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The Bush Blunder

by R.W. Bradford

Bush believed that American anger about 9/11 would provide enough political capital for him to conquer and reform Iraq. It is becoming apparent that he was wrong.

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It is increasingly evident that Bush administration strategists have blundered. They thought that American anger at the Muslim world regarding the 9/11 attacks would provide sufficient political capital to enable the administration to declare war on whatever Islamic state it pleased, and that the U.S. military could quickly conquer and transform the countries it conquered into free, democratic states.

They were right about American anger, up to a point. But their second belief was plainly wrong, though it took more than a year for the blunder to be evident.

For a variety of reasons, known and unknown, the president was amenable to his advisers' arguments, especially when the chosen target was Iraq. On the surface, it was a strange choice. Iraq was a secular Islamic state that had no truck with such radical Islamic outfits as al Qaeda. It had been stripped of its military might when it was forced to disarm a decade ago, after losing a war with the U.S. — though its dictator had survived and continued to boast of his might, despite his disarmed condition.

To sustain the anti-Muslim anger, the administration falsely claimed that Iraq was uniquely aggressive, a threat to the United States, and an ally of al Qaeda, the organization that coordinated the 9/11 attacks. This worked pretty well so long as it could be plausibly maintained that the U.S. armed forces were succeeding in their conquest and reform of Iraq. The conquest went very easily, but the reform has not gone well.

This is not very surprising. Conquest and occupation have seldom led to real reform. Looking back a century or so, I can find only two cases in which they achieved their goals: Germany and Japan after their devastating losses in World War II. The failures are almost too many to count. The European countries that Germany conquered in each world war quickly rejected the Germans and set up national governments, democratic or undemocratic, as conditions allowed. Japan's conquest of China brought nothing but grief, as did its conquest and occupation of Korea. The U.S. occupations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti have done no visible good. Even countries conquered in earlier centuries tossed out their occupiers, as witness the revolutions within the French, British, Italian, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, and Portuguese empires.

So the successful experiences in Germany and Japan are the exception, not the rule. They are likely explained by the unusual national character and dire straits of the countries involved. Germany was utterly devastated by its experiment in authoritarianism and had a democratic tradition to fall back on. Japan was equally devastated, had seen its religious and political system destroyed, and was the non-Western country most receptive of liberal institutions to begin with.

Meanwhile, the news from Iraq these days is almost uniformly bad. By April 15, more Americans had been killed than in any month of the war. American conquest and occupation have managed to do something that past rulers of Iraq have never been able to accomplish: unite the country's Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The Bush administration finds fewer and fewer policy options and faces harder and harder dilemmas. A broader coalition would likely help to reform Iraq. But crackdowns are needed to maintain order, and crackdowns increase civilian casualties, which erodes such little support as the U.S. gets from other nations. Installing a democratic government means letting Iraqis select their own leaders, but the leaders they support are religious figures whose views alarm American policy-makers.

Public support in the U.S. is eroding. It is plain that right now, most Americans continue to support the president, but increasingly they do so only because they see no alternative and because the perceptible costs of the war have been relatively low. But costs are escalating. Casualties are increasing, and the financial costs are beginning to have an impact: inflation is rising, the dollar is losing ground against other currencies, and Alan Greenspan is talking about raising interest rates, which could hurt the stock market, increase the cost of housing, and increase unemployment. Like eastern Montana's Powder River, the president's support is a mile wide but an inch deep.

The president has painted himself into a corner: by predicating his policy on moral dudgeon, he has no alternative but to stay the course, no matter what the consequences. To retreat is to confess to giving in to evil.

Will he be re-elected? American politics are far too chaotic for anyone to make a rational prediction. A major setback in Iraq could send his support reeling, as could any number of domestic political developments. He's helped by the fact that the Democrats, fearing the broad if shallow support the president still enjoys, are refraining from making the war an issue. But that can change. And it will, as soon as the president looks vulnerable on this issue.

For the time being, the Democrats seem insistent on making the central issue of the campaign Bush's evil "export of American jobs," a bogus issue if ever there was one. Bush has responded by focussing on the evil of gay marriage and wrapping himself in the American flag, hoping that the Democrats will be perceived as disloyal. If I were a betting man offered even money right now, I'd bet on Bush. But not with any degree of certainty.

Of course, his reelection will not help him out of this mess. It will delay America's inevitable pullout from Iraq, which will mean more American casualties, more Iraqi casualties, more destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, and more waste of U.S. money. Leaving Iraq sooner rather than later will be embarrassing and costly. But it will be less embarrassing and less costly than postponing withdrawal until American public support has disappeared, the American treasury is bankrupt, and American military cemeteries have more graves.

Iraq will likely be a mess for a long, long time. But leaving now will not make the mess any worse. More likely, the sooner we leave the less mess we will leave behind.

© Copyright 2010, Liberty Foundation

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