Blood in the Water

It is now commonly recognized that George W. Bush’s Iraq policy has degenerated into a cynical, nakedly political election year exercise.

Ted Kennedy, UN insiders, and even clerics in far-off Iraq have declared that the hastily conceived and continually revised plans for the Iraq transition are nothing more than a frantic effort to distance Bush and his re-election hopes from the ongoing, accelerating collapse of the shaky, shoddily-constructed edifice that is post-Saddam Iraq.

Bush has thereby forfeited the “politics stops at the water’s edge” privilege and protection that the president’s foreign policy has traditionally enjoyed from the political opposition and the press.

For Bush, heightened critical scrutiny of his Iraq adventure could not come at a worse time.

The wheels are coming off the George W. Bush warmobile. The allegations about the al-Qaeda links and WMDs that propelled us into the war have gone spinning into the ditch. Last week, Paul O’Neill’s revelations about the continual, obsessive planning for an Iraq invasion that commenced immediately after Bush took office exploded the myth that “9/11 changed everything” and sent our newly awakened and aroused world warriors charging into Mesopotamia.

The once-triumphal White House chariot is now scraping along on the single wobbly wheel that “nothing really changed” and Bush was doing little more than carrying out the ferocious regime change policy of — hold on to your hats — Bill Clinton.

The fact that George W. Bush has to lean on Bill Clinton — whose foreign policy he despised and did everything possible to reverse, apparently as much out of malice as of conviction — should be considered a sign of desperation.

The depth of Bush’s desperation is readily apparent when one examines the Iraq Liberation Act under which Clinton unenthusiastically conducted his Iraq policy. It specifically forbids the use of U.S. military force and allocates a measly $92 million in Defense Department logistical support for those wonderful Iraq exile groups.

No, George has dragged his administration far out on a rotten limb. He’s sitting out there with no credible legal support for his invasion of Iraq. His only political strategy now is to beg the Congress, media, and American people not to saw that limb off because “Saddam was a very very very bad man” and everybody — even Bill and Hillary! - agreed that Saddam was a very very very very bad man.

But we didn’t go into Iraq because Saddam was very bad. Or because a full-bore invasion was necessary, good, prudent, justifiable, or defendable.

We only went in because George W. Bush thought it would be easy.

In the aftermath of a quick, overwhelming success no one would care to — or dare to — question the stated motives for the war.

Bush thought that come November 2004 he would be the conqueror of Baghdad, lawgiver to the Palestinians, and acknowledged overlord of the Syrians and Iranians. He’d be crowing from his dunghill while the Democratic Party and American people kissed his feet with desperate humility to offer him a second term of office.

How could we screw up the conquest of a country that we had already defeated in the first Gulf War, and that had only gotten weaker since then? We already exercised de facto control of one-third through our Kurdish proxies, bombed Iraq’s infrastructure at will, and crushed the country to Third World levels through sanctions. Many Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, with good reason.

Well, George W. Bush did screw it up. We got rid of Saddam just like we wanted to get rid of him — in the worst possible way.

The cost to date is counted in thousands of American lives lost or shattered, hundreds of billions of dollars flung into a sinkhole of waste and corruption, and the erosion of the United States’ international credibility and diplomatic and military stature.

In a disastrous piece of political synchronicity for Bush, his Iraq adventure is unraveling even as its legal justifications evaporate.

In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Sistani brushed aside US attempts to patronize and sideline him in order to conduct stage-managed caucus elections and put 30,000 followers on the streets of Basra demanding one man one vote.

In New York, the Bush administration is crawling to the UN and groveling before France and Russia in an attempt to get UN backing for the caucus plan that might turn out to be DOA anyway.

In Iowa, the Democrats are slugging it out as if they realize that Bush is vulnerable and the Democratic nomination is something worth fighting for.

Bush’s blunders demand the ultimate political sanction — from the elites, the media, and the voters.

He should not be judged by the consequences of his policies inside Iraq — neither the limited, transitory, and almost accidental benefits nor the conspicuous, bloody, and catastrophic failures.

He must be judged by the disastrous consequences for American prestige, interests, and institutions of his Iraq folly.

At first, the Iraq war was George W. Bush’s brilliant political charade; then it was the political liability that he could shrug off given sufficient bombs and bluster; now it’s the political crime — the blunder — that may destroy him.

There’s blood in the water. George W. Bush poured it in, thinking he would profit from the ensuing frenzy. Now the sharks are circling, and he may be devoured himself instead.

That’s irony.

That’s justice.