OPINION Iraq is choking George Bush By PETER MADAKA
Hardly six months after the conclusion of Washington's "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq and many glorious pontifications by pundits claiming that the Iraqi resistance was more feeble than anti-war proponents had projected, many Americans are wondering how the Bush administration could have been so wrong on Iraq.
This week, President Bush not only returned to plead for help from the very world body he ignored when he attacked Iraq, the victory he claimed a few months ago has evaporated. More Americans have died since the end of hostile combat than died during it. Little did the U.S. Congress expect the President to return for another $87 billion. Then again, they did not imagine a scenario where their President would assume a humble posture before the international community and plead for a bailout from a messy situation.
It has not even been a year since America and its allies invaded Iraq, yet Washington feels cornered. Even a cash-strapped former Soviet Union stayed in Afghanistan longer.
President Bush returned to the United Nations this week and set off speculation that Americans are in over their heads. Both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden remain at large. The Taliban is on the upswing in Afghanistan and the few countries that had hinted that they might contribute troops for Iraq under a UN mandate have changed their minds.
Just when one thought the situation for a beleaguered Bush could not look bleaker, a UN compound in Iraq comes under another attack. This time, on the eve of the President's visit, leading a UN spokesperson in Iraq to say that the United Nations has no choice but to reconsider its presence in Iraq-a message no doubt intended to show Bush that his enemies in Iraq are a step ahead of him.
The American President, who, only six months ago seemed youthfully exuberant, arrogant and dismissive, is increasingly looking haggard and politically vulnerable. And the depressing news from Iraq keeps coming. It is relentless and it is psychologically punitive. Pundits who had earlier scoffed at Iraqis as cowards for folding too fast under America's pounding have been just as quick to take back their own words.
American soldiers are not only dying in Iraq in greater numbers, the economic surplus the President inherited has been whittled down to a depressing deficit. Within a short span, America, the mighty empire, has become America, the paper tiger, cornered and pleading for a bailout.
In fact, Iraq has become everything Americans dreaded and which Bush claimed he was invading the country to prevent. Iraq has become the battleground for terrorism. Iraqi oil has not quickly translated into the dollars Bush advisors projected it would. Instead, the oil is burning under relentless economic sabotage. Slowly and methodically, the guerillas have whittled away America's technological advantage and peeled away the aura of invincibility, leaving linguistically and culturally disadvantaged U.S. soldiers exposed. How could the administration get it so wrong on all scores?
And, the targets in Iraq continue to expand. From just ordinary Iraqis being caught in crossfire or targeted for collaborating with Americans, to clerics, to members of the Iraqi Governing Council and now, to the United Nations itself. Worse, the much dreaded Osama-Saddam call for a religious war against America is seemingly taking shape.
Yet going to the UN at this particular time will make no difference. Internationalizing the face of an American occupation will spread the casualties globally but will not end the resistance.
But, desperate times call for desperate solutions. If Bush wants a way out of this mess, he simply needs to take a second look at his vision for a New American Century, purge himself of that notion, fire advisors who believe in that vision and declare his own freedom. Going to the UN is a symbolic trip that will not amount to much. The killing in Iraq will continue and the cost of occupation will continue to spiral.
The Vietnam and Somalia syndromes have not only returned to America, Congress is also beginning to ask Bush tougher and more embarrassing questions.
In a television interview last week, Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy described the invasion of Iraq as a fraud on the American people and questioned why the administration was bribing foreign governments to send their troops to Iraq.
But as Bush pleads with the international community to help fund and support what was, from the very beginning, a doomed 'Bush-Blair Witch Hunt Project' in Iraq, the global community must flatly ask him if it is a worthwhile endeavour. The UN must resist becoming a fire brigade which Bush thinks he can call on at any time.
Mitayo Potosi
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