 |
|
|
 Editorials | December 2005 
Victory, Mr. President?
 Rupert Cornwell - Independent UK
| | U.S. President George W. Bush waves to midshipmen after speaking about the war in Iraq at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, November 30, 2005. (Reuters/Jason Reed) |
"Our strategy in Iraq is clear.... I will settle for nothing less than complete victory," said George Bush yesterday.
President George Bush said yesterday that America was on course for "complete victory" and he ruled out any firm timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Instead he declared that Iraqi forces were beginning to take the lead in the battle against the insurgency.
In a speech aimed squarely at restoring morale on the home front, and to meet the growing clamour for a pull-out, Mr Bush set out what critics say he has conspicuously failed to deliver: a clear exit strategy from the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
In the midst of a war that has cost the lives of more than 2,100 US troops and in which public opinion has turned decisively against the President, he was trying to persuade the home front that despite evidence to the contrary, they were winning.
Victory would come, he said, thanks to the same Iraqi forces which critics say are demoralised, divided and ineffective. In front of a cheering audience at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Mr Bush held out the prospect of a gradual troop withdrawal, under a new approach that would mean US soldiers moving out of Iraqi cities and making fewer patrols, leaving that to newly trained Iraqi soldiers and police. "As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists," Mr Bush said.
Standing before a gold and blue banner proclaiming "Plan For Victory", the President added that decisions about troop levels would be dictated by conditions on the ground in Iraq and the judgement of US commanders, "not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington".
In practical terms, neither the 30-minute speech, nor a 35-page National Strategy for Victory in Iraq issued by the administration beforehand, offered great novelty. The aim was to convince Americans deeply sceptical about the handling of a war that has taken the lives of so many US troops and is costing $6bn (£3.47bn) a month, that the White House had a policy beyond a mantra-like repetition of "stay the course".
Polls show a majority of Americans think the US is bogged down in a Vietnam-like conflict that has made the US more, not less, vulnerable to terrorism, and Mr Bush's approval ratings have slumped to a dismal 37 per cent, the lowest of his presidency.
The key to the conflict, Mr Bush says, is that the Iraqis themselves assume responsibility for securing their country. He acknowledged there had been "some setbacks" in the creation of a capable force, and that the performance of Iraqi troops was "still uneven in some areas". But progress was being made, the President declared, claiming more than 120 army and police battalions (average strength 700) were ready to fight unaided, and 80 more battalions were in combat beside coalition forces.
These figures are hotly contested by critics (and challenged even by many US commanders) who say only a handful of Iraqi units are able to fight on their own and morale is low.
Republicans hailed the speech as a clear and realistic blueprint for the future, but Democrats were scathing. Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, accused Mr Bush of "recycling his tired rhetoric of 'stay the course'." He had "again missed an opportunity to lay out a real strategy for success in Iraq that will bring our troops safely home".
Senator Edward Kennedy described the speech as "a continuation of a political campaign to shore up the failed policies in Iraq ... It does not respond to what the American people want."
Mr Bush portrayed Iraq as "the central front" in the war on terror, saying a precipitate US departure would send the wrong signal to its enemies. "Pulling our troops out before they achieve their purpose is not a plan for victory," he said. "America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins as long as I am your commander-in-chief."
There were a few hints of change, but on tactics, not on underlying strategy. "If by 'stay the course' they mean we will not allow the terrorists to break our will, they're right," he said. "If by 'stay the course' they mean we will not permit al-Qa'ida to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, they're right as well." But if critics interpreted 'stay the course' as an inability to learn from experience, "then they're flat wrong".
The new White House document defines who the US sees as the enemy in Iraq. The largest group are "rejectionists", primarily Sunnis who prospered under Saddam Hussein. The document says this resistance will diminish if a democratic government that emerges from the December elections protects minority rights.
The second group are "Saddamists", former regime members who kept influence. Their power, says the administration, will prove no match for better-organised Iraqi forces.
The White House has dropped its insistence that foreign fighters were the main foe and now concedes that terrorists linked to al-Qa'ida are the smallest component of the insurgency.
The first female suicide bomber of European origin was identified yesterday when prosecutors said a Belgian-born woman was the perpetrator of an attack on US forces in Baghdad earlier this month. The woman, thought to be 37 or 38 years old, is said to have gone to Iraq to carry out the attack after marrying a radical Muslim and converting. Identified only by her first name, either Mireille or Muriel, the women is said to have come from southern Belgian city of Charleroi.
What the President Said.... And the Reality of the War
'Our strategy in Iraq is clear. Our tactics are flexible and dynamic. We have changed them as conditions required and they are bringing us victory against a brutal enemy.'
After two-and-a-half years of war, nobody in Iraq believes the US is winning against the insurgents who have the active or passive support of the five million-strong Sunni Arab community. A key objective for Mr Bush is troop reduction and convincing the public the administration has a "strategy". No-one anticipates withdrawal of all troops any time soon.
'This war is going to take many turns. And the enemy must be defeated on every battlefield. Yet the terrorists have made it clear that Iraq is the central front in their war against humanity. And so we must recognise Iraq as the central front in the war on terror.'
The supporters of al-Qa'ida now have a haven in Iraq which they did not have before the war. Prior to invasion, there was no serious al-Qa'ida presence in Iraq. CIA director Porter Goss said that "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-US jihadists." Mr Bush has admitted that al-Qa'ida accounts for only a tiny part of the insurgency. The aim of the bulk of the insurgency appears to be localised - namely driving out the US.
'Iraqi security forces are on the offensive against the enemy, cleaning out areas controlled by the terrorists and Saddam loyalists, leaving Iraqi forces to hold territory taken from the enemy, and following up with targeted reconstruction to help Iraqis rebuild their lives.'
The US has been taking territory from the insurgents since the start of the fighting but the war is still intensifying. There is little sign of reconstruction.
'Iraqi forces are earning the trust of their countrymen who are willing to help them in the fight against the enemy. As the Iraqi forces grow in number, they're helping to keep a better hold on the cities taken from the enemy. And as Iraqi forces grow more capable, they're increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the terrorists.'
Iraq is getting closer to outright civil war. Sunnis are terrified of Shia troops and police. The Kurds want to reclaim Kirkuk. Each side has its death squads. John Pike, a military analyst, said it was impossible to assess the ability of Iraqi forces. "If they're saying there has been a change around and American forces are not taking the lead, but that Iraqi units are taking the lead, then it's difficult to understand why they are still shipping home so many body-bags."
'At this time last year there were only a handful of Iraqi battalions ready for combat. Now there are over 120 Iraqi army and police combat battalions in the fight against the terrorists, typically comprised of between 350 and 800 Iraqi forces.'
Iraqi government officials say that without US support they could not hold much of Baghdad. Many Iraqi units are "ghost battalions", the number of soldiers inflated by commanders who pocket the pay of non-existent men.
'These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington. Some are calling for a deadline for withdrawal. Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops are sincere, but I believe they're sincerely wrong.'
He could scarcely say anything else, to talk of a timetable to pull out would have pointed to US desperation to extricate itself. The leader of the Sunni - the core of the uprising - say armed resistance will continue until the US pulls out. But the recent demand by some Iraqi parties for a timetable to pull out may be part of the choreography that will, in practice, hand Bush an opportunity to discuss withdrawal.
Plan: We Win
NYTimes
We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.
It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.
Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.
The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.
On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.
What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.
Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory," which his strategy document defines as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency," is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure" and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."
That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for that region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it) and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.
Bush's Pledge: Nothing but Complete Victory before US Troops Leave Iraq
Julian Borger - The Guardian UK
George Bush yesterday staked his presidency on winning a "complete victory" in Iraq, rejecting a timetable for withdrawal and setting a high bar for military success.
In a speech to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the president claimed substantial progress in training Iraqi forces, offering the prospect of US redeployment outside Iraq's lethal cities and eventual force reductions.
But Mr Bush made it clear that there could be no wholesale withdrawal before the insurgency was comprehensively defeated and stability was restored to Iraq.
"Pulling our troops out before they achieve their purpose is not a plan for victory," Mr Bush said yesterday. "To all who wear the uniform, 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."
As with most of his recent speeches, Mr Bush was addressing men and women in uniform - an arena full of naval cadets. Recent polls suggest that more than 60% of Americans now believe the war in Iraq is not worth its cost to the nation.
In an attempt to force back that tide in public opinion, a series of presidential speeches is planned before the December 15 elections in Iraq. Yesterday's address, the first in the series, coincided with the publication of a 35-page statement of war aims, entitled: "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq", aimed at bolstering public morale and beating back the political pressure for a withdrawal.
That pressure increased yesterday when the Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi declared her formal support for a plan to withdraw US forces over six months, beginning immediately. That plan was first advanced by an influential Democratic hawk, John Murtha, in a declaration that took Washington by surprise.
The president rejected a slew of recent reports questioning the readiness of Iraqi forces, claiming they had made substantial progress and had taken over significant areas of the country.
The president claimed there were now 80 Iraqi battalions fighting alongside coalition forces and 40 others "taking the lead in the fight".
A Pentagon assessment in September said only one Iraqi battalion was capable of mounting major operations without support, but the president insisted that was too harsh a standard by which to measure progress. "As a matter of fact, there are some battalions from Nato militaries that would not be able to meet this standard," he said.
As Iraqi forces improved, the president predicted, US troops would be redeployed, moving out of cities, making fewer patrols and focusing on special counter-terrorist operations.
While Iraqi forces would ultimately take over from US troops, allowing them to return home, the president insisted the pace "will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington."
Mr Bush went out of his way to set a high standard for declaring victory in Iraq declaring: "We will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory."
The national strategy document stipulated that such a complete victory required leaving behind a country that was "peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism".
"Failure is not an option," the document declares, as this would leave Iraq as "a safe haven from which terrorists could plan attacks against America".
Democratic politicians dismissed the speech as a repeat of old rhetoric. Senator John Kerry said the president was ignoring what his own generals are telling him: "That the large presence of American forces on the ground that feeds the insurgency".
Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation, a Washington thinktank, said Mr Bush's war aims failed to address the strains on US armed forces imposed by Iraq.
"It's a very expansive commitment and it blows by the structural questions," Mr Clemons said. He added that those problems could only be resolved by a withdrawal, changing the current rules limiting the frequency of combat tours for individual units, or by moving towards a draft. He said Mr Bush was trying to escape those problems by portraying Iraqi forces as more ready than they actually are. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us