The stubborn truth in Iraq
PRESIDENT BUSH is becoming his own most damning critic. That is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from his recent insistence that ''on the big decisions" he made about the Iraq war, he would, even with the benefit of hindsight, ''have done it again."
To give the president his due, he acknowledged Monday to the Orange County Business Council in Irvine, Calif., that some mistakes were made. Those he cited, however, were of the unforeseeable kind. Bush evoked a military dictum, saying ''every war plan is perfect until it meets the enemy," to absolve himself of true responsibility for the errors he conceded. These were the errors of ''preparing an Iraqi army for an external threat" instead of the ''internal threat" it now must face, and undertaking big reconstruction projects too soon which then became ''convenient targets for the enemy."
Even as Bush tries to show he is not oblivious to all criticism, however, he has chosen to reject the central points made by a growing number of retired generals and diplomats. They are saying that the crucial blunders -- postwar looting, the hollowness of Iraqi state institutions, the need for at least 400,000 troops to provide security in the immediate post-combat period, the dangers of sectarian conflict, and the infiltration of jihadists from abroad -- were not merely foreseeable but foreseen.
When Bush insists he would still do things the same way, the implicit message is that he still thinks he was right to disregard reality. This was the reality reflected in analyses and advice from military professionals who knew from experience what to expect in the event of a postwar occupation and from Iraq specialists who understood the political, ethnic, religious, and tribal factors specific to Iraq.
Bush has become his own worst critic because of his refusal to seize the many chances he had to adapt his policies to the evidence of chaos in Iraq as the weeks turned into months and the months into years. If Bush is seen today as an incompetent leader, it is primarily because of this stubborn refusal to face reality in Iraq -- a trait that also explains his failures to cope with nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran and the budget deficits exacerbated by his irresponsible tax cuts.
A bipartisan congressional task force called the Iraq Study Group, headed by former secretary of state James Baker, may at last give Bush a face-saving way of coming to terms with reality in Iraq. Before the war, Baker openly warned against the dangers of a unilateral invasion of Iraq and an extended occupation of the country. He is the embodiment of old-school foreign policy realism. That school produced its own depredations, but not out of a refusal to face realities. It is time for Bush to listen to the grown-ups.
