard sycophants now acknowledge that before the war the Bush administration
exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and
terrorist ties. And that it lowballed the costs – in money, troops and time –
of building a stable, liberal government in Baghdad. Yet even today the
president keeps playing the same dishonest games. In his June 18 radio address,
Bush said, in the context of Iraq, that “we went to war because we were
attacked,” He’s still implying a
connection between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11, 2001 – even now! A plurality of Americans now believe they were “deliberately misled”
before the war. When the president talks to the country about Iraq tonight, he
needs to address that. Otherwise,
he’ll never have the credibility to tell Americans the harsh truth: that Iraqi
troops won’t be ready to defend their government for two years or more. And until they can, brave young US
soldiers will have to keep doing the job. A good way to
begin addressing this credibility gap is by dumping John Bolton. The nomination
of Bolton is a giant declaration that the Bush administration still thinks it did
nothing wrong on prewar intelligence. As undersecretary of state for arms
control, Bolton tried to hype the threat from Cuba, Syria and Iraq. And when intelligence analysts opposed
him, he tried to fire them. Now the Bush administration wants to send him to the
United Nations so he can opine about US intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program –
and be laughed out of the building. Then Bush
should dump Donald Rumsfeld – whose continued
employment signals that the Bush administration still thinks it did nothing
wrong on prewar planning. Rumsfeld’s
refusal to listen to the Army, the State Department, outside experts and even
conservative pundits who said that America needed more troops to secure postwar
Iraq constitutes, in the words of Larry Diamon, a former Coalition Provisional
Authority senior adviser, “criminal
negligence.” How
can Bush offer credible strategy for winning peace if he relies on an utterly
discredited defense secretary to carry it out? President Bush famously hates admitting mistakes. And he generally plays to his base. But
on Iraq, those instincts are driving his administration off a cliff. The vast majority of Democrats, and
most independents, now think Iraq was a mistake. And the calls for withdrawal
are moving from the fringes of American politics to the center. Congressional Democrats must resist those calls. As retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, a fierce
critic of the war, recently explained, even a timetable for withdrawal is a
terrible idea. Knowing America was on its way out would embolden the insurgency
and undermine Iraqis risking their lives to build a free country. But if Bush wants to stem the rising
sentiment for withdrawal, he needs to do something he has avoided for more than
two years: He needs to make this a national war, not a partisan one. That means
appointing independent figures to key jobs – people like Richard Lugar or Sam
Nunn, who come from outside the conservative cocoon. And it means speaking
about Iraq with a humility that this administration has richly earned. For America to win in Iraq, President Bush first needs to win back
America’s trust. Let’s hope it’s not too late. Peter Beinart is editor of the New Republic
and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institute. Sen. John Kerry: The Speech the President Should Give http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/opinion/28kerry.html?
and http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062805Y.shtml |
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