Sidney Blumenthal
Salon
Thursday, December 21, 2006
"We're going to win," President Bush told a guest
at a White House Christmas party. Another guest, ingratiating
himself with his host, urged him to ignore the report of the bipartisan
Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker, the former secretary
of state and his father's close associate, which described the
crisis in Iraq as "grave and deteriorating," and offered
79 recommendations for diplomacy, transferring responsibility
to the Iraqi government and withdrawing nearly all U.S. troops
by 2008. "The president chuckled," according to an account
in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, "and said he'd made
his position clear when he appeared with British Prime Minister
Tony Blair. The report had never mentioned the possibility of
American victory. Bush's goal in Iraq, he said at the photo op
with Blair, is 'victory.'" Bush reasserted his belief that
"victory in Iraq is achievable" at his Wednesday press
conference.
Two members of the ISG were responsible for George W. Bush's
becoming president. Baker had maneuvered through the thicket of
the 2000 Florida contest, finally bringing Bush v. Gore before
the Supreme Court, where Sandra Day O'Connor was the deciding
vote. (Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker reported that she had
complained before hearing the case that she wanted to retire but
did not want a Democrat to appoint her replacement.) Through the
Iraq Study Group Baker and O'Connor were attempting to salvage
what they had made possible in Bush v. Gore. Upon Bush's receipt
of the report, a White House spokesman told the press, "Jim
Baker can go back to his day job."
The day after the report was submitted, on Dec. 8, Tony Blair
appeared at the White House. He had testified before the Baker
Commission, and supported its main proposals, but now stood beside
Bush as the president tossed them aside, talking instead of "victory."
"The president isn't standing alone," explained White
House press secretary Tony Snow. Blair left to pursue a vain mission
for Middle East peace, emphasizing by his presence the U.S. absence.
His predetermined failure outlined the dimensions of the vacuum
that only the U.S. could fill. On Dec. 18, Chatham House, the
former Royal Institute of International Affairs, issued a report
on Blair's foreign policy: "The root failure of Tony Blair's
foreign policy has been its inability to influence the Bush administration
in any significant way despite the sacrifice -- military, political
and financial -- that the United Kingdom has made."
The day before the Chatham House report was released former Secretary
of State Colin Powell appeared on CBS News' "Face the Nation"
to announce his support for the rejected Iraq Study Group and
declare, "We are not winning, we are losing." He made
plain his opposition to any new "surge" of troops in
Baghdad, a tactic he said had already been tried and failed. Powell
added that Bush had not explained "the mission" and
that "we are a little less safe."
The Chatham House report describes Blair and Powell as partners
before the invasion of Iraq who had concluded that Bush was set
on war and decided to lend their voices to its defense. "The
British role was therefore to provide diplomatic cover,"
the report states. Powell, of course, delivered the most important
speech of his career justifying the invasion before the United
Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, which was later disclosed
to have been a tissue of falsehoods and which he called a "blot"
on his record. Since the time of the Reagan administration, when
he was national security advisor, Powell had been aligned with
Baker, the elder Bush and other foreign policy realists. But during
his tenure as secretary of state he had suppressed his skepticism
and obligations as a constitutional officer in favor of his loyalty
as a "good soldier" to his commander in chief. Now,
his reputation in tatters, he is trying to restore himself as
a member of his original team and speaking for the unanimous opposition
to Bush's new plans from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of which he
was once chairman.
Bush's touted but unexplained "new way forward" (his
version of the ISG's "the way forward") may be the first
order of battle, complete with details of units, maps and timetables,
ever posted on the Web site of a think tank. "I will not
be rushed," said Bush. But apparently he has already accepted
the latest neoconservative program, artfully titled with catchphrases
appealing to his desperation -- "Choosing Victory: A Plan
for Success in Iraq" -- and available for reading on the
site of the American Enterprise Institute.
The author of this plan is Frederick W. Kagan, a neoconservative
at the AEI and the author of a new book, "Finding the Target:
The Transformation of American Military Policy," replete
with up-to-date neocon scorn of Bush as "simplistic,"
Donald Rumsfeld as "fatuous," and even erstwhile neocon
icon Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense and currently
president of the World Bank, as "self-serving." Among
the others listed as "participants" in drawing up the
plan are various marginal and obscure figures including, notably,
Danielle Pletka, a former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms; Michael Rubin,
an aide to the catastrophic Coalition Provisional Authority; and
retired Maj. Gen. Jack Keane, the former deputy Army chief of
staff.
This rump group of neocons is the battered remnant left of the
phalanx that once conjured up grandiose visions of conquest and
blowtorched ideological ground for Bush. Although neocons are
still entrenched in the Vice President's Office and on the National
Security Council, they mostly feel that their perfect ideas have
been the victims of imperfect execution. Rather than accepting
any responsibility for the ideas themselves, they blame Rumsfeld
and Bush. Meyrav Wurmser, a research fellow at the neoconservative
Hudson Institute, whose husband, David Wurmser, is a Middle East
advisor on Dick Cheney's staff, recently vented the neocons' despair
to an Israeli news outlet: "This administration is in its
twilight days. Everyone is now looking for work, looking to make
money ... We all feel beaten after the past five years."
But they are not so crushed that they cannot summon one last ragged
Team B to provide a manifesto for a cornered president.
"Choosing Victory" is a prophetic document, a bugle
call for an additional 30,000 troops to fight a decisive Napoleonic
battle for Baghdad. (Its author, Kagan, has written a book on
Napoleon.) It assumes that through this turning point the Shiite
militias will melt away, the Sunni insurgents will suffer defeat
and from the solid base of Baghdad security will radiate throughout
the country. The plan also assumes that additional combat teams
that actually take considerable time to assemble and train are
instantly available for deployment. And it dismisses every diplomatic
initiative proposed by the Iraq Study Group as dangerously softheaded.
Foremost among the plan's assertions is that there is still a
military solution in Iraq -- "victory."
The strategic premise of the entire document rests on the incredulous
disbelief that the U.S. cannot enforce its will through force.
"Victory is still an option in Iraq," it states. "America,
a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and
more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of
Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million
and a GDP under $100 billion." By these gross metrics, France
should never have lost in Algeria and Vietnam. The U.S. experience
in Vietnam goes unmentioned.
Bush's rejection of the Iraq Study Group report was presaged
by a post-election speech delivered on Dec. 4 by Karl Rove at
the Churchill dinner held by Hillsdale College, a citadel of conservative
crankdom. Here Rove conflated Winston Churchill and George W.
Bush, Neville Chamberlain and James Baker, and the Battle of Britain
and the Iraq war. "Why would we want to pursue a policy that
our enemies want?" demanded Rove. "We will either win
or we will lose … Winston Churchill showed us the way. And
like Great Britain under its greatest leader, we in the United
States will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and
we will not fail."
A week later, on Dec. 11, Bush met at the White House with Jack
Keane, from the latest neocon Team B, and four other critics of
the ISG. But even before, on Dec. 8, in a meeting with senators,
he compared himself to an embattled Harry Truman, unpopular as
he forged the early policies of the Cold War. When Sen. Dick Durbin,
D-Ill., offered that Truman had created the NATO alliance, worked
through the U.N. and conducted diplomacy with enemies, and that
Bush could follow his example by endorsing the recommendations
of the ISG, Bush rejected Durbin's fine-tuning of the historical
analogy and replied that he was "the commander in chief."
The opening section of the ISG report is a lengthy analysis of
the dire situation in Iraq. But Bush has frantically brushed that
analysis away just as he has rejected every objective assessment
that had reached him before. He has assimilated no analysis whatsoever
of what's gone wrong. For him, there's no past, especially his
own. There's only the present. The war is detached from strategic
purposes, the history of Iraq and the region, and political and
social dynamics, and instead is grasped as a test of character.
Ultimately, what's at stake is his willpower.
Repudiated in the midterm elections, Bush has elevated himself
above politics, and repeatedly says, "I am the commander
in chief." With the crash of Rove's game plan for using his
presidency as an instrument to leverage a permanent Republican
majority, Bush is abandoning the role of political leader. He
can't disengage militarily from Iraq because that would abolish
his identity as a military leader, his default identity and now
his only one.
Unlike the political leader, the commander in chief doesn't require
persuasion; he rules through orders, deference and the obedience
of those beneath him. By discarding the ISG report, Bush has rejected
doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility. By embracing
the AEI manifesto, he asserts the warrior virtues of will, perseverance
and resolve. The contest in Iraq is a struggle between will and
doubt. Every day his defiance proves his superiority over lesser
mortals. Even the Joint Chiefs have betrayed the martial virtues
that he presumes to embody. He views those lacking his will with
rising disdain. The more he stands up against those who tell him
to change, the more virtuous he becomes. His ability to realize
those qualities surpasses anyone else's and passes the character
test.
The mere suggestion of doubt is fatally compromising. Any admission
of doubt means complete loss, impotence and disgrace. Bush cannot
entertain doubt and still function. He cannot keep two ideas in
his head at the same time. Powell misunderstood when he said that
the current war strategy lacks a clear mission. The war is Bush's
mission.
No matter the setback it's always temporary, and the campaign
can always be started from scratch in an endless series of new
beginnings and offensives -- "the new way forward" --
just as in his earlier life no failure was irredeemable through
his father's intervention. Now he has rejected his father's intervention
in preference for the clean slate of a new scenario that depends
only on his willpower.
"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush told the
Washington Post on Tuesday, a direct rebuke of Powell's formulation,
saying he was citing Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
and adding, "We're going to win." Winning means not
ending the war while he is president. Losing would mean coming
to the end of the rope while he was still in office. In his mind,
so long as the war goes on and he maintains his will he can win.
Then only his successor can be a loser.
Bush's idea of himself as personifying martial virtues, however,
is based on a vision that would be unrecognizable to all modern
theorists of warfare. According to Carl von Clausewitz, war is
the most uncertain of human enterprises, difficult to understand,
hardest to control and demanding the highest degree of adaptability.
It was Clausewitz who first applied the metaphor of "fog"
to war. In his classic work, "On War," he warned, "We
only wish to represent things as they are, and to expose the error
of believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make himself
distinguished in war."
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