White House ready to blame Dems for Iraq disaster
It’s hardly a secret that the Bush White House plans to hand over its mess in Iraq to the president’s successor. Short of Congress cutting off funding for the war, which seems unlikely, the president expects to have at least 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in January 2009. At that point, this disaster will be someone else’s problem, not Bush’s.
At this point, however, the president not only wants to stay the course between now and then, he also wants to figure out a way for the next president to also stay the course, whether they want to or not.
In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”
Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”
“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”
Bush told Bill Sammon, “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”
Sammon also talked to a “senior White House official” who argued that Iraq could become a disaster under a Democratic president, who would be held responsible.
“One of two things will happen if a Democrat gets elected president,” the official said. “They will either have to withdraw U.S. troops in order to remain true to the rhetoric — in which case, any consequences in the aftermath fall on their heads. Or they have to break their word, in which case they encourage fratricide on the left of their party. Now that’s a thorny issue to work through.”
As Kevin Drum responded, “If Iraq fails, all the consequences will fall directly on Democratic heads. Democratic heads. With a capital D. You can almost feel the knife twisting. Do you think he managed to deliver that line to Sammon with a straight face?”
For what it’s worth, Bush is apparently preoccupied with this subject. Resigned to the fact that his policy will not produce positive results over the next 16 months, the president is apparently convinced that staying the course in 2009 will still be the right call. As he sees it, Bush is Truman, Iraq is Korea, and his successor is Eisenhower.
As Bush was describing his thinking about Iraq and the future, he indicated he wants to use his final 16 months to stabilize Iraq enough and redefine the U.S. mission there so that the next president, even a Democrat, would feel politically able to keep a smaller but long-term presence in the country. The broadcasters were not allowed to directly quote the president, but they were allowed to allude to his thinking and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News later cited the analogy of Dwight D. Eisenhower essentially adopting President Harry S. Truman’s foreign policy despite the Republican general’s 1952 campaign statements.
“He had kind of a striking analogy,” Stephanopoulos said of Bush on air a few hours after the lunch. “He believes that whoever replaces him, like General Eisenhower when he replaced Harry Truman, may criticize the president’s policy during the campaign, but will likely continue much of it in office.”
It is a striking analogy, in large part because it’s wrong.
First, Eisenhower did not continue the most unpopular aspect of Truman’s foreign policy — the war in Korea, then in its third year, grinding in stalemate, with 50,000 American troops dead. During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower pledged, “I will go to Korea,” and he did just that, on a secret trip in late November, soon after the election. By the end of July 1953, an armistice was signed; the fighting stopped. […]
Second, Eisenhower did continue Truman’s broader foreign policy, but Bush should be careful about citing this as an analogy for today.
It is true, during the ’52 campaign, Eisenhower and the Republican Party lashed out at Truman’s policy of “containment.” John Foster Dulles, Ike’s foreign-policy adviser (and, eventually, secretary of state), was vehement in his opposition, proposing instead a policy of “rollback”—of actively liberating nations that had fallen to Communist rule.
It is also true that, after he became president, Eisenhower ignored Dulles’ rhetoric and proceeded with containment. (In 1956, during the Hungarian revolt, for instance, he decided not to send troops or air support on behalf of the rebels, despite much pressure to do so. He also declined to replace the French in Vietnam after their rout at Dien Bien Phu.)
In this sense, Bush has been what Eisenhower might have been, had he followed Dulles’ advice. His doctrine of pre-emption, which rationalized the invasion of Iraq; his agenda of promoting freedom over stability, as articulated in his second inaugural address; his depiction of the war in Iraq as a moral clash of good vs. evil—these are all in the spirit of Dulles.
If Bush’s successor is a Democrat, it is extremely unlikely that he or she will follow that course.
Something to look forward to.
It’s simple: Iraq becomes the 51st state of the United States of America.
Whodda guessed?
I just sent this to TPM, but something we need to consider:
There is a big, nasty question hanging over a withdrawal from Iraq that has yet to be addressed. We forget that there are perhaps as many private contractors in Iraq as there are soldiers, and the military is under no obligation to cover their exit. Once it becomes clear we’re leaving — say, due to a Democratic candidate heading towards an easy November victory on a platform of withdrawal as a first order of business — you’ll see thousands of private contractors scrambling for the exits while our soldiers are still keeping some modicum of security. No one wants to be on the last helicopter out of Bagdhad.
Many of these security companies are well armed, and may be contributing to some modicum of order. Because of the many, many support duties contractors perform, that exit could cripple our military who depends on them — and we don’t really have anyway to prevent them from walking away from their contracts. Unlike soldiers, they can’t be compelled to serve or sacrifice life and limb.
If it’s clear we’re leaving, the exodus will begin, regardless of what Bush wants, and it will begin while Bush is in office if it is clear Democrats are serious about ending it, and Bush will own this war, start to finish. And if he doesn’t have a plan for withdrawal, as he didn’t have one for an insurgency because planning for such an eventuality might bring in unwanted realities that distract from our present course, then we will be left as flat-footed as we were in New Orleans.
If I were a Democrat, I would start demanding that we have a plan for this eventuality, as we had a plan for the possibility of a Russian invasion of Germany, or missile launch from Cuba. And we need to see this plan to make sure it is not as incompetent as the plans for occupation. After all, even Bush believes we’ll leave eventually, right? So we ought to have a plan — this time.
If he doesn’t, the forced withdrawal will be a disaster that’s on his head. If he does, we’ve framed the issue around withdrawal instead of occupation — we’re talking about how, and when, not whether. In which case, the withdrawal is Bush’s, not the Dems.
“He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”
Translation: he wants to screw things up so horrendously they’re un-unscrewable.
These guys are INSANE.
Ummmm, 50k dead? That is Viet Nam. US KIA were under 37K in Korea. Can we keep our past wars straigh!
I think one of the HUGE advantages of not being able to get 60 votes in the Senate is that the Democrats can say, with a straight face, that the Democrats have given Bush EVERYTHING that he wanted in Iraq.
It is Bush’s War
It may not matter when or how US troops leave Iraq — I think the relief of that pressure on Iraqi society might result in some chaos, but it might actually unite the Iraqis long enough in their joy for them to create the kind of government they want, whether they’re one country or three.
Bush is ridiculous to claim that even the Democrats will stay in Iraq because a bad ending for Iraq would be the fault of the Democrats. There’s no WAY he can hide the fact that he is appallingly responsible for that war and everything that has happened or will happen, from the lies to the corruption to the mismanagement to the motivation of stealing Iraq’s oil profits. The Democrats won’t want to take on that mantle.
Dream on, Bush. Dream on…
God, the one thing Bush can’t do is read the American people.
This is why the Dems should keep hammering away with bill after bill after bill all focused on getting out of Iraq now. Even though they’re doomed to fail unless things get *really* different, they can trumpet Republican obstructionism and Bush stupidity from every rooftop: “Look, folks, we tried hard over and over again to do the right thing but were prevented every time by those morons on the other side. Here’s the proof right here.”
The trick will be to get our bought-and-paid-for media to actually publicize those attempts somewhere besides the bottom of page 32 on their slowest news day.
Still, that kind of a paper trail will be hard for even Republican spinmeisters to overcome when crunchtime comes.
Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”
If the Dems withdraw the troops, they’ll be saving American lives with probably no detriment to us. If they keep the troops there they’ll effectively be saying Bush was right. It’s the best result to keep Repubs out of hot water.
Fine. Let a Democrat deal with it. Then we’ll have a coherant Iraqi policy (dedependent on who gets elected of course). That is why it is essential that any democrat who gets the nomination state, without any shred of a doubt, that we will bring the troops home. Redeploy, turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. Let them fight the civil war that has been raging for a millenia. Get serious with Iraqi’s neighbors about brokering peace if possible. Go back into Afghanistan, destroy the Taliban – again – and catch Osama. If we can do that, then Republicans will have lost their last card, supposedly being the ‘stronger’ military party.
You see, Bu$h and his handlers aren’t going to leave, they never have, never will… this is what this war is all about, Oil, and profit. Iraq is the biggest cash cow in the history of mankind.
get someone in office who has not moneyed interests and we’ll have the troops home as quick as possible!
Re: #2, to follow up on memekiller’s point a little bit. The contractors are there solely to make money. When the U.S. military finally withdraws from Iraq, they might indeed abandon the place or they might try to turn the situation to their advantage by hiring themselves out as mercenaries to whichever faction has the money to pay them.
There are untold billions of dollars in untraceable cash floating around out there, and people who have depended on the American military to protect them up to that point might decide it’s worth it to spend some of it that way. One private army is as good as another, as they say.
It might not work out that way, but then again it might. Something to think about, anyway.
I think Curmudgeon is absolutely correct at 7. But I also have been thinking, since it is almost a certainty that the Democratic President in 09 will be stuck with Bush’s Folly, that we will have to be careful how we conclude it to avoid getting tarred with it like the left was for decades post-Vietnam.
The one bright spot is that we should have many more options than we do now. A big part of the problem is Bush himself, and the unpopularity to which he has led the US. A new President – one who actually befriends, rather than bullies, other countries; one who works with rather than undermines international institutions – will have options that Bush simply does not. Options for multinationalizing the forces in Iraq, options for different types of aid packages and sanction threats, different options for optimal diplomatic outreach and pressure. I fervently believe that merely changing leadership gives the US a somewhat clean slate, and that foreign countries who once were close to us but have been driven away by Bush will look to reward the US’ choice of a new direction by working with our new leader. We need to be ready to make the most of that honeymoon period.
Curmudgeon, it’s a good point. Large contractors like Haliburton will leave, but some of the smaller firms populated by third world mercs might stick around. Regardless, you’ll have A LOT of out of work contractors looking for another market to exploit, much the same way you had the disbanding of the Iraqi Army.
What’s more, these companies give a lot of cash to the party that lined their pockets, and those politicians will be looking for new business avenues to keep the checks coming.
More likely, the big players will be pushing for other places to earn their government paychecks.
If the Dems cough up another red cent for King George’s ransom then it is as much their fault as it is the fault of the Idiot-In-Chief. That is of course, a lot sooner than 2009 and has nothing to do with the next President.
I’m tired of all the excuses to the contrary, so save them.
There is no “if” a democrat becomes president. Who ever wins the Democratic nomination will be the next president.
I and others have been telling our democratic leaders that because this is Bush’s mess they should make Bush deal with ending it. They claim this is Bush’s war but they have been unwilling to do what is necessary to ‘force’ Bush to end it. Bush has boasted that he will make it impossible for the next president to leave Iraq a couple of years ago.
Bush is obsessed with how he will look in the history books and has been trying top find a way to make his war policy appear successful…no matter how long it takes. Democrats must know that he is trying to push his mess off on them to solve but do they see that he is currently in the process of sabotaging all possible ways to change his policy.
One of the ways that he believes will keep us in Iraq and the ME is to attack Iran. He is trying to escalate our involvement in the ME to the point that it would be impossible to leave. He actually believes this will make him look like a national hero with insight rather than an ego maniac who acts like a demagogue.
The future of our role and our involvement in Iraq and Iran, and the future of democracy in America is tied to this moment in time when the Democrats in the senate and the House have the power to withhold funding for the Bush operations.
The importance of this decision cannot be overestimated. Since Dems refused to impeach this is the ONLY way to stop the Bush plan. They will not get another chance because with the extra $50 bil Bush is demanding, he will attack Iran and then our options of dealing with ME will dwindle to almost nothing and Bush will get what he wants…We will not be able to withdraw from Iraq. We will thus be a Corporate Imperialistic Fascist state but we will still be in Iraq.
Bush is more concerned with how he and his war will be interpreted in the history books than he is with all the death destruction and chaos we will have to endure. This is the madness of power…his vision and reality don’t mix.
At this point, however, the president not only wants to stay the course between now and then, he also wants to figure out a way for the next president to also stay the course, whether they want to or not.
He isn’t smart enough.
End of story.
Here’s your recipe for a permanent Republican majority.
Bush and the neocon bastards get into a war and fail to accomplish their goals. So they keep it going until a Dem gets in the WH. When the Dem pulls us out of Iraq, the disaster that ensues — the one that was inevitable all along — is blamed on Dems for not staying the course. In the meantime, imagine Dems roll back some of the wiretapping/detention abuses of the Bush administration and we have another attack on US soil. Whether the attack is related to rolling back the abuses, Republicans blame the Dems again.
If the Dems fail to take the bait — say, they keep the war going and fail to roll back the abuses, they lose credibility among their own supporters and all of the draconian measures instituted by the Bush administration are undiminished, just waiting for a Republican to pick up in 2012 and nail the lid on the coffin of democracy as we knew it.
The piece that is missing from the memekiller, curmudgeon, et al. comments is Governor Richardson’s emphasis on diplomacy. We cannot mobilize the front-line and other Islamic states to form an All-Muslim security force as long as we have troops in Iraq. Period. That has been the sticking-point for the Bush/Rice “diplomacy” and it is not going to change. They don’t get in until we get out.
The same is true for the “political solution” that the !@!#!$#! Iraqis can’t seem to reach. As long as we are there, the Iraqi factions have every incentive to protect/extend their power and wait us out. If we leave, all that changes, and the pressure is on them to reach a settlement.
We should not accept the Republican framework of military action or nothing. Neither should we be stuck with arguing over how large the “residual forces” will be. Governor Richardson is correct to explore and formulate what a diplomatic strategy would look like. Good work.
Excellent post, Steve, especially about Bush’s a-historical mis-reading pf Eisenhower.
One quibble: I think we can now posit that the neo-con emphasis on war in the name of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights around the world is nothing more than a rhetorical gambit to hide the reality of their imperialistic vision. So I would say that what Bush has favored over stability in the Middle East isn’t freedom, it’s chaos.
First of all, I hate the term “young democracy”. What a stupid, stupid term.
Second, go back to Vietnam. Why do the DEMS get blamed? Didn’t Johnson, a Dem, handover the war in 1969 to Nixon, a Republican? Nixon campaigned on a platform of getting us out of Vietnam; he didn’t succeed to he handed the war off to Ford.
SO WHY DO THE DEMS get blamed for “losing” the Vietnam War??? Someone, please explain this to me.
By the same token, why would the Dems get blamed for “losing” the Iraq clusterfuck?
Doesn’t make sense.