Patience May Not Be An Option
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Will Public Pique Limit Bush's Time in Iraq?
By Robert Dallek
The Washington Post
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page B01
washingtonpost.com
Winston Churchill complained that democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the rest. Yet democracy's unwieldiness and inconveniences, not its relative virtues, must be very much on the mind of President Bush at the moment. In both Iraq and the United States, political realities are schooling him in the difficulties that American presidents have always faced in trying to plant U.S.-cultivated institutions in foreign soil while simultaneously mustering domestic support for overseas policies that carry significant costs in blood and treasure.
It is obvious to anyone who cares to see that transforming Iraq into anything resembling a constitutional democracy is a daunting -- maybe impossible -- task. An invented country divided by possibly unbridgeable religious and ethnic differences that were repressed by a ruthless dictator does not seem like fertile ground for the rational deliberations essential to a representative government. Iraq is not Germany or Japan, where those countries' past experience helped give birth to the robust democracies fashioned out of the devastation of World War II.
Given enough time and resources, the United States might be able to build something to our liking in Baghdad. Perhaps the Philippines is an appropriate analogy, but it took 48 years from our occupation of that smaller, more pliable country to our departure in 1946 for free institutions to begin to establish themselves. Nor should we forget the insurmountable difficulties to democratic nation building in countries closer to home such as the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua.
When Woodrow Wilson promised a British diplomat in 1913 that he would "teach the South American republics to elect good men," he was making a commitment he couldn't keep. Part of the problem was our reluctance to relinquish control to local authorities. We had little trust that the Latin American officials we dealt with knew or cared much about democracy. A similar dilemma faces us in Iraq. Last week, French President Jacques Chirac made "transfer of power" the mantra of the moment. But how can we transfer power to leaders whose commitments to constitutional government we understandably doubt? And yet without transferring power, how do you ever get the Western-style rule we insist on? We had no ready answers in Latin America; nor do we seem to now.
It would be foolish to believe that either the Iraqis or the American public would accept a multi-year timetable while the occupation plods along. Six months after U.S. and British forces decisively defeated Saddam Hussein's hapless armies, Iraqis are grumbling about the occupation and demanding that we provide an estimate of when they will realize self-governance.
The American public also is showing impatience with the Bush administration's calls for more time and money to reshape Iraq. The president's request for an additional $87 billion to meet the unrelenting challenges in Iraq has struck a sour note with millions of Americans. Dead soldiers can be wrapped in the flag, but the unheroic and unredeeming nature of the appropriations request somehow scraped the gloss off the war and made people think about all its costs. Virtually overnight, Mr. Bush's approval ratings have slipped to 50 percent, the lowest of his presidency; 47 percent disapprove of the job he is doing, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll last week. More than half of respondents said they disagree with Bush on issues they care most about. Unhappiness with his Iraq policies has registered more clearly in polls showing a drop in support for the war to 50 percent; 48 percent currently think the war was a poor idea.
Part of this change in sentiment stems from the failure to find weapons of mass destruction or demonstrate clear links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- the most heavily stressed reasons for going to war. But the continuing bloodshed and mayhem in Iraq are more powerful arguments to a majority of Americans that a long-term occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces is a bad idea. Pollsters tend to avoid the word "quagmire" because of its Vietnam overtones, but a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted Sept. 10 to 13 found that 85 percent of Americans are concerned that the United States "will get bogged down in a long and costly peacekeeping mission in Iraq." The percentage of those "very concerned" more than doubled since April.
The Bush administration correctly warns against a cut-and-run strategy. Leaving Iraq too soon or prematurely turning over power to the appointed Iraqi Governing Council or to the United Nations, U.S. officials predict, could bring chaos and an end to hopes for a democratic Iraq and a more stable Middle East. They also warn that if we don't confront terrorism in Iraq, we will make ourselves more vulnerable to it at home.
Judging from Bush's U.N. speech last Tuesday, which was addressed more to a domestic than an international audience, the White House understands that it has a problem with maintaining public support for an occupation that suffers almost daily casualties and seems unable to ensure uninterrupted delivery of electricity and economic stability.
The Bush administration's credibility problem is now three-fold: It cannot convince a majority of Americans that national security needs required the United States to go to war; that it has a reliable exit strategy or plan for bringing peace and democracy to Iraq in a reasonable period of time; and that the war and occupation of Iraq is not a slow-motion Vietnam.
No one who knows anything about America's failed war in Vietnam would argue that the struggle with Iraq is just like that conflict. American causalities in Iraq -- compared with Vietnam, where we ultimately lost more than 58,000 American lives -- are minuscule. No one discounts the more than 300 troops who have perished in Iraq, but it is hardly on a scale with the tens of thousands killed and wounded during 10 years of combat in the 1960s and '70s. What matters now, however, is that the struggle to achieve our goals in Iraq and then depart stands in the shadow of Vietnam. It took several years for a majority of Americans to oppose continuing military commitments to Saigon; indeed, it wasn't until after the communists' Tet Offensive in 1968 that most Americans began to doubt Lyndon B. Johnson's assurances of "light at the end of the tunnel." (Light at the end of the tunnel, ran a joke back then, is sometimes from an oncoming train.) Now, just six months into the current conflict, there is growing skepticism of assurances that seem all too reminiscent of Johnson's upbeat, but ultimately unconvincing, rhetoric about Vietnam.
The history of public opposition to past wars costly in dollars and lives should persuade the Bush administration that its days in power are numbered unless it finds a solution to the current challenge. Franklin D. Roosevelt held back from entering World War II until Pearl Harbor assured him of a stable consensus to fight a global war that would eventually cost the country more than 400,000 combat deaths. FDR's policy before December 1941 was anchored in the belief that he could not take the country into the war without firm public commitments to sacrifices. Though he could win majority support for a congressional declaration of war, he told the British ambassador in November 1941, he did not believe it sufficient to see the country through a long, difficult struggle.
The stalemate in Korea in 1951-52, after we crossed the 38th Parallel, destroyed Harry S. Truman's political support; he left office in January 1953 with only a 31 percent approval rating. Lyndon Johnson had to abandon plans to run for another term in 1968 after public opinion saw him as having misled the country about the need for and ability to fight a successful war against the communist insurgency in Vietnam.
What is to be done? Hardly anyone in the United States argues for a unilateral withdrawal from a chaotic Iraq. It would not only add to the instability in the Middle East but also undermine confidence in America's international leadership of the problems -- from terrorism to poverty -- that face the world community. The only politically viable course at home and abroad is for the Bush administration to accept U.N. demands for a principal role in addressing the terrible difficulties facing any nation or group of nations trying to bring stability to Iraq.
The administration's unilateral policies have been a serious error. Entering a war in Iraq without a genuine coalition of nations prepared to sacrifice lives and commit money to postwar reconstruction was a fundamental mistake that might yet be rectified with skillful diplomacy. Given the administration's track record, however, it is difficult to have much confidence that it will rise to the challenge. But if it doesn't, it will be watching from the outside after 2004 as a new U.S. government works to alter the course in Iraq and repair the damage done to America's reputation by an unwise and unsuccessful war to remake the Middle East.
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Author's e-mail: rdallek@aol.com
Robert Dallek, a professor of history at Boston University, is the author most recently of "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963" (Little Brown).
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