Today’s anniversary: the fourth year of the launching of the Iraq war.
The plea: from President George Bush, who urged Americans to be patient and to give “no strings” backing on the Iraq war.
The reality: Bush is making his plea on the anniversary of the war’s launch from a supremely weakened political position, not just in terms of war policy and management, but due to various controversies and mini-scandals swirling around his administration — all against the backdrop of an administration that did not put a high premium on working with the opposition or critics…and now finds itself increasingly isolated:
George W. Bush marked the beginning of the fifth year of the Iraq war on Monday by warning the Democratic-controlled Congress to approve $100bn in emergency funding for the war “without strings and without delay”.
The US president, whose poll approval numbers are hovering just above his all-time low, also warned Capitol Hill that any attempt to withdraw American forces from Iraq could prove “devastating” and spark a regional civil war.
In his five-minute televised address Mr Bush’s choice of words were notably more downbeat and realistic than in many of the president’s previous statements on the war in Iraq. However, he said the “new way forward in Iraq”, which he unveiled in his last Iraq address in January, was beginning to take effect.
Mr Bush said that if US and Iraqi forces continued to make progress in their joint security operations in Baghdad and elsewhere then the war “can be won”. This contrasts with the president’s traditional statements of confidence in the ultimate certainty of US victory. Mr Bush said that fewer than half of the 21,500 new combat troops had so far arrived in Iraq.“I want to stress that this operation is still in the early stages. … The new strategy will need more time to take effect. And there will be good days, and there will be bad days,” he said. “Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult, but it can be won. It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through.”
The main problem for Bush and his administration is one of credibility. Many of the predictions made by Bush and his associates about the war didn’t pan out in the end. And on the anniversary of the war, if you look at some of the headlines you see a war — and administration — seemingly more unsettled than ever:
–Tony Snow did a more polite version of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s “Shaddup!!” at a White House press briefing today. Think Progress has the video here and writes:
During this morning’s press gaggle, Tony Snow told reporters that Bush will use the speech to attack the House plan for Iraq as a “recipe for defeat� that would “provide a victory for the enemy.�
CNN’s Ed Henry told Snow that since he was attacking the House plan, he should explain the Bush administration’s “recipe for success.� According to Henry, Snow “tried to turn it around on me,� asking Henry what his recipe for success was. When Henry objected to Snow’s question, Snow told him to “zip it.�
NOTE: If you go back in history, you don’t see too many press secretaries answering a question from a reporter by telling them to shut up. They usually make some effort to answer or at least gracefully evade the question. Theoretically, press secretaries have greater journalistic and PR skills than answering questions by telling reporters to shut their mouths.
—The Washington Post says a poll shows that Iraqi’s believe the quality of life has changed and not for the better:
More than six in 10 Iraqis now say that their lives are going badly — double the percentage who said so in late 2005 — and about half say that increasing U.S. forces in the country will make the security situation worse, according to a poll of more than 2,200 Iraqis conducted by ABC News and other media organizations.
The survey, released Monday, shows that Iraqi assessments of the quality of their lives and the future of the country have plunged in comparison with similar polling done in November 2005 and February 2004.
USA Today also reports on that poll.
–In a particularly disturbing report, The Washington Post further reports that the war has left the United States poorly prepared for other conflicts elsewhere:
Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge.
More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a “death spiral,” in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand
The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the U.S. military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said.
“We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it,” Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
So on the fourth anniversary of the war, the administration used several approaches: a plea from Bush and a more aggressive characterization by Snow that those who seek to place a timetable on the war are “defeatest” (and those who ask for a recipe for success should shut up). Plus, warnings from a military official that the United States is overextended.
All against the background of an administration that a) has plummeting public support and b) has not shown an ability to work with critics but, rather, a penchant for seeking to confront and characterize them.
Prognosis: a bumpy year (or years) ahead…
For more blog reaction see Memeorandum.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.