For the longest time, all the Bush White House
had to do to answer
critics of the war in Iraq was to unfurl Old
Glory. The time for
flag-waving, however, appears to be ending. According
to a USA
Today/Gallup poll, almost six in 10 Americans
think the U.S. should
start bringing the troops home ASAP. Only 36
percent, roughly the
hard-core Republican base, want them to stay.
Majorities in several
polls say the war wasn’t worth the sacrifice
and doubt that Iraq was
ever a threat to the United States. Would-be
soldiers are voting with
their feet. Despite lowering standards to include
drug users and
small-time criminals, Army recruiters keep significantly
missing their
enlistment quotas. Marine recruiters aren’t doing
much better. There’s
even talk of a renewed draft, but that’s not
going to happen. The kinds
of student deferments that helped patriots like
Dick Cheney (and me)
stay out of Vietnam wouldn’t pass muster today.
But any move to pluck
Young Republicans out of the nation’s high schools
and colleges would
alter the balance of American politics overnight.
Even the generals are beginning to say they see
no military solution for
the Iraqi disaster. On Memorial Day, Cheney claimed
the Iraqi insurgency
was in its "last throes." President Bush has
expressed similar optimism.
Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the Army’s spokesman
in Baghdad, sees things
differently, saying: "I think the more accurate
way to approach this right now
is to concede that... this insurgency is not
going to be settled, the terrorists
and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be
settled, through military options
or military operations. It’s going to be settled
in the political process."
Maybe if everybody who believes in that process
simply closes his eyes
and claps his hands, a solution to Iraq’s centuries-old
ethnic and religious
strife will magically appear. Meanwhile, Gen.
George W. Casey, the top U.S.
commander in Iraq, has complained to reporters
about what he called
"the Pillsbury Doughboy" effect: Pressing the
insurgents hard in one area
only causes outbreaks of violence elsewhere.
Lt. Col. Frederick P. Wellman, who works with
the task force training
Iraqi troops, was even blunter. In an interview
with Tom Lasseter of
Knight-Ridder, one of the few journalistic organizations
to apply appropriate
skepticism in the coverage all along, Wellman
said that tribal members’
seeking revenge for slain relatives keeps the
insurgency growing.
"We can’t kill them all," he said. "When I kill
one, I create three."
And what about those newly trained Iraqi troops?
Here’s what one
outspoken American soldier told The Washington
Post, according to its
recent news story: "‘ I know the party line.
You know, the Department of
Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star generals,
four-star generals, Bush, Rumsfeld:
The Iraqis will be ready in whatever time
period, ’ said 1st Lt. Kenrick Cato,
34, of Long Island, N. Y.... ‘But from the
ground, I can say with certainty
they won’t be ready before I leave. And I
know I’ll be back in Iraq,
probably in three or four years. And I don’t
think they’ll be ready then. ’"
In a stunning piece of journalism, the Post’s
Anthony Shadid, who speaks
fluent Arabic, and his colleague Steve Fainaru
recently spent several days
on patrol with an Iraqi Army company and the
Pennsylvania National
Guardsmen charged with training them. What they
found was profound
mutual contempt.
The Americans call the Iraqis "preschoolers with
guns" and deride them
for cowardice. The Iraqis, who unanimously said
they enlisted only for
the money, predicted that the entire company
would desert on payday. On
patrol, they wear face scarves and masks so nobody
will recognize them
and sing songs praising Saddam Hussein that their
American counterparts
can’t understand. "Look at the homes of the Iraqis,"
an Iraqi soldier
complained to a Post reporter. "The people have
been destroyed." "By
whom?" he was asked. "Them," said the man, identified
as Omar, pointing
at the U.S. Humvees leading the patrol.
Let’s get back to basics. Nobody ever asked the
American people if they
wanted an empire. Instead, the geopolitical daydreamers
involved with
the "Project for a New American Century"—Cheney,
Rummy, Paul Wolfowitz
et al. —conceived a scheme to conquer Iraq after
the first Gulf War to
ensure that the U.S. remain the world’s lone"
superpower. "
The first President Bush knew better, refusing
to march into Baghdad
lest chaos ensue. Knowing little geography and
less history, the second
President Bush was easily tempted into rashness,
using the 9/11 attacks
to concoct a bogus threat largely out of his
advisers’ fevered
imaginations. Having dragged the country into
an unnecessary war, they
ignored allies and military professionals who
warned that a far larger
force would be needed to stabilize a large, fragmented
nation like Iraq.
They haven’t demonstrated American strength,
they’ve dramatized American
weakness halfway around the world. Afraid to
admit error, they have no
clue what to do next.
Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock
author and
recipient of the National Magazine Award.