So What’s New?
Okay, let’s review. Our Democratic congressional majority reverted to ineffectual form this week and acknowledged that they were ready to make concessions to end an impasse with President Bush over war spending after the Senate soundly rejected a Democratic plan to block money for major combat operations in Iraq beginning next spring.
The 67-to-29 vote (which included 19 Democrats joining 47 Republicans and one independent against the measure), which we should remember was, at best, symbolic, demonstrated that a significant majority of Senators remained unwilling to demand a withdrawal of forces despite their own misgivings and public unease over the war.
Even some of those who supported the measure tried to explain away their support. Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham sought to distance herself from the amendment by stressing its procedural nature,
So, the war and the killing continue. Is there any reason to hope? Not really. Consider what passes for good news.
On May 16 the White House officials announced, after a long search and many rejections, that they had filled a new job to manage and oversee the Iraq and Afghan wars. Finally! The man they tapped: Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute. He has been serving as chief operations officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He will coordinate policy among government agencies, including the Pentagon and the State Department. He’ll report directly to President Bush and will serve under National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Of course, in theory, this is the job description of Hadley himself. But supposedly he has more important things to do. Really; what could be more important?
But let’s suppose Hadley really has bigger fish to fry. Can Lute really accomplish anything useful? Consider what Leon Panetta, a member of the Iraq Study Group and White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration, said on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
LEON PANETTA: Well, you know, I have a very high regard for General Lute, and I’m sure this is being done under the best of intentions, but I’m afraid it’s not going to work. First of all, I don’t think the national security adviser can contract out the responsibility that that person has to coordinate policy. I mean, that is the role of national security adviser. Iraq just happens to be the most important issue that they’re dealing with. It’s probably about 80 percent affecting our foreign policy abroad. This really needs to be the role of the national security adviser.
But wait, as they say in commercials, there’s more. Lute himself, by all accounts, believes, along with virtually everyone else — the Joint Chiefs; Adm. Fallon, the head of the Central Command; Gen. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq– that there is no military solution. In fact, he opposed the surge of troops to Iraq. So, at least with respect to Iraq, he will be asked to oversee and improve a policy that he personally doesn’t believe in. There is, of course, such a thing as being a good soldier but this is ridiculous.
Perhaps we are just supposed to wait and have faith in Lute, as we are supposed to do for the surge. But there is not much reason to have faith in that either. Consider this ending paragraph in the excellent article by Nir Rosen in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine:
Barbara Bodine, a longtime U.S. diplomat in the region who was brought in to be the temporary “mayor” of Baghdad in 2003, told me there was a simple reason for the White House’s denial of a refugee crisis: “When you affirm you have refugees and I.D.P.’s” — internally displaced persons — “you are admitting that the average Iraqi has little or no expectation that Bush’s surge can reverse a security situation that has spun utterly out of control. This is not a loss of faith in Iraq, per se, but in the current governments of Iraq and Washington.”
Finally, consider that this week saw the launch of a new think tank in Washington, the American Security Project. During their event at the National Press Club they released the results of its 2000-voter survey on national security attitudes. It found that a large majority of Americans (62%) believe that we are currently losing the war in Iraq. Nearly six in ten Americans (57%) do not think the war in Iraq was worth fighting.
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