Reduced Expectations

The Bush Administration continues its public repositioning with their “War on Terror.” The repositioning started a few weeks back when Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff General Richard Myers introduced their new marketing campaign for the war. Calling it the “struggle against violent extremism” the new terminology is a strong indication that the Administration is becoming concerned about the constant decline in public support for the war.

The latest move by the Administration has been to lower expectations in Iraq. Over the past few months Bush has been describing the pullout in terms of the Iraqi security forces. It has been quite some time since he has insisted that we will defeat the insurgency outright. Sticking close to the playbook, Bush responds to all questions about troop withdrawal by explaining that as the Iraqi’s become more self-sufficient and able to defend against the insurgency the US will reduce forces correspondingly. Sunday the Washington Post broke a story about the administration “shedding unreality that dominated at the beginning” of the invasion (Full article here).

This story marks the beginning of the Bush Administration’s admission that Iraq is not and probably will never be the rosy picture of representative democracy and security they have been selling the American people. “What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” admits the senior official interviewed in the Washington Post article. I certainly hope the Bush Administration is not surprised by this. They had the best advice from military leaders, intelligence leaders, the United Nations etc. All these sources came to the conclusion that invading and occupying Iraq was not good for the Iraqis, the United States or the international community. Millions and millions of people stood up and protested world wide prior to the US invasion. President Bush’s own father realized that occupation of Iraq would have been a nightmare situation with no way out and said so publicly during the first Gulf War.

During the 2004 Presidential debates Bush was asked to name three mistakes which his administration made and he replied with the impossible claim no mistakes have been made. The candid report in the Post, finally admits that they were completely unrealistic in the invasion. Unfortunately no matter how many times one says “I told you so” it won’t undo the damage. What’s even worse is the fact that now that the Administration agrees that Iraq will not be secure, they continue to insist that we are on the right track and doing the right thing in Iraq. So I ask how is a society gripped by fear and oppression on the right track?

Posted at Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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