A new irony in the Iraq War and a new public relations headache have surfaced for President George Bush.
The source: a report in the New York Times about a classified memo by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld submitted to the White House two days before Rumsfeld’s resignation as Defense Secretary — a resignation that is widely conceded to have come with a strong shove from Bush rather than a voluntary jump by Rumsfeld.
The significance: it shows that even Rumsfeld, whose public image has been the most inflexible of policymakers, has been telling the White House it’s time for a major change because the present game plan isn’t working. And, more than ever, it is isolating Bush who could come under renewed fire for what increasingly seems to be foreign policy by positive affirmation if Bush rejects key findings of the upcoming bipartisan Jim Baker-led Iraq study group.
The Times’ report is truly a devastating one for the White House:
Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.
“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,� wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.�
Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,� he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ �
“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,� he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics. (Text of the Memo)
The memo’s discussion of possible troop reduction options offers a counterpoint to Mr. Rumsfeld’s frequent public suggestions that discussions about force levels are driven by requests from American military commanders.
It also puts on the table several ideas for troop redeployments or withdrawals, even as there have been recent pronouncements from American commanders emphasizing the need to maintain troop levels for the time being.
You can read the full text of the memo here.
Meanwhile, another piece of the puzzle that is quickly assembling to show an administration that is trying to cope with a major failure in foreign policy analysis, policy formulation and policy implementation comes from this report about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Although she is not yet ready to explain herself, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is admitting that the United States has made mistakes in Iraq.
“As to whether the United States has made mistakes: Of course, I’m sure we have,” Rice told the Arabic satellite television station Al-Arabiya. “You can’t be involved in something as big as the liberation of a country like Iraq and all that has happened since, and I’m sure there are things that we could have done differently.”
However, Rice told Al-Arabiya that now is not the time to talk about U.S. mistakes in Iraq.
“Frankly, we are looking ahead,” she said.
In terms of dealing with journalists and the political opposition, that kind of response is the least-effective to use. It ensures that she and the administration will continue to be pressed to talk about mistakes. MORE:
Once her tenure as secretary of state is over and she is back at Stanford University, she said she will reflect on the war.
“I can look back and write books about what we might have done differently,” she said.
But she may not be able to put it off until then. In January, a Democratic-led Congress will be sworn in and is likely to demand a full accounting of any mistakes made in Iraq.
And indeed: part of what is destroying any support for the war (even among those who supported it earlier) is that fact that the administration won’t acknowledge mistakes — which doesn’t allow it to reassure citizens that mistakes are (a) seen, (b) noted and (c) won’t be repeated. It’s clearly an attempt to downplay policy miscalculations to make sure its political foes don’t get a chance to to exploit them — but it has sandbagged the administration’s credibility at a time when it needs clout at home and abroad.
Add the Rumsfeld memo and Rice’s comments and you get a portrait of a government that gravely misjudged. The key question then becomes whether it’s continuing to do so — which will make any dismissive attitude shown towards the highly-touted Iraq Study Group political poison.
Perhaps the most intriguing analysis comes from Andrew Sullivan who writes, in part:
The Bush administration is leaking like a spigot right now. The latest is interesting because it gives a glimpse into the thinking of the man who ran the occupation for three years of failure. I find it significant that, in the memo, it doesn’t even occur to Rumsfeld that the U.S. ever needed or needs more troops to succeed. His memo recommends a drastic reduction in U.S. goals in the country – “go minimalist.” Minimalist is, of course, as good a description as any of his policy for the last three years as well….
….Here’s a mischievous thought. What if the two most recent leaks – the Hadley Memo and the Rumsfeld Memo – came from the same source? What if they were designed to kill any attempt by Bush and Cheney to pretend things are okay, that Maliki is viable, and that a revamped effort can work? And what if the leaker were a man who just got fired and who’s skilled at bureaucratic payback? Just musing.
Whether that’s the case here or not, what’s clear is: the Bush administration is losing allies — and advocates — right…center…and left.
UPDATE: Be sure to read Ed Morrissey on this memo. A tiny taste 4 U:
That begs the question: is this why Rumsfeld got fired so abruptly? We have heard from inside sources at the White House that Bush intended on replacing Rumsfeld as far back as mid-summer, which would be around the same time as the new Baghdad strategy failed to show the results we expected. However, two weeks before this memo was written, Bush had publicly endorsed Rumsfeld for two more years of service, despite the obvious political damage that would cause the Republicans in the midterms. Two days after Rumsfeld submitted this memo, he was out of a job.
The Bush administration clearly does not want to change its higher-level strategies in Iraq; Bush has made that clear on the eve of the Baker-Hamilton ISG report. If Rumsfeld hoped to pre-empt the ISG, he may have miscalculated his boss’ intentions….
…I suspect that this memo did not get leaked by someone within the Bush administration opposed to Rumsfeld; I suspect it came from Rumsfeld himself, or one of his deputies…I think this signals that we are about to enter a difficult two years for the war on terror.
Also re-read what we wrote above: the Bush administration is losing support left…center…and right. And, if Morrissey is right, then how likely is it that the Baker commission report will in the end become just one more bigwig-written group report that gets a lot of press attention and is filed away?
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.