a fabric of the cloth

Get ready for more lies about Iraq war
March 24, 2006, Andrew Greeley,Times Union

The media exaggerate the problems, Mr. Bush says. Yet how does one exaggerate the killings, the bombings, the religious conflict in the country, the smoke, the fire, the dead bodies, the wailing survivors and the 30,000 Iraqi deaths? Surveys show that the majority of Iraqis want us out of there and that the majority of our troops want out, too. But Americans are supposed to be patient, even when no hint is offered about how long this moral obligation to patience will persist.

President Bush reminds me of President Carter. Both are men of considerable religious faith, both have strong moral convictions, both believe in the spread of democracy around the world.

As president, Carter was monumentally incompetent and surrounded by a staff that gave him very bad advice. He preached in vain at the American people. Remember the time he came down from the mountain (Camp David) and exhorted us to return to our faith? The problems of the country, you see, were not his fault but ours.

Bush is isolated behind a veil of secrecy and his staff is good only at winning elections. He, too, has been woefully incompetent as president. Consider his responses to Hurricane Katrina. Now, almost pathetically, he preaches to us that we must be patient with the war in Iraq -- almost three years after celebrating its end in the "mission accomplished" photo-op on an aircraft carrier.

There is no evidence at all in the happy talk speeches he gives around the country, in which he promises victory and urges us to be patient. Roughly two-thirds of Americans do not approve of him. His neoconservative base is drying up. Such stalwart hawks as Andrew Sullivan and and George Will are jumping ship, and we all know what kind of creatures jump ship. None of them, of course, admit any moral responsibility for the war they had once supported. Neither does The New York Times, which supported the war at the beginning, just as it supported the Vietnam War at the beginning. Neither do the ordinary people who supported the war and now change their minds.

It's easy to be against the war when it is clear that the United States is finally in Big Muddy and when you ignored all the warnings that the President and his secretary of defense were leading us into the Big Muddy. If the war were unwinnable from day one, it was an unjust war and hence immoral.

Yet the warnings were clear. The Powell doctrine called for massive numbers of troops to maintain order after the Iraqi government was destroyed. The history of Iraq promised religious conflict and eventual civil war if the United States did not have the forces there to suppress such conflict. Anyone who knew anything about Iraq would have predicted the Big Muddy.

Yet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who knew everything about Iraq and everything about modern war, ignored these risks. His man, Gen. Tommy Franks, wanted to withdraw all but 25,000 troops. Maybe a half-million American soldiers could have pacified the country. Or maybe a million. But not the token force the President sent, with inadequate armor and equipment and training.

The media exaggerate the problems, Mr. Bush says. Yet how does one exaggerate the killings, the bombings, the religious conflict in the country, the smoke, the fire, the dead bodies, the wailing survivors and the 30,000 Iraqi deaths? Surveys show that the majority of Iraqis want us out of there and that the majority of our troops want out, too. But Americans are supposed to be patient, even when no hint is offered about how long this moral obligation to patience will persist.

Lyndon Johnson's downfall as president was Vietnam. Jimmy Carter's downfall was Iran. He could not rescue the trapped Americans from the Embassy. George W. Bush's downfall will be Iraq. Mr. Carter followed the path of peaceful negotiation and lost. Mr. Bush followed the path of shock and awe, and he is losing. Perhaps future presidents will learn the lesson -- don't get involved in foreign adventures unless you have overwhelming force. Cut your losses and get out when you realize you're losing, as Ronald Reagan did in Lebanon. And don't listen to any corporate CEO who tells you that war, even with peasants, can be quick and easy.
The only hope that Mr. Bush has to protect his legacy from the same trash can in which those of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Carter molder will be that his master of prestidigitation, Karl Rove, will be able to find the magic words which will convert tragedy and defeat into bright victory.

Regardless of the situation in Iraq, most of the troops will be out before the midterm elections in November and all of them before the 2008 election. "Cut and run" will be renamed "a victory for democracy."

And that will be the biggest lie of them all.