Shame on the Bush Administration

11/30/2005

Paul Munnis

Democrats and indeed all Americans should take a moment to pause and celebrate the release of the Iraqi War Plan by the Bush Administration. It has been missing for three years and creating and releasing a public plan was vigorously opposed by the Bush Administration. Such a plan sets criteria for managing and ending the war in Iraq. The lack of such a plan for over three years while the war was being conducted will be recorded in history as a major shortcoming of the Bush Administration. The Bush people should really be ashamed of themselves. Once Democrats lead the fight and the American people joined in and demanded a plan, then it took only a matter of a few weeks to produce and to release one.

In Annapolis, in front of the U.S. Naval Academy cadets, Mr. Bush delivered a powerful sales speech in which he tried to sell the American people on continuing the War in Iraq. The fact that he had to do so is proof enough of a president who has lost the argument to critics who questioned the various risks versus the rewards of “staying the course,” while others are looking hard at the cost/benefit analysis of continuing this war. The degree to which these two factors can be derived and assured from an evaluation of the speech and examination of the plan will determine the future of the War in Iraq. We have provided a link to the War Plan below and we have published a transcript of the speech under POLITICS. Thus our readers can begin their own evaluations.

An honest national discussion can now take place concerning the aims and objectives of the Iraqi War effort. Just a simple thing like defining the meaning of “Victory,” is critical. Nobody has understood the Bush-babble of “Winning the War in Iraq...” for some three years now, Mr. Bush has never defined what it is that he is trying to win and he has changed his definition so many times that it seems like a revolving door. Even the White House and the Pentagon staff could not define what it meant to “win” in Iraq. Now “Victory,” is defined and thus it can be measured.

Critics will complain about the lack of a time-line but a time-line can be a virtual timeline, especially in strategic planning, and can be defined as a series of milestones to be accomplished. That is what has been done in this plan. Both monetary and human resource cost levels are needed in a plan of this nature too and those should establish a ceiling for the war costs. Such cost targets should define the number of soldiers that we are willing to see die to support our War in Iraq. The goals and the cost of war have to be spelled out in the war plan - something badly lacking for three years now from the Bush Administration.

When a plan is defined in such a cold blooded manner, the value of human life is suddenly quantified and the stark realities of war begin to register upon the public. Photos of coffins containing the remains of U.S. soldiers now take on a new meaning as evidence of the cost of war. The objectives of the war can then be evaluated in context of sacrifice and we the people can decide if we support the war effort or not.

A legacy plan is also a key element of a strategic plan and it defines what you plan to leave behind as an inheritance. Mr. Bush seems to keep coming back to two major legacies for the Iraq War:

- the elimination, or at least the containment, of “terrorism,” and

- the establishment of Democracy as a form of government in the mid-east region and in Iraq in particular.

The war is already lost to the last point of these two goals since a non-democratic and theocratic form of government for Iraq has been chosen by virtue of their Constitutional Convention while the subsequent vote to accept the Iraqi Constitution has legitimitized it and the U.S. has accepted the outcome.

As such, in the mid-east region, it is now an established fact that a theocratic and Islamic form of governance is okay with the USA. That is exactly the governmental form that is in place across the mid-east region for governanace right now, for example Iran uses it. The Bush Administration accepts this and has aligned our forces with it. Thus it would seem that we have no more beef over the form of government in the mid-east. Yet that was not the stated goal of Mr. Bush. He says that he wants to introduce representative government and freedom of choice to Iraq and the region. He has clearly lost those goals already in Iraq.

This is why Mr. Bush has not created a public plan. He can be held accountable for the plan and he can be measured upon it and it’s all in writing.

As another example, it is odd that Mr. Bush defined success of the war as meeting a goal of providing a Democratic government in Iraq. Women’s rights in politics ia a hallmark of freedom and democracy when present and is a marker of oppression when not present. If not present then you do not have a representative form of democracy for all of the people of Iraq. In Iraq a church run state has been established and women do not have the right of full representation because the Church forbids it. That is not a democratic government. Thus Mr. Bush has lost another goal of representative democracy for Iraq. At the same time he has ratified his acceptance of the Iranian form of government which is where Iraq is now headed towards.

Minority rights are another hallmark of a democratic form of government yet recent deaths, shootings, reprisals, and torture of minority Sunni’s by majority Shiites is not what America should be championing as being democracy in Iraq or in the mid-east region.  Mr. Bush has lost the goal of a government for “all Iraqi’s,” and because he has lost that goal a civil war is now in progress in Iraq.

That will likely explain, at least in part, Mr. Bush’s behavior towards our own U.S. Constitution where he seeks to eliminate the provisions of separation of church and state, his denigration of a woman’s right to choose, plus his Party’s unwillingness to permit minority representation. He is not that far fom accepting Islamic law as being his choice for America.

In Iraq this lack of separation of church and state is causing a civil war to erupt and also is forcing the U.S. to align itself with a particular religious faction, the Shiites. This is the antithesis of representative democracy and nation building and thus Mr. Bush has lost many of the key goals of a democratic government for Iraq already. May we thus conclude that this then is mere rhetoric on his behalf, an appeal to emotion and not to reason? I think that we can safely reach those conclusions and such the conclusion is based upon his stated goals.

We are approaching a time period where the Iraq War will exceed the time period for both the War against Japan and the Korean War. Committing our nation, our people and our resources to a war of occupation for a long period of time requires a full explanation to the citizens of our nation and to his shame that has not been forthcoming from Mr. Bush. Now finally we have something that we can begin to use as a basis for a national discussion and to determine if the war is worth fighting and what the costs will be.

Imagine spending $300 billion dollars and destroying the lives of 2,100 of American soldiers without a plan for victory. It took three years to wring a plan out of Mr. Bush and it is indeed shameful.

The Bush Administration should be ashamed that the voters of America had to demand a War Plan from his office and had to threaten to force his resignation in order to get it. This document should have been available simultaneously with the invasion of Iraq.

The 38 page plan can be read at the link below:
http://www.TheRochesterDemocrat.com/ee/IRAQ_Strategy.pdf

The real debate can now begin and a lot of hard-nosed evaluations can happen. Bush has not yet sold his plan, he has merely offered it and in that sense he has regressed to where he was before the invasion of Iraq took place. He needs to justify his War in Iraq all over again and this time without the rhetoric and fear factors of WMD. People are nearing the end of their patience on this subject.