Plan Faces Skeptics in D.C., Iraq, Pentagon

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

By Michael Tackett, Chicago Tribune

January 11, 2007

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has been in this position many times--speaking solemnly to Americans from the White House about war and terror--but he has never been in this place.

He finds himself asking for more--of the military, of Congress, of the Iraqi government and of the American people--but possessing so much less. Now, he lacks the safety net of a Republican-run Congress, the political capital of which he famously boasted, and most decidedly, the support of the public weary of the war's grim narrative.

Many in the military opposed his call Wednesday night for a sharp increase in troops, though they will carry it out as ordered. Democrats were blunt in decrying the president's plan, and an escalating number of Republicans on Capitol Hill share that view. Fewer than 2 in 10 Americans support the idea, one poll shows, and it is certainly not welcome in many precincts in Iraq.

To be sure, the president conceded some mistakes, for the first time admitting that there were not enough troops and resources in Iraq and in the process disavowing the war doctrine of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But the admissions were framed as failures in tactics rather than in strategy. Bush tried to proffer his address as a new direction that "will change America's course in Iraq," though much of what he suggested has been tried before.

So has this stated rationale: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict," Bush said. "It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time."

Bush hitched winning that struggle to two rather shaky propositions: American soldiers performing more of a policing function and the Iraqi government's ability to bring an end to seemingly intractable sectarian violence and establish a functioning democracy.

No easy sell

The burden of persuasion on waging war rests with the president, but Bush has, since the conflict began, essentially confined his arguments to Republican ears. He seems to be paying a price for that approach, with some newly empowered Democrats not only rejecting the idea of what the administration calls a "surge" in troops, but also suggesting that funding won't be automatic either.

Or, they asked, if he wanted to adopt this approach, why did he not do it some three years ago? The appeals of Gen. Eric Shinseki, who in 2003 said that the U.S. needed several hundred thousand troops to prevail in the war, and of Lawrence Lindsey, the former top economic adviser who left his post after having the temerity to say that the war could cost $200 billion, now seem prophetic.

And there were the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Bush seemed to disregard nearly all of its advice, save the proposal to increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi army units.

"It's not only not an adoption, it seems to be moving in almost the opposite direction," said former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the Sept. 11 commission. "Many of these people on the Iraq Study Group are from his father's administration . . . who were pretty successful and established a respectable record of public diplomacy. These principles were not just put on the shelf, but were rejected by the current president."

The role of the military, however, will be different in that troops will be put in even greater danger on a daily basis as they wade deeper into the swamp of Baghdad.

"There will never be true peace in Iraq as long as there are American combat forces in the streets of Iraq," said Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a decorated Vietnam veteran who has advocated a phased withdrawal of troops after intensive diplomacy.

Wartime presidents

Few presidents have faced wartime choices with so few good options. Truman did not at the end of World War II. Eisenhower did not in Korea. Lyndon Johnson chose to leave it to his successor when he declined to run for a second term. But in some sense, what Bush is doing is likely to have the same effect in that it will prolong the conflict in Iraq, almost certainly pushing the hard decision of when to leave to the next occupant of the Oval Office.

During Vietnam, Presidents Johnson and Richard Nixon made numerous speeches offering new ways to try to summon public support--bombing pauses by Johnson, peace proposals by Nixon--but neither swayed majorities to their views.

"This is in significant part an exercise in shoring up their political support," said historian Robert Dallek. "But this rhetoric that Johnson made, Nixon made and Bush is making really in the long run doesn't amount to a hill of beans. He may get a rally effect, an increase in backing in the short run, but if the realities on the ground don't change and people continue to see this war, like Vietnam, as a failing enterprise, it won't make any difference."

Democrats, many of whom couldn't find the same voice when the war began, now are eagerly and openly critical of the president. Those considering running for president are climbing all over one another to try to put the most distance between their position and Bush's.

Following the rebuke of voters in the midterm election, the president finds himself more isolated than at any time in his term. And for at least one Republican who would like to replace him, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, support for the president might help rather than hurt. But if McCain, who served heroically in Vietnam, were to win the presidency, it might well fall to him to end this war with so many echoes of Vietnam.

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