WASHINGTON, Oct 29: The Bush administration seems to have given up its aim of moulding Iraq into a democracy of its liking and is now looking for an honourable exit strategy, experts say.
With President George W. Bush’s approval ratings stuck below 40 per cent, even White House officials have begun to indicate that the administration is re-thinking its Iraq war strategy.
White House Counsel Dan Bartlett told CBS that the fledgling Iraqi government must “step up and take more responsibility” for the country’s security. At the same time, Mr Bartlett denied that the Bush administration’s war policy has been a sweeping “stay-the-course” commitment, saying “what we aren’t doing is sitting there with our heads in the sand”.
In contrast to earlier White House statements, Mr Bartlett did not contradict US media reports that the head of the US-led multinational forces in Iraq and the US ambassador were working on a plan that for the first time would set a specific timetable for disarming militias and meeting other political and economic goals.
On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that October 2006 may be remembered as the month that “the US experience in Iraq hit a tipping point, when the violence flared and shook both the military command in Iraq and the political establishment back in Washington”.
Mr Bartlett endorsed the assessment. “October has been very busy from a standpoint of operations on the ground and certainly back here in Washington,” he said.
The talks of re-thinking the Iraq strategy and setting a timetable for withdrawing US forces from Iraq follow recent opinion polls showing that a strong dissatisfaction with President Bush’s leadership and the war in Iraq was translating into a growing support for opposition Democrats who may end up capturing both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the mid-term elections next Tuesday.
“This is the most challenging environment for Republicans since the Watergate year of 1974,” Republican political consultant Whit Ayres told reporters, referring to the loss of 48 House seats after the resignation of disgraced Republican President Richard Nixon.
Such developments forced the Republicans to accept the mistakes they have made in Iraq. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican, returned from Iraq earlier this month with a far grim assessment. “The situation,” he said, “is simply drifting sidewise.” One Republican senator declared Iraq “on the verge of chaos”. By last week, President Bush was saying he too was “not satisfied” and was looking for a fresh approach.
This contrasts sharply with the earlier Republican stance on Iraq. Only recently, Vice President Dick Cheney had charged that the Democrats’ talk of withdrawing the troops from Iraq “validates the strategy of the terrorists,” and John Boehner, the House majority leader, had phrased the matter even more harshly, saying of the Democrats, “I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists than they are in protecting the American people”.
If this is compared with what President Bush said in a White House news conference earlier this week, the change becomes more obvious. In an unusually harsh warning to his Iraqi allies, Mr Bush told them not to expect the Americans to do their military duties forever.
“We are making it clear that America’s patience is not unlimited,” he said, but hastily added that he did not want to “put more pressure on the Iraqi government than it can bear”.
What would have been even more discomforting for his Iraqi allies was President Bush’s declaration that the “Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions”.
