JULY 10, 2003
AFFAIRS OF STATE
By Stan Crock
Boxed In in Baghdad | With Bush facing rising troop casualties, slow rebuilding, and sliding approval ratings at home, his options are few -- and narrowing
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Every day, it seems, another GI is killed in Iraq. Shortages of electricity, drinking water, and gasoline are chronic. Turkey, Iran, and Syria are meddling in Iraqi affairs. And with oil flowing more slowly than expected, the stagnant economy has given Iraqis few tangible benefits from the U.S. intervention.
Small wonder that back in the U.S., the Democratic Presidential wannabes -- few of whom challenged the President duringthe war -- are now speaking out. On the left, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) argues for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible and replacing them with U.N. peacekeepers. On the right, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) wants more American troops on the ground in Baghdad, aided by foreign forces under a NATO mandate. A political and economic transformation of Iraq was supposed to pave the way for reform throughout the Middle East and help end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Instead, Bush has a morass on his hands.
"DRIP, DRIP, DRIP." Polls show public approval for George W. Bush and his handling of Iraq remain high, but support is slipping fast. According to a CNN/USA Today poll, the President's overall approval rating declined from 71% in mid-April, to 61% at the end of June. The percentage of those who think it was worth going to war in Iraq slumped from 76% on Apr. 9, to 56% in late June, while the percentage of those who think things are going very or moderately well in Iraq plummeted from 86% in early May, to 56% in late June.
Bush ignores these developments at his own political peril. "No one knows how long that patience will last with the American public," says Republican pollster Ed Goeas. "I don't think you can predict the impact of Iraq if there's a drip, drip, drip of casualties over a long period of time." (See BW Online, 7/7/03, "Is Bush a Shoo-In for '04? Not Yet".)
So what are the President's options?
Cut and run: That's essentially what President Ronald Reagan did in Beirut after a U.S. military barrack was bombed, killing more than 200 Marines, and what President Bill Clinton did in Somalia after U.S. troops suffered losses. But Washington hasn't yet found the weapons of mass destruction that provided the rationale for the war. Nor has the U.S. occupation nudged Baghdad toward a democracy.
Leaving abruptly with the tasks unfinished would make America look like it's being "chased by a bunch of hoodlums out of the Middle East," says the Brookings Institution's Ivo H. Daalder, a National Security Council staffer in the Clinton Administration. "That's just not an option for this President."
Escalation: With about 150,000 troops already on the ground, the U.S. doesn't have many more replacements to bring in. To maintain morale and preparedness, Army benchmarks say only one-quarter to one-third of active-duty combat troops should be deployed at any time, according to Brookings Institution defense analyst Michael E. O'Hanlon. But now roughly 70% of them are posted to hot spots from Iraq to Afghanistan to Korea -- two to three times the acceptable level. "We can't keep this up longer than 12 months," says retired General Barry R. McCaffrey, who predicts that the U.S. military could be in Iraq for up to a decade.
Calling up additional reserves is problematic as well. About a quarter of them already are on duty. And shipping out more reserves or National Guard forces would "really start hitting homeland security here," says Michael G. Vickers, director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. "Communities can't do without them very easily."
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Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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