Bush Speech Offers "Clear Strategy"- For Victory or Disaster?
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 01 December 2005
But the bromide-heavy speech that President George W. Bush gave
yesterday at the Naval Academy presents a clear strategy for quagmire and
eventual disaster. Despite the gathering storm of opposition to his approach
to the war in Iraq, the speech was bereft of new ideas, calling to mind the
words of Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
The problem is that this hobgoblin has consequences. Bush's renewed
warning of a future "Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain" at first seemed
to me as outlandish as President Ronald Reagan's warning that the Russians
planned to transit Nicaragua to invade Texas. On second thought, Bush's
concern may become self-fulfilling prophecy, since the course he is on could
hardly be better designed to usher in an eventual Islamic, rather than
American, "empire."
Iraqi Security Forces: A Pathetic Pillar
The president indicated that in the days ahead he would be addressing
various pillars of his policy in Iraq. Yesterday's speech was devoted
largely to the training of Iraqi army and security forces, and he protested
too much in his efforts to accentuate the positive. His tortured attempt to
explain why, after so many months of US training, only one Iraqi army
battalion can fight independently was no more convincing that earlier
attempts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his star-bedecked
generals. Statistics just confuse the issue, we have been told; progress is
being made. Trust us.
All this is reminiscent of the rhetoric at a similar juncture at the
beginning - yes, the beginning - of US involvement in the Vietnam War. The
Lyndon Johnson tapes show how in February 1964 President Johnson found fault
with a draft of a major policy speech by then-Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara:
LBJ: "I wonder if you shouldn't find two minutes to devote to Vietnam."
McN: "The problem is what to say about it."
LBJ: "I would say that we have a commitment to Vietnamese freedom ...
Our purpose is to train [the South Vietnamese] people, and our training's
going good."
The training was not going good then, and it's not going good now. The
Johnson administration's self-deception helped usher in a decade of war
resulting in 2-3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American servicemen killed.
The parallel is eerie. Just a few months ago Rumsfeld was talking about the
need for US forces to remain in Iraq for perhaps as long as 12 years.
Let "Freedom" Ring
As for LBJ's commitment to "freedom" for a foreign client, Bush's
speechwriters would not be outdone. In his speech the president used
"freedom" or "free" no fewer than 36 times. The nine-paragraph coda,
apparently orchestrated by Bush speechwriter and ambassador Karen Hughes,
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, was a veritable free-for-all -
with 19 "frees" or "freedoms."
...and "Real Progress" in Preparing Iraqi Forces
I found it embarrassing to listen to President Bush stretch for evidence
of "real progress" in readying Iraqi army and security forces to "stand up
[so that we] can stand down." Did you know that, because of our help, the
Iraqis now have their own supply depot north of Baghdad; simulation models
for roadblocks; a bomb disposal school; a training program for squad
leaders? Bush even quoted a US soldier saying, "We have turned the corner."
For veteran observers of the Vietnam, this brings on a very troubling
flashback.
How Many "Insurgents?"
Missing from the president's words was any information on how many
"insurgents" there are. No surprise here. Rumsfeld, whose fingerprints are
all over the speech, is apparently still seeking "situational awareness,"
the lack of which he has famously bemoaned time and again.
Those of us with experience on Vietnam remember only too well that the
Pentagon kept the count of Vietnamese Communist forces at an artificially
low level, lest its claims of "real progress" be given the lie. It is hard
to know which is worse - artificially low numbers, or none at all. It is, in
fact, quite telling that Rumsfeld and the president prefer to leave enemy
strength in the Rumsfeldian category of "known unknowns." And it is small
solace that this category is one step higher than the "unknown unknowns" in
his lexicon.
Still, does it not seem odd that no figures are ever offered on the
"insurgents" that are causing such havoc in Iraq; or on whether we are
"killing or capturing more terrorists each day than are being recruited
against us" - the question Rumsfeld posed to Pentagon brass more than a year
ago?
A pity that those running the war in Iraq found ways to sit out Vietnam.
For there, too, was a guerrilla war in which it was very difficult to
estimate the number of "insurgents," without including thousands and
thousands of the populace supporting the resistance, with many of them
acting as night-time guerrillas. The lesson is that an army trained and
supplied by foreign occupiers can almost always eventually be outmatched and
out-waited in a guerrilla war, no matter how many billions are pumped into
things like simulation models for roadblocks.
Don't take my word for it. Professor Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, the only non-American military historian on the US
Army's list of required reading for officers, recently criticized President
Bush for "launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent
his legions in to Germany and lost them."
Staying the Course
The president's words struck an overall defensive tone, especially when
he took on critics of his policy of "staying the course." Bush rang a number
of changes on the theme of how "flexible and dynamic" our military has
become in "adapting and adjusting" to the situation in Iraq. As an example,
he noted: "We have changed the way we train Iraqi troops."
There was no sign in the president's speech that this flexibility
includes openness to the step that is the sine qua non for the US to climb
out of the Iraqi quagmire. As author Robert Dreyfuss has emphasized, that
step is to sit down face-to-face with representatives of the Baath party -
not the Quisling Sunnis with whom US officials prefer to deal. Why? Because
the Baathists are the backbone of the resistance/insurgency.
The good news is that a peace process has begun, despite Washington's
decision to boycott it because of its allergic reaction to dealing with the
real resistance/insurgents. At a Reconciliation Conference ten days ago in
Cairo, Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish representatives sat down together under the
auspices of the Arab League and reached a surprising degree of consensus,
including agreement on a demand for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign
forces from Iraq. Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing
arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA
analyst from the administration of John Kennedy to that of George H.W. Bush,
and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
***
http://select.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/opinion/01herbert.html?th&emc=th
Bush Hits Rewind
By BOB HERBERT
NY Times Op-Ed: December 1, 2005
It's weird. It's like watching a computerized model of a president. Somebody
programs George W. Bush, carefully embedding the information to be dispensed
over the next several hours, and then he goes out and addresses the nation -
as a computerized bundle of administration talking points.
"We will never back down," said Mr. Bush in his speech at the U.S. Naval
Academy yesterday. "We will never give in. And we will never accept anything
less than complete victory."
I don't think there were many people who believed him. Members of Mr. Bush's
own party are nervously eyeing next year's Congressional elections. They
would abandon Iraq in a heartbeat if it meant the difference between getting
re-elected or having to hunt for a real job.
This war (which has already cost the lives of more than 2,100 Americans and
tens of thousands of Iraqis) was cynically launched (it was never about
Sept. 11) and incompetently fought (we have never sent enough troops or
sufficient equipment), and will be brought to a close by people obsessed not
with the security of the United States and the welfare of the troops, but
with the political calendar.
"I will settle for nothing less than complete victory," said Mr. Bush. He
then dutifully defined victory as follows:
"Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten
Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety
of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to
plot new attacks on our nation."
Those were some of yesterday's talking points. Here's today's reality: the
$6-billion-a-month U.S. military mission in Iraq is unsustainable, as is the
political support for the war. There is now a virtual consensus that a
significant American troop withdrawal will get under way in 2006.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi security forces are ill equipped, understaffed and
widely infiltrated by private militia members and insurgents. In many ways,
it's an amateurish operation.
As Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who served in the 82nd
Airborne, told reporters this week:
"Without an effective ministry that can keep track of soldiers and police,
pay those soldiers and police, apply those soldiers and police and
essentially provide the foundation, then you're going to have some
tactically trained units, but they're not going to be a coherent or
effective force."
Despite the rosy scenarios offered by President Bush, American-style
democracy is nowhere in sight in Iraq. Among other things, the evidence of
horrific human rights abuses by Iraqi forces allied with us - including
kidnappings, torture and murders - is increasing.
In short, the picture in Iraq is not a pretty one, and there is no
indication that substantial improvements are coming soon.
If the president gets any of this, you couldn't tell it by his appearance
yesterday. He stuck to his talking points. "To all who wear the uniform," he
said, "I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car
bombers and assassins so long as I am your commander in chief."
We may not cut and run in Iraq, but with the G.O.P. sweating out next year's
elections, the plans are already under way for American forces by the tens
of thousands to cut and speed-walk toward the exits. Mr. Bush could have
been honest about this yesterday, but he chose not to be.
If the administration does not address this inevitable pullout, or pullback,
seriously, it will be conducted as incompetently as the post-invasion
operation.
The inevitable drawdown of U.S. forces is hardly a secret. In addition to
the political pressures coming from the G.O.P., there's the fact that we
don't have enough people in the military - and can't entice enough people
into the military - to back up the president's blithe promises.
Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said in an op-ed article in The
Washington Post that it was likely that 50,000 troops would be redeployed
out of Iraq by the end of next year and "a significant number" of the
remainder in 2007.
A president who's little more than a bundle of talking points cannot
possibly maintain the long-term trust and confidence of the public. There's
a disturbing remoteness to President Bush that seems especially odd in a
politician who was selected by his party because of his supposed ability to
project warmth and the kind of fundamental authenticity that his Democratic
opponents lacked.
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