Mr. Bush is on the attack (again). Whenever things begin to go badly for Bush (as they often have), he seems to be incapable of acknowledging the problem and engaging a wide group in assessment of possible solutions. Instead, he tends to have two response. First, he asserts that everything is wonderful and that his opponents are simply wrong. When that fails, he goes on the attack and blames somebody else for the problem.
The "blame game"--Congress did it, too!
Bush from the beginning planned to attack Iraq, and up until the invasion senior White House officials arduously built the case for removing Saddam. Rice used fear of nuclear attack, talking of mushroom clouds as though the administration knew with certainty that we faced such a threat from Saddam if we did not act swiftly. Bush constantly beat the drums of war, claiming that further UN inspections were useless because we were so sure that Saddam was succesfully hiding his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Cheney was the most certain of all, implying that the evidence to which he was privy required a belligerant response.
Congress depended on the information these senior officials provided. The Downing Street memo, with its red flag that the Bush White House was "fixing" the intelligence to support its decision to go to war, was not available to Congress or to the public. The Defense Department's internal memoranda that provided evidence that sources such as "curveball" were untrustworthy were not available to Congress or to the public. Unlike Bush, Congress did not have daily intelligence briefings with the heads of the agencies. Trusting in their chief executive to reveal as much as possible and to carefully probe the intelligence officials in daily briefings, Congress affirmatively responded to Bush's demand for authority to go to war.
Now, as more information surfaces about the uncertainties and weakness of the intelligence used to justify the invasion, many people are calling for an accounting. Americans have a right to know whether the intelligence was "fixed" or whether the problem was sheer incompetence writ large. We need to know, because we cannot possibly protect ourselves over the long run if we cannot correct the problems that led to the quagmire in Iraq.
Mr. Bush does not want a genuine investigation of these matters. Instead, he and Cheney attack those who now question the intelligence used to go to war with the blame game. Congress voted for the resolution, he said, after seeing the same intelligence the White House had. It's your fault as much as mine that we are in this mess, he seems to say. What silliness. Bob Graham, former Senator and member of the intelligence committee, has written an op-ed in the Washington Post at this URL in which he articulates the problem with Bush's blame game approach. He notes that the Bush White House was so intent on its pre-determined decision to invade Iraq that it had not even asked the intelligence agencies to produce a "national intelligence estimate." When the Senate did so, those privy to the document saw considerable uncertainty about each of the claims made so assuredly in public by Mr. Cheney and others. The summary of the NIE provided to the public, however, removed all the doubts and uncertainties--an apparent effort to buttress the White House's case for war. In that context, Graham notes,
"The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud."
"The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth."
The "stay the course no matter what game"--We're there so we're going to stay there.
After the invasion, however, we learned that there were no WMDs. The substitute rationale, that we had invaded Iraq to liberate its people from their admittedly cruel dictator who imprisoned and tortured his own people, was not very convincing in a world where we have supported many dictators, including Saddam, for appropriate quid pro quos. It was even less convincing as information about military use of waterboarding, dogs, nudity, blasphemy and other psychological and physical torture, and even murder, became apparent. How could we claim to have unseated Saddam for those reasons, when we were practicing them ourselves, and even writing legal memorandum to find rationales for torture even though apparently in violation of our law and international agreements. The third rationale, that we invaded Iraq to sow the seeds of democracy, finds little sustenance when we continue as an occupying force and when the constitution, even with our prodding and control of Iraq's resources, provides for an Islamic government.
And the longer we stay, the worse the results. We imprison thousands of Iraqis, detained without due process. On the mere suspicion or report from some informant, our bombs strafe homes and cares where we think insurgents are hiding, but often we seem to have killed innocent women and children, bridal parties, and families whose father, perhaps out of fear, was merely driving erratically. The insurgency has continued to grow, in spite of the many times that Cheney and the generals have assured us that it is on its last legs. It is, in part, fueled by outside terrorists like members of al-Queda who have found Iraq to be an ideal training and recruiting ground. But even more, the insurgency is an Islamic and Arabic resistance against the American occupation. The longer we stay, the more our occupation and influence on the government and its institutions is a focus of the insurgency. The longer we stay and fail to restore order or even to rebuild schools and provide a stable society, the more the Iraqi view of America as a stabilizing friend recedes and their view of us as a destabilizing agent in a frightening world increases. The longer we stay, the more the ethnic strife among Sunnis, Kurds and Shi'ias re-kindled by our occupation resembles a civil war. That civil confrontation will not end in one year, or two, or even five. The most likely stable conclusion is a Shi'ia dominated state that is allied with Iran. Our presence likely cannot prevent that result.
Accordingly, a majority of Americans now wants us to get out of Iraq as expeditiously as possible. More than 2000 troops' lives have been lost, and tens (or hundreds) of thousands of Iraqi lives have been lost. We believe it is time to end this occupation and give a multinational coalition a chance to work with Iraq to try to help it find a solution. Even a long time hawk and supporter of the Iraq invasion, Congressman Murtha, has proposed that the military establish a timetable to withdraw from Iraq "as soon as practicable" and make arrangements to leave a smaller multinational force in place, at the sidelines, to help Iraq as requested. The Republican majority in Congress, like Bush, cannot deal with open deliberation about serious issues. Instead, they tried to embarass Murtha and those calling for withdrawal by substituting a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal, without arrangements for any multinational force. Why is it that the Republican majority cannot understand the importance of engaging in a serious debate on the issue of how to exit the Iraq quagmire?
The Iraqi people are also well aware that the American presence interferes with their efforts to resolve their differences and pushes them ever deeper into civil war. This week, even the Shi'ias, Kurds, and Sunnis have finally found one thing on which they can agree--they passed their own consensus resolution calling for the American military to set a timetable for withdrawal.
The Bush response has been to go on the attack. In speeches before friendly miltiary audiences, Bush has condemned the call for a pragmatic withdrawal and claimed that America will stay the course until it is victorious. (Bush does not seem to understand the irony of these speeches, in light of his May 2003 "victory" landing on an aircraft carrier to proclaim "mission accomplished" in Iraq.) On the Lehrer News Hour tonight on PBS, General John Vine responded to a question whether the US should withdraw with a resounding "no." General Vine appeared to think his decision, and not the Iraqi's, was the one that mattered. No one mentioned our declaration when a constitution was adopted in January that Iraq was now sovereign and we would leave upon the Iraqi's request.
If the Bush White House distorted the intelligence to force us to war, we must know that. An investigation is necessary, and it must be an independent one that will not kowtow to the White House. Our future depends on learning from these mistakes of the past.
Similarly, we cannot continue this partisan gamesmanship in lieu of the serious and difficult deliberation in which we should engage regarding our exit from Iraq. We must get out, and we must do so soon rather than later. The question is how soon is practicable, and how can we arrange some assistance to Iraq to help it reconstruct after the carnage we brought upon it. That question, too, must be answered, because our future depends on returning to a focus on thwarting those who would engage in terrorism while retaining our deeply cherished respect for individual rights. The silliness of the blame game and the stay-the-course game has to stop. We have to get serious about these matters.