PRESIDENT BUSH’S speech today at Fort Bragg will try to convince Americans they should expect to be in Iraq for the long haul.
It is not an easy pitch. The weekend remarks by Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, did not make it much easier. Nor did the weak performance yesterday in London by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi Prime Minister.
It is sensible of Bush to have confronted the problem head-on. His policies at home have become bogged down — in a Congress controlled by his own party — far sooner than a second-term president would normally expect.
Foreign affairs are the natural refuge, and Bush is now wading through dozens of encounters with heads of state, even the loathed German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, who may well be on the losing side of elections in September.
But wherever Bush turns, there is Iraq. New polls show that support for the war is at an all-time low. Pollsters report hearing the word “Vietnam” often on the doorstop. In Congress, the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel keeps saying loudly that the US is losing. The past month’s violence in Iraq has prompted the Administration’s multi-pronged onslaught on public opinion. But the recent assertion by Vice-President Dick Cheney that the insurgency was in its “last throes” provoked such nationwide derision that, on its own, it demanded a follow-up.
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Rumsfeld’s first parry — saying that “throes” might mean a last shudder — fell flat. His dryness and linguistic suppleness, which won a cult following of its own in the early days of the war, is losing its power as his own status in Washington dwindles, damaged by Iraq and Abu Ghraib.
Rumsfeld’s second remark was realistic: that the insurgency might continue for 12 years and that the US will have forces there for some time, if not for the whole time. But it left dangling the question of how long that might be. The most convincing performance has come from General John Abizaid, the US’s top commander in the huge region of conflict which has Iraq at its centre. Abizaid, the Arabic-speaking, Harvard-educated general, has long been seen as a prize weapon for the US Administration’s public relations efforts - but given that, deployed surprisingly infrequently.
In the past week he has said, with useful frankness, that the insurgency was undiminished — contradicting Cheney — and that the US was talking to insurgents to try to coax some on to the Government’s side. Yesterday, speaking at a joint news conference with Tony Blair, Jaafari said that two years should be “more than enough” to establish security in his country, although he has also said he wants coalition troops to stay until Iraqi security forces can cope. He also insisted that the insurgency was fading, claiming that “we find the operations of the rebels are less and less”. He added that he had full confidence that the US-set timetable for writing the constitution and for elections would be met.
None of this is very credible. US officials, never keen on Jaafari as a leader, are increasingly nervous of his ability to tackle the tough questions which confront him: whether to respond to the US and British desire to see Sunnis given more influence; how to dissuade potential insurgents; how to do deals with Iraq’s neighbours; how to make most use of the US troops while they are there and how to prepare the way for their withdrawal.
The pressure on the Bush Administration to withdraw is rising. It is sensible of the Bush team, from the President downwards, to warn the public that troops will be in Iraq for some time — almost certainly beyond the mid-term elections in November next year. It is also sensible to have avoided giving a date.
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But by the mid-term elections, Bush will surely want to be able to tell Americans when the troops are coming home.