Bush's Fantasy of 'Progress' in Iraq
What is he thinking?
On a day when Shiite vigilantes conducted hangings in Sadr City in reprisal for the killing of scores of their co-religionists in a market bombing, President Bush continued to insist that progress in Iraq justified staying the course.
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| Khalid Mohammed / AP |
An Iraqi woman wails after a raid by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad |
Contrast that fantasy with the same day’s harsh news: “In Sadr City, the Shiite section in Baghdad where the terrorist suspects were executed, government forces vanished,” reported the New York Times. “The streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and machine guns. They set up roadblocks and poke their heads into cars and detain whomever they want. Mosques blare warnings on loudspeakers for American troops to stay out. Increasingly, the Americans have been doing just that.”
The next day, 87 corpses, all male, were found scattered throughout the city, shot or strangled after being bound and blindfolded. This, in turn, was in apparent reprisal for a series of bombings on Sunday targeting Shiite civilians that killed 58 and wounded 300, according to Iraq’s Health Ministry.
Of course, the drip-drip of American troop deaths continues, as Lance Cpl. Bunny Long, 22, of Modesto, Calif., will be coming home in a flag-draped casket after being killed Friday by a suicide bomber with a vehicle-borne IED.
If such constant mayhem is taken as a sign of progress, three years after the U.S. invasion, then Bush surely will be thrilled by what the future holds. The British, on the other hand, have seen the handwriting on the wall and once again have begun to flee an imperial disappointment in Mesopotamia, announcing they are reducing their forces by 10%. Clearly, London has grasped what Bush cannot: The three-year occupation by Western armies is an incitement to guerrilla violence, not an impediment.
Of course, Bush would have us believe this expanding civil war is the work of insidious foreigners rather than of competing agendas arising from within an Iraq society long stunted by colonialism and dictatorship. It does not occur to him that he is the foreigner whom the majority of Iraqis hold responsible for the country’s despair, and whose occupation immeasurably strengthens the hand of extremists on all sides. Bush’s neoconservative Svengalis apparently failed to alert him to the possibility that religious, ethnic and nationalist sentiments might trump his plans for a Western-imposed “democracy,” subservient to U.S. interests. Or that U.S.-engineered elections would be won by allies and disciples of the radical Shiite government in the “evil axis” capital of Tehran.
Such bright contradictions were on display in Bush’s latest strategically bankrupt “plan” for victory: spending $3.3 billion to fight the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that Bush now claims Iran is smuggling into Iraq — to the very Shiite forces that won the U.S.-engineered election and are positioned to form the first real post-Hussein government. The IEDs, mentioned a whopping 26 times in the president’s speech, have obviously come to replace that nonexistent WMD threat as the centerpiece of Bush’s Iraq policy. We will stop them, he says, by bumping anti-IED-related spending by a factor of 22, from $150 million in 2004 to $3.3 billion. “We’re putting the best minds in America to work on this effort,” Bush said.
Why not put a few of them to work on figuring how to extract the U.S. military from Iraq instead? After all, that is where all the IEDs happen to be exploding.
But, of course, this alternative, to stop making U.S. troops targets in the midst of a raging civil war in a Muslim country that the United States has no business occupying, was summarily dismissed by our president.
“[M]y decisions on troop levels will be made based upon the conditions on the ground and on the recommendations of our military commanders, not artificial timetables set by politicians here in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Has the president never read our Constitution, which mandates civilian control over the military? Does he not grasp that he is himself a Washington politician? How can you effectively sell democracy to the world when you mock it so contemptuously at home?
You can’t. Not until the public and its representatives force this administration to change its disastrous course can we begin to restore international respect for the American political system that Bush has so masterfully subverted.
In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush's approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged. Yet the public uncharacteristically has good things to say about the role that Congress played in this high-profile Washington controversy.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted among 1,405 adults from March 8-12, finds no evidence of a public backlash against foreign commercial and economic ties in the wake of the ports deal. A narrow majority (53%) has a negative view of foreign investors owning U.S. companies. But that is significantly less than the 70% expressing the same opinion in 1989, when high-profile acquisitions of U.S. firms by Japanese companies provoked widespread concern.
The survey finds that the falloff in the president's support since the start of his second term includes a significant decline in support among Republicans. Overall, half of Americans approved of Bush's overall job performance in January 2005, while 43% disapproved. Today, just 33% approve compared with 57% who disapprove.
Many people who voted for Bush in the 2004 election are more critical of his performance. Currently, 68% of Bush voters approve of his performance, while 22% disapprove. Shortly after the election Bush voters approved of his performance by a margin of 92% to 4%.
Congress has drawn bipartisan praise from the American public for its response to the possible transfer of U.S. port operations to a United Arab Emirates company. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats (68%), and roughly half each of independents (53%) and Republicans (49%) said Congress acted appropriately, though a third of Republicans felt too much was made of the issue.
Despite public support for scuttling the ports deal, most Americans are either very (24%) or somewhat (34%) concerned that America may have angered important allies in the Middle East by opposing this deal. This concern crosses party lines, with Democrats, Republicans and independents expressing comparable levels of concern.
Younger Americans and those in higher-income households tend to be more supportive of both foreign ownership and investment, but age and income gaps are the greatest with respect to views of investment. People under age 30 see investment in the U.S. as good by a 71% to 26% margin, but half believe foreign ownership has a negative impact. By comparison, majorities of those ages 65 and older tend to see both foreign ownership (57%) and foreign investment (53%) as bad for the U.S.
While Republicans and Democrats around the country hold similar views on the costs and benefits of foreign ownership and investment, the public rates the Democratic Party as stronger on the issue, particularly among those who see these as bad for the country. Among the 53% of Americans who say it is bad for the U.S. when investors from other countries own companies here, more favor the Democrats to handle this issue than Republicans by two-to-one (43% to 22%). The Democrats are also viewed as better able to address foreign investment in the United States.
Fully 56% say that about Bush now, compared with 47% who expressed that view of Reagan nearly 20 years ago. At that time, Reagan's image had been tarnished by the Iran-contra affair, though his approval rating was much higher than Bush's is currently (50% in September 1987 vs. 33% today).
Currently, 48% use a negative word to describe Bush compared with just 28% who use a positive term, and 10% who use neutral language.
The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent,"and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." All three are mentioned far more often today than a year ago.
Similarly, fewer Americans now say that Bush listens to conservative members of his party, rather than moderates, when it comes to national policy. Currently, a narrow majority (51%) says Bush listens mostly to conservative Republicans, down from 57% last October. Just 39% of self-described conservatives now say that Bush listens more to conservative members of the GOP; in October, 51% of conservatives said Bush mostly listened to conservative members of the Republican Party.
Ports Debate Draws Broad Attention
Reports on rebuilding efforts in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina also continue to attract considerable attention; 36% followed this news very closely, about the same as in December (39%). Roughly three-in-ten (31%) say they very closely followed news that Vice President Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a fellow hunter. The incident occurred Feb. 11, approximately a month before the field period for this survey.
Other news stories have drawn far less public interest: 24% very closely followed news on Iran's nuclear program; 21% each paid very close attention to news on bird flu outbreaks and the South Dakota law banning most abortions; and 16% say they tracked news of lobbyists' financial ties with members of Congress very closely.
