American Voters Must Not Reward Failure

by Ramzy Baroud

"The Bush administration, its faithful strategists and PR managers have done their utmost to carry out the president’s vision for a new Iraq that would serve as an icon of democracy for a new Middle East, and have worked tirelessly to sell the ‘achievements’ of the administration to an unimpressed public, who slowly but determinately realized that that the Iraq war was a colossal mistake.

I do remember the days when I predicted similar scenarios to what is taking place today, only to be shouted out by right wing radio show hosts, for my apparent lack of patriotism. Now the president himself, accompanied by leading army generals and senators, is saying more or less what progressive writers and intellectuals have contended for years: Bush is finally seeing some similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, and top American officials are candidly talking of Iraq as a ‘’problem’ and a ‘very difficult’ one at that. (A similar storm was unleashed in Britain when General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff, said in a newspaper interview that the presence of foreign troops might be "exacerbating" the situation in Iraq.)

But why did it take the Bush administration all of this time to reach such a simple conclusion, that was deduced by almost three quarters of the US population before it was inferred by the administration itself? Did 650,000 Iraqi and nearly 2,800 American lives have to be wasted in order for the president to summon General John Abizaid, overall US commander for the Middle East, and General George Casey, in command of the American troops in Iraq, to discuss the country’s other options out of the quagmire?

But I am still not sure why the situation is critical now, as opposed to last March, for example. Is it a last resort change of strategy prior to the US legislative mid-term elections? The Republicans are trailing in the polls and a deciding factor in that is their botched Iraq strategy; maybe a more pragmatic president who appreciates the intensity of the crisis and is doing his outmost to face it is the best image that Bush’s advisors can conjure up at such short notice. It’s anything but one of Karl Rove’s other ‘genius’ ideas, but is certainly worth the effort. On November 7, however, only the American voter has the power to decide: whether to reward failure or to gracefully search for a way out."