For a better part of the past four years George Bush had been obsessed with a whole lot of things. One of his nonsensical themes, of course up until last week’s ISG report, was to persistently refer to “victory“ in Iraq and remind the tired world that his generals were doing a fantastic job in exporting democracy to the Arab nation by killing their women and children on a daily basis.
For instance, like a small child he enjoyed references to the “progress“ the Anglo-American invasion was making when actually most of his soldiers and commanders in Iraq were too busy trying not to get killed.
Several months ago in a major policy speech the US president declared that there would be no change in his Iraq policy. “We want to win, and I don’t want the troops to come home without having achieved victory. We are not going to cut and run. We are going to achieve our objective,“ he had said.
But this week Bush and his minions who have a key role in the slaughter of innocent Iraqi men, women and children ever since the illegal March 2003 invasion are talking about “a new way forward.“
It is not that they just learnt about the wholesale disaster unfolding in Iraq, or that, come what may, the US will never win this insane war. After all, things were going from bad to worse for the neocon enclave in Washington in the early stages of the military attack, and it had become clear to most regional watchers that America only stands to lose the war it started on false premise. For some strange reason the Bush White House had then presumed, and still does, that in time the pendulum will swing in its direction and all its domestic opponents and “terrorists, rogue states, axis of evil, atomic bomb-makersÉ.“ will be proved wrong.
Now both Bush and his legacy of trying to fix things with military force have turned out to be a big embarrassment and a humiliation to the world’s biggest economic and military power. As a result of Bush’s dangerous policies, occupied Iraq is sliding into full-fledged chaos and anarchy where hatred for the invaders, like death and destruction, is fast becoming a growth industry.
Reports today said Bush has decided to postpone the announcement of his new Iraq policy until 2007 and that his government for more reasons than one is not very keen on accepting the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) that were officially made public on Dec. 6.
Needless to say, for the neocons and their war lobbies it hardly matters that several more of their soldiers will return home in body bags in the next three weeks before real change (if any) is declared in their disastrous war policy. Accepting ISG prescriptions in actuality means the Bush team must accept defeat, and this America’s admittedly worst president is not willing to do, at least for now.
Iraqis and informed public opinion in our part of the world did not have to wait for the ISG to confirm that the US for all practical purpose is fighting an unwinnable war or that there “is no path that can guarantee success“ for Uncle Sam and his children in the Iraqi desert. The final product of the Baker-Hamilton pooling of minds has everything to do with salvaging US interest and whatever remains of its credibility in the strategic region. There is nothing in the report about helping defend Iraqi interest or the future of its oppressed people.
Looking at ground realities across continents, traditional bastions of US power and influence in particular, the only reasonable definition one can give about Bush’s America is that it is diminishing. After all with Bush at the helm the embattled superpower has nowhere to go but down.
One day in the not-too-distant future, the US will get out of Iraq and then the world will get to see the full scale of how American power and prestige has diminished largely due to Bush’s foreign policy set in motion since 2001.