WASHINGTON: As President George Bush and Gen David Petraeus struggle to make the case that yet more time is needed for victory in Iraq, the goal for success no longer resembles the high hopes the architects of the 2003 invasion had in mind.
Bush’s decision to wage war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the Sept 11 attacks — six years ago on Tuesday — led to many miscalculations and mistakes. Critics contend those mistakes continue today.
Bush not only wanted to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and overthrow a brutal dictator but also to create a shining pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Arab world.
The “victory” goal now is to exit with the least amount of additional bloodshed or lasting damage possible, either to Iraq or to the United States.
“Our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous,” Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, told a House of Representatives hearing on Monday.
He testified that Bush’s troop buildup has led to measurable successes and should allow a reduction in troop levels by the middle of next year. It also was a telling commentary on the history of the conflict.
Almost nothing the Bush administration has said about Iraq has panned out.
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Iraqis did not welcome American troops as “liberators” but instead as foreign occupiers.
The mission was not accomplished when Bush proclaimed an end to major combat from the deck of an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. Far from it. More than 3,700 members of the US military and tens of thousands of Iraqis, mostly non-combatants, have died since the war started in March 2003. Only the Revolutionary War in the 18th century and the Vietnam War four decades ago have lasted longer.
Oil revenues have yet to allow post-Saddam Iraq to sustain itself financially. Billions of US government dollars are being spent to subsidise the fragile Iraqi government and economy.
A new constitution and national elections did not lead to a stable government that could “govern, sustain and defend itself,” as Bush repeatedly intones.
The chances that Iraq will evolve into a pro-Western democracy seem slight, with anti-Americanism rampant throughout most of Iraq among most ethnic factions.
Bush’s decision in January to send in 30,000 additional troops, bringing the total US military presence to about 160,000, has failed to bring about the sought-after turnaround once predicted for this month.
How did the United States get into this mess? The decision has bipartisan roots.
In 1998 the then-Republican Congress passed, and Democratic President Bill Clinton signed, the “Iraq Liberation Act,” making changing the government in Iraq official US policy and promoting an Iraqi insurgency.
In October 2002, Congress — still in Republican hands — voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq if necessary, with the administration asserting Iraqi links with Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and insisting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and would use them on the United States if possible.
Bush, perhaps wanting to finish the job his father did not do by deciding not to send troops marching to Baghdad after driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991, first went to the United Nations and got a strong Security Council resolution in late 2002 demanding Saddam to give up all unconventional weapons and open his country to new arms inspections.
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified to the Security Council in early 2003 documenting Saddam’s weapons programs. His presentation was based, it turned out later, on faulty US intelligence.
Russia, France and Germany balked at a US resolution to use force against Saddam. With Russia and France holding permanent Security Council veto powers, Bush decided to invade Iraq without UN blessings.
Polls at the time showed that roughly six in 10 Americans agreed with him. He enlisted the help of Britain, Italy, Spain, Australia and several dozen smaller countries for a “coalition of the willing.”
Despite initial support among Americans for the war, a strong majority of people now say the United States made a mistake going to war in Iraq, a position they have stubbornly maintained all year, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. Asked whether the additional troops had helped stabilize Iraq, 58 per cent said no.
Bush’s continual linking of Iraqi insurgents with Al Qaeda terrorists who planned the Sept 11, 2001, attacks has been challenged by academics and war critics. Few dispute that Al Qaeda is active in Iraq today, having been drawn in by the chance to cause pain to the US military.
A third of Americans — 33 per cent — said they think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, according to a CBS News-New York Times poll released on Monday. Fifty-eight per cent said he was not, and nine per cent said they did not know.
The victory in Iraq long sought by the administration now has become “avoiding a bloodbath, having some minimum amount of stability and predictability in the region,” said Dan Benjamin, a former Middle East specialist with the National Security Council in the Clinton administration.
Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution military analyst who has criticized the administration’s post-invasion tactics but who saw signs of military progress during a recent tour of Iraq, cites “momentum that I think is real.”
But it follows “four years of mistakes,” said O’Hanlon. “What I don’t know is whether the four years of errors are something we can recover from.”—AP
