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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (710186)	11/1/2005 9:43:08 AM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The most scurrilous alibi, however, blames our difficulties on eroding public support at home. Grieving antiwar mother Cindy Sheehan gets pilloried by right-wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and President Bush declares that Americans who favor withdrawing “are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.” Similarly, neoconservative pundit Max Boot recently maintained that Iraqi democracy would survive its birth pangs only “if we don’t cut and run prematurely.” So, we are told, “staying the course” will work, unless we are forced to pull out by weak-willed critics back home. This argument is a clever bit of political jujitsu, because it in effect blames any future defeat on the people who have long contended that the war was unnecessary and unwise. But it is also a bogus excuse. In a democracy, a commander in chief who wants to go to war is responsible for building and maintaining public support for sending our sons and daughters into harm’s way. President Bush sold the war brilliantly before the fighting started, but his sales pitch could not survive the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the embarrassing revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib, the bungled occupation, the mounting list of dead and wounded, and the rising economic toll. Most of all, this rationale highlights the conspicuous lack of a plausible theory of victory now. We are not losing because our troops lack public support. The war lacks support because we are losing. If our Iraq adventure ends badly, there will be ample blame to go around. But the buck should stop, as President Harry Truman famously said, in the Oval Office. President Bush was quick to claim credit when things were going well, and he cannot escape blame when things turn ugly. This is President Bush’s war, and America’s failure will be his legacy. foreignpolicy.com