BECAUSE HIS policies are so badly off track, President Bush's repeated assurances that he will soldier on through hard times sound more like folly than fortitude. "We will stay the course," he has said time and again. After Nicholas Berg was killed in Iraq, Bush repeated his resolve: "We will complete our mission. We will complete our task."
Perseverance is an admirable quality in a national leader facing difficult challenges to a policy that is fundamentally sound. Churchill comes to mind. But when the policy is wrong, perseverance compounds the problem, often disastrously.
The United States has been forced to make some adjustments. Rather than storm Fallujah to avenge the mutilation murders of four American contract workers, US forces held back and gave Iraqis the task of securing the city, even if they don't avenge the murders. But this is an exception. Sovereignty is slated to transfer to an Iraqi council in six weeks, but more than 100,000 US troops are likely to stay in Iraq for a year or more.
As the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal has unfolded, Bush has said repeatedly that the actions of a few are contrary to American values. But many in Iraq, in other Arab countries, in Europe, and elsewhere see the humiliating tactics as of a piece with Bush's swaggering, presumptuous foreign policy.
Much of the world supported Bush's assault on Al Qaeda and the Taliban after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. When progress in that campaign slowed, however, Bush invaded Iraq, portraying his mission there as the central focus of the war on terror. But who can doubt that Al Qaeda is more active in Iraq now than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, and that more of the world today distrusts America?
Throughout his presidency, Bush has been reluctant to admit error on a range of issues. This is fine to a point. No one wants a president who is the abnegator in chief. But the one thing worse than a president with a faulty policy is a president who refuses to recognize failure and change direction.
boston.com |
