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Bush at war with public's doubt« Thread Started on Mar 19, 2

Daily newsbrief journal for March 2006, also see http://www.usdemocrats.com/brief for a global 100-page perpetual brief and follow twitter @usdemocrats


Bush at war with public's doubt« Thread Started on Mar 19, 2

Postby admin » Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:54 am

Bush at war with public's doubt« Thread Started on Mar 19, 2006, 5:44am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bush at war with public's doubtEmail Print Normal font Large font By Michael Gawenda, WashingtonMarch 18, 2006read source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/bus ... ertisement"AMERICA is at war. This is a wartime national security strategy required by the grave challenges we face. This strategy reflects our most solemn obligation: to protect the security of the American people."On the third anniversary of war in Iraq, George Bush looks and sounds like a president who goes to bed and wakes wondering whether the patience he has asked and indeed pleaded for from Americans will be forthcoming.The Bush swagger — that strange, stiff-shouldered walk, chest out, arms by his side — is rarely to be seen. Mr Bush looks gaunt, his hair greyer than it was a year ago, the easy banter with the media and carefully selected audiences mostly gone.But the war that Mr Bush was referring to in those first stark sentences of the Administration's 2006 National Security Strategy, released this week, was not the war in Iraq. It was the war on terror that began with the attacks on September 11, 2001.That war, according to Mr Bush, is about spreading freedom and democracy around the world, and "because free nations tend towards peace, the advance of liberty will make Americans more secure".The politics is clear: the best, and perhaps the only, hope that Mr Bush has of keeping some support among Americans for the involvement in Iraq is to link it to the wider war on terror.His poll numbers on Iraq are at about the level of Richard Nixon's just before he resigned in disgrace in 1974, but on keeping America safe he still polls just over 50 per cent — and crucially, still does better than the Democrats.That doesn't say much. Isolationism, protectionism, even nativism are on the march. That's what the Dubai ports controversy was all about. That's what the debate about illegal immigrants is about. That's what you often hear when you talk to Americans of all political persuasions. They say that all America gets for its efforts to spread democracy and liberty is hostility.That's why Mr Bush, in virtually all his recent speeches, including his statement on the 2006 National Security Strategy, warns against Americans "choosing the path of fear".The war in Iraq has left most Americans with no great faith that Mr Bush — or, for that matter, Congress — can turn things around any time soon.Administration officials were at pains to say that the 2006 National Security Strategy did not represent a major change from the controversial 2002 strategy, which spelt out post-September 11 US foreign policy, based on America's pre-eminent military and pre-emptive strikes against rogue states.But in fact, policy has shifted significantly. Gone from the 2006 document is the confidence in America's influence in the world and the faith that America's strength can be used to deal with the terrorist threat and the dangers of rogue states.In place of the unilateralism and disdain for diplomacy and international institutions of the neo-conservatives who so influenced the first Bush Administration, there is now a focus on diplomacy, the sort of diplomacy Condoleezza Rice has described as "transformational".The question is whether this change has come too late and whether it can deal with the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program.When asked about the impact of the Iraq war on US foreign policy, Richard Haass, president of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, said it had been clearly negative."The war has absorbed a tremendous amount of US military capacity, the result being that the United States has far less spare or available capacity, not just in the active sense, but to exploit in the diplomatic sense," he said. "It has therefore weakened our position against both Iran and North Korea."The Haass view is widely shared in Washington, where even the most ardent supporters of war and the Administration now agree that the serious blunders made in the way the war was fought and during the occupation have called the Administration's competence into question.David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times and a strong supporter of the war, this week described Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a "pathetic figure" who ignored his generals and expressed contempt for those with different views to his, and as a result got everything about the war wrong.The debate has moved beyond the question of whether or not the Administration selectively used intelligence about Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. It is about whether, in light of the mounting evidence of the Administration's incompetence, it can be trusted with looming foreign policy challenges, from Iran in particular.There are signs in Washington that even while the war in Iraq hangs in the balance, even while the suggestion of major troop withdrawals this year seems far-fetched, the efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program will inevitably fail.When that becomes clear, officials suggest, the only option left for the US will be a military one. That may be some time off, these officials say, but there's little doubt that planning is under way at the Pentagon.But the legacy of Iraq is that a clear majority of Americans, no matter what Mr Bush said, would oppose military action against Iran. On this third anniversary of the start of war in Iraq, what a majority of Americans want is out — as quickly as possible. They are not yet saying get out now, whatever the consequences, but unless things improve, that may come soon.
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