Headlines, Middle East & North Africa, North America

POLITICS-US: Bush Campaigns to Sustain Military "Surge"

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 2007 (IPS) - Opening a new campaign to sustain his "surge" strategy in Iraq, President George W. Bush Wednesday compared Washington&#39s ongoing struggle there to both World War II and the Vietnam War where, he said, Washington&#39s withdrawal led to disaster for "millions of innocent citizens."

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks the VFW on Aug. 22, 2007. Credit: White House

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks the VFW on Aug. 22, 2007. Credit: White House

Speaking to the perennially hawkish Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Convention in Missouri, Bush also reiterated strong support for Iraq&#39s increasingly besieged prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, whose reluctance to implement U.S. plans for national reconciliation has spurred growing disillusionment – and even calls for his ouster – by influential lawmakers here.

"Prime Minister Maliki&#39s a good guy, good man with a difficult job, and I support him," Bush declared. "And it&#39s not up to the politicians in Washington, D.C., to say whether he will remain in his position. That is up to the Iraqi people, who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship."

Bush&#39s remarks, the first in a series of appearances and other administration initiatives designed to rally support for maintaining as many as 170,000 U.S. troops in Iraq well into 2008 in advance of a critical report to Congress due in mid-September, suggested to supporters and critics alike that the president remains as determined as ever to hold out against pressure, even from his own party, to begin withdrawing troops in the coming months.

"The president is not going to change; he&#39s going to insist on staying the course," said ret. Gen. John Johns, a counter-insurgency specialist. "What is required is that the Republican leadership in Congress force the president (to change course). I do not see that in the works today, and I don&#39t understand why."

Bush&#39s speech, which followed the overnight crash of a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in which 14 U.S. soldiers were killed – the worst one-day U.S. death toll in more than a year – came amid growing speculation about both the fate of al-Maliki&#39s government and the report by Washington&#39s ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, and its military commander there, Gen. David Petraeus, which Congress may receive as early as Sep. 11.


The report, which is supposed to be an assessment of the six-month-old surge strategy, is likely to echo what has become a growing consensus here over the past several weeks – that, while the addition of some 30,000 U.S. troops and the adoption of more-aggressive counter-insurgency tactics have succeeded in reducing sectarian violence in Baghdad, virtually no comparable progress has been made on the political front.

Not only has the Iraqi parliament failed to approve legislation on the distribution of oil revenues, the eligibility of former Ba&#39ath party officials to return to government, or on the holding of elections that would give Sunnis a greater voice in provincial and local councils, but the largest Sunni bloc aligned with the government walked out earlier this month.

Crocker himself called progress toward national reconciliation "extremely disappointing" Tuesday, while even Bush appeared to be hedging his support for al-Maliki during a visit to Canada Tuesday, calling on the government "to do more through its parliament to help heal the wounds of …having lived years under a tyrant."

Their remarks followed a harsh assessment earlier this week by the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, on his return from his latest trip to Iraq. Calling the regime "non-functional," Levin said he hoped "the parliament will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government."

Levin also released a joint statement signed by the senior committee Republican and another surge sceptic, Sen. John Warner, which conveyed much the same message, albeit in somewhat softer language.

But most analysts here believe it unlikely that al-Maliki will be forced out, and that, even if he is, a successor will be any less sectarian given the current balance of forces within the parliament and the apparent unwillingness at this time of either the majority Shi&#39a and their Kurdish partners to make major concessions to the Sunnis of the kind the U.S. and Crocker have been urging.

"You could swap Maliki out for another Shi&#39a, but frankly I don&#39t see the basic dynamics of Iraqi politics as opening the door to the kind of reconciliation we need," said Steven Simon of the Council on Foreign Relations, who spoke with Johns during a teleconference organised by the National Security Network (NSN) after Bush&#39s speech. Even while Bush himself reiterated support for al-Maliki, the Iraqi leader lashed out against the growing pressure against him during a visit to Damascus Wednesday. "The Iraqi government was elected by the Iraqi people; no one has the right to set a timetable for it," he said, referring to Levin&#39s remarks. These statements do not concern us much. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere," he added in a comment that Simon described as an "implicit threat" that Iran was "perhaps a more reliable ally (of his government) than the U.S." By reiterating his support for al-Maliki and by once again suggesting that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would have catastrophic results, Bush appeared Wednesday to be digging himself in for a major new confrontation with Democrats in Congress.

Boasting of recent military successes, Bush said U.S. troops were asking: "Whether elected leaders in Washington pulled the rug out from under them just as they&#39re gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq. Here&#39s my answer: We&#39ll support our troops; we&#39ll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed."

Comparing Washington&#39s current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan with the "ideological struggles" of World War II and "the communists in Korea and Vietnam", Bush argued that the subsequent transitions of Japan and South Korea into democratic states should offer hope for similar results in the Middle East.

As for the Vietnam War, Bush implied that Washington&#39s withdrawal constituted a moral abdication to the people of Indochina. "…(O)ne unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America&#39s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like &#39boat people,&#39 &#39re-education camps&#39 and &#39killing fields&#39."

"Unlike in Vietnam," he went on, "if we were to withdraw before the job was done, this enemy would follow us home." On the other hand, a "free Iraq will be a massive defeat for al Qaeda (and) an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East. It&#39ll be a friend of the United States, and it&#39s going to be an important ally in the ideological struggle of the 21st century."

But critics argued that Bush fundamentally misunderstood the historical precedents he cited. "Bush is cherry-picking history to support his case for staying the course," said Johns, who was a senior military planner during the Vietnam War. "What I learned in Vietnam is that U.S. forces could not conduct a counter-insurgency operation. The longer we stay there, the worse it&#39s going to get."

As for Bush&#39s references to the violence, especially in Cambodia, that followed its withdrawal from Indochina, Simon noted that much of it happened "because the United States left too late, not too early. It was the expansion of the war (into Cambodia) that opened the door to Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay the worse it gets."

 
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