Baghdad, 2003

23 November 2006 |permalink | email article

On Sunday the war in Iraq will surpass World War II in duration. The United States is losing this one and, as Henry Kissinger reminds us, “democracy is out of reach.” So it is not surprising that the Bush administration is being forced into a face-saving reality check, and not a moment too soon.

The New York Times reported on Thanksgiving Day that three years ago this week President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad and told troops that the U.S. did not wage a bloody war to depose Saddam Hussein “only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.”

Well, yesterday, explosions from car bombs and a mortar shell tore through crowded intersections of a Shiite district in Baghdad, killing at least 144 people and wounding 206. It was the deadliest sectarian violence since the fall of Hussein. Despite the president’s bravado in 2003, the search for a solution to address the quagmire in Iraq becomes more elusive.

Next week, the president will meet with Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq to discuss giving Iraqis more control of security forces and deal with the new political realities both in the region and Washington. The meeting will not take place in Baghdad, as one might expect, but in Amman, Jordan on the given assumption that Jordan is supportive of a unity government in Iraq.

Given Maliki’s strong political ties and unswerving loyalty to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, a sworn enemy of the U.S., doubts about whether the meeting will be little more than a photo-op to imply progress are rampant.

Predictably, Vice President Cheney will go to Saudi Arabia this weekend to solicit the views of the House of Saud, which has had a long-term relationship with Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger.

But the cozy Bush alliance with oil-rich Arab nations during the successful Persian Gulf war when a worldwide coalition drove Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait in 1991 is crumbling in the region.

At a leadership conference this week in Abu Dhabi where he spoke, Bush 41 engaged in a testy exchange with members of the audience, one of whom said “we do not respect what he (Bush 43) is doing all over the world.”

While others in the audience, according to the Associated Press, whooped and whistled approval, the stunned father defended his son.
“My son is an honest man…This son is not going to back away. He’s not going to change his view because some poll says this or some poll says that…” That’s the double-speak problem the patrician father and prodigal son have long had in dealing with reality.

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