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Bush/Cheney Dig in to Win
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
Tuesday 17 April 2007
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are determined to secure another $100 billion
blank check for the Iraq War despite a growing consensus among intelligence
and military analysts that the war strategy is in chaos and on course to gravely
damage U.S. interests in the Middle East.
Having solidified support among congressional Republicans and still backed
by a powerful right-wing news media, Bush and Cheney appear to have concluded
that they can force congressional Democrats to back down over legislative language
seeking a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
If the President does succeed in this test of wills and wrests the war funding
from Congress without strings attached, Bush's supporters will tout his
success as a political rebound. Republican strategists also hope the expected
Democratic humiliation will drive a wedge between the national Democrats and
the party's staunchly anti-war base.
Already, prominent Democrats, such as Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Barack
Obama of Illinois, have drawn criticism from the base for showing a readiness
to run up a white flag rather than face a continued barrage of accusations about
undercutting the troops. Those signals have reinforced White House confidence
than Bush can prevail.
Over the past week, Bush and Cheney have ratcheted up the rhetoric with the
President declaring on April 16 that the Democrats
were pushing legislation that "would undercut our troops" and accusing
the Democrats of playing politics at a moment of crisis.
"America is not going to be safe until the terrorist threat has been
defeated," Bush said. "If we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists
in Iraq, they won't leave us alone - they will follow us to the
United States of America.... We should not legislate defeat in this vital
war."
On April 13, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation,
Vice President Cheney took an even tougher line calling the Democratic-backed
war funding bill "irresponsible" and dressing down the Democratic
congressional leadership in especially harsh terms.
"Although the current political environment in our country carries echoes
of the hard left in the early '70s, America will not again play out those
old scenes of abandonment, and retreat, and regret," Cheney said. "Not
this time, not on our watch.... We will press on in this mission, and we
will turn events towards victory."
Political Victory
But military and intelligence analysts do not expect that a Republican political
victory over Democrats in Washington will lead to a battlefield victory in Iraq.
In an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post,
retired Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan explained that he rejected a White House
overture to serve as a special coordinator for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
- the so-called "war czar" - because he found the administration
confused about what strategy should be pursued.
"There is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region,"
Sheehan wrote. "Activities such as the current surge operations should
fit into an overall strategic framework. There has to be linkage between short-term
operations and strategic objectives that represent long-term U.S. and regional
interests, such as assured access to energy resources. ...
"We cannot 'shorthand' this issue with concepts such as the
'democratization of the region' or the constant refrain by a small
but powerful group that we are going to 'win,' even as 'victory'
is not defined or is frequently redefined....
"I concluded that the current Washington decision-making process lacks
a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically.
We got it right during the early days of Afghanistan - and then lost focus.
We have never gotten it right in Iraq. ... These huge shortcomings are not
going to be resolved by the assignment of an additional individual to the White
House staff." [Washington Post, April 16, 2007]
Sheehan's account of policy chaos at senior levels of the administration
fits with the view of many analysts that Bush and Cheney have put political
goals - splitting the Democrats and retaining White House swagger on the
war - ahead of a sensible strategy for salvaging the best possible outcome
in Iraq.
A revamped strategy that involved redeploying U.S. troops either away from
Iraqi cities or outside Iraq altogether would require recognition that Bush
had botched his ballyhooed role as "war president" and Cheney had
bungled his vaunted work as "crisis manager."
Bush and Cheney would have to face up to how their grand schemes for remaking
the Middle East and their alarmist rhetoric about al-Qaeda creating a global
empire from Spain to Indonesia no more match up with reality than did their
earlier assertions about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program and his supposed
stockpiles of WMD.
Instead, Bush and Cheney continue to justify the Iraq War by citing provocative
public comments from Osama bin Laden about how he would relish an American defeat
in Iraq. But Bush and Cheney keep ignoring intercepted communiqués from
al-Qaeda leaders that indicate they actually want the United States to remain
bogged down in Iraq.
For instance, a letter attributed to al-Qaeda leader Zayman al-Zawahiri worried
that a rapid U.S. military withdrawal could precipitate a collapse of al-Qaeda's
position in Iraq, fretting that "the mujahaddin must not have their mission
end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons,
and silence the fighting zeal."
Another intercepted letter, written by a senior al-Qaeda operative known as
"Atiyah," cited the need for more time so the terrorist network
could sink down roots in Iraq. "Prolonging the war is in our interest,"
Atiyah wrote.
Yet, the political battle in Washington is taking place in a kind of parallel
universe from the military conflict in Iraq. So, Bush may yet achieve his triumph
of the will over the Democrats but that likely will do nothing to alter the
unfolding disaster in Iraq.
[For more on how Bush and al-Qaeda's goals mesh, see Consortiumnews.com's
"The
Bush-bin Laden Symbiosis."]
--------
Robert
Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for
the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy &
Privilege:
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com.
It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History:
Contras,
Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
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