By stopping short of declaring victory, Bush prepared the country for continuing casualties. Here’s a prediction: more Americans will die in Iraq after the statue of Saddam came crashing down than died during the three-week takeover of the country. For that reason we’ll be pulling up stakes in Iraq much sooner than we should to make the war a success. Bush knows that the minute he says the war is over, pressure will escalate for rebuilding the ravaged nation. By leaving the war open-ended, Bush insulates himself at home and keeps the international community at bay.
Give Bush this much: celebrating aboard an aircraft carrier before a crowd of polished and pressed sailors giddy at the prospect of returning home is clever public relations. Most Americans will remember the president’s dramatic televised address as marking the end of the war in Iraq even though the hard work of nation-rebuilding is just beginning.
The White House spared no theatrics. Bush originally wanted to go in on a two-seater jet. The Secret Service rejected the idea because there’s only room for the pilot and Bush, and the agents would not leave the president unguarded. Bush settled for a four-seater, which still had plenty of dramatic effect as its tail hook caught the steel cable on deck and screeched to a halt.
Bush has already gotten most of the glowing media coverage he’s going to get out of Iraq. The prevailing sentiment in Washington is that we’re headed for the Iraqi equivalent of the liberation of Afghanistan: a few weeks of good news followed by a long, slow, steady deterioration. Bush is counting on the fact that people won’t know or care about what’s happening just as they are ignorant of the conditions in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Kabul this week taking a victory lap. When a reporter asked about the “deteriorating security situation,” Rumsfeld demurred, referring to the “ebb and flow” of the sporadic violence as though it were a natural occurrence.
For those who need a refresher course on Afghanistan, it is once again the world’s leading exporter of poppy, which is refined into heroin. Despite the $1 billion a month the United States is spending to preserve a semblance of order in Afghanistan, outside the capital, Kabul, the country is back in the hands of warlords and a resurgent Taliban. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is belittled as the “mayor of Kabul” because he can’t go anywhere else without fear of assassination. Appearing with Rumsfeld at a news conference, Karzai said, “Can we provide the whole country with a strong administration? No.” Asked why, he cited the “severe lack of human resources,” to provide security.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich got attention last week for his broadside against Colin Powell and the State Department. Gingrich, a discredited extremist who is a Pentagon adviser, assailed the Agency for International Development (AID) for not building roads in Afghanistan. AID is forbidden to operate without military protection. The AID administrator in Kabul recently complained to a Senate staffer on a fact-finding tour, “I can’t even leave my office without a three-car team of Green Berets.” Where does the blame lie, with the guidelines governing the security of Americans abroad or with the Bush administration’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan?
Everybody from the president down promised we would not repeat past mistakes, yet that’s what the Bush administration is doing. In Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks bombed the caves in the mountainous region of Tora Bora that borders Pakistan, but didn’t send U.S. ground troops to clean out Al Qaeda fighters. The strategy spared American casualties but allowed Al Qaeda to escape like roaches under a bright light. The country has returned to chaos much as in the early 1990s after the Soviets pulled out and the mujahedin, the Islamic fighters, took charge.
In Iraq, the shock and awe of a three-week war may have dispersed the weapons of mass destruction much as the bombing of Afghanistan scattered Al Qaeda. So far, search teams have come up with nothing. Based on intelligence briefings, a Senate staffer says he still thinks evidence of chemical and biological weapons will be found, though he is not 100 percent certain.
Disarming Saddam was the stated reason for invading Iraq. Bush invoked the specter of another 9-11, this time with a mushroom cloud, suggesting Saddam could pass nuclear material to the terrorists of his choice. A CIA report concluded there was little danger that Saddam would use weapons of mass destruction against the United States unless provoked and left with no other option. “From a danger standpoint, the weapons of mass destruction may already have been sold to the highest bidder,” says the Senate aide.
Democrats are hoping the voters will wake up to the reality that the country is billions of dollars poorer but may not be any safer after the display of military might in Iraq. Americans like the idea of a strong, decisive leader, but dropping bombs and overcoming a fifth-rate military doesn’t make you a leader. Bush has sacrificed the good will of much of the world, and America’s troubles may be just beginning.
