The Washington Post The Real Fight . . . By Jim Hoagland Friday, October 10, 2003
It's Iraq, stupid. With apologies to James Carville and the queen's English, someone should shout that thuggish slogan at the Bush administration's senior policymakers 20 times a day. They are making a mess of a noble enterprise, in part by forgetting what it was they set out to do in the first place. It's not Don Rumsfeld's pride, Condi Rice's management skills, Colin Powell's popularity, Jerry Bremer's reputation, the king of Jordan's unending need for money, Turkey's desire to master the Kurds or the CIA's determination to install its Iraqi clients in power in Baghdad. It's not even the much-needed transformation of the American military. It's Iraq that counts. That simple truth grows more obscure as the battles for foreign policy dominance in Washington escalate into public dysfunction. In recent days, Rumsfeld responded with schnauzer-like testiness to Rice's copious briefings on her reorganization plans for Iraq policymaking; Bremer fought with the Iraqi Governing Council (which he personally chose) over Turkish troops entering Iraq; Powell's camp skillfully planted daggers in Rumsfeld's back in press accounts of Pentagon errors; and parts of the CIA's permanent bureaucracy worked to undermine President Bush in Washington and Ahmed Chalabi in Baghdad. At moments like these -- which seem to recur regularly in this administration -- I begin to wonder if Bush enjoys fighting the odds, if he waits for troubles to pile up so he can cut through them with bold, simple decisions. He is not known to run a deficit in self-confidence in this area. If this is the case, Bush is letting the time for his dramatic policy rescue run dangerously short. His tolerance for internecine quarreling and for Cabinet officers not carrying out administration decisions they don't support (see State Department vs. Iraqi National Congress, a coming congressional investigation) is a luxury that he, and the American and Iraqi peoples, can afford no longer. The announcement of the founding of a new Iraq Stabilization Group under Rice is both instructive and misleading. It is an acknowledgment that Bush realizes he has a huge problem with the way things are being reported and with the way things are going in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. The support group's most urgent goal looks suspiciously like an attempt to change media coverage. But there is more to it than that. This is the moment in the cycle of Washington political life when any president seeking reelection tries to centralize foreign policy in the White House. Like his predecessors, Bush wants to make sure foreign crises do not sneak up and bite him in the campaign. This predictable effort began in midsummer, when Rice persuaded Robert Blackwill to delay retirement after his exemplary two-year stint as ambassador to India, and come work for her on Iraq. Blackwill, who helped transform the relationship between Washington and New Delhi from estrangement to strategic engagement, is a hard-charging geopolitical thinker who, not coincidentally, was one of Bush's foreign policy campaign advisers in 2000. He understands where the needs of campaigns and the substance of foreign policy intersect. He heads a working group on political change, the most important of the four groups unveiled last week by Rice. No staffer, even one as close to the president as Rice, can alone bring order to the chaotic process and bitter arguments that Bush has tolerated. Rice cannot override Rumsfeld or Powell. Only Bush's direct and vigorous engagement, driven by the awareness that his reelection may depend on it, can bring unity to this bitter bunch. That means most of all imposing the "It's Iraq, stupid" rule on his barons as well as the bureaucrats at AID and the CIA. Their ambitions, egos and pet projects must be subordinated to turning the Governing Council into a semi-empowered provisional Iraqi government that can work with Bremer instead of working under him, which will increasingly mean working against him. A key point is being missed: Iraqis are vehemently opposed to being remade in the image of their neighbors -- especially of countries that supported Saddam Hussein's murderous regime. Iraqis are uneasy about Turkish troops, and about the $1.2 billion Bremer has allocated to pay for the training of Iraqi police officers in CIA-favored Jordan. They are uneasy about the State Department and Britain wanting to enhance Egypt's intelligence and commercial influence in Iraq. They must be heard on these issues. The history of American involvement in Iraq has been stained by the willingness of successive administrations to subordinate the interests of the Iraqi people to those of the regimes in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other "reliable" clients in the Arab world. It is time to change that pattern, Mr. President. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
