[Mb-civic] Bush should tell America the truth - Telegraph

[Alexander Harper]

Well, I know that all of us and millions of Americans (and others all over the globe) have been saying this for a very long time now. What makes it interesting this time is that it is The Daily Telegraph, the UK's leading quality right-wing broadsheet, which is making the point.

It gives me absolutely no satisfaction that we on this bulletin board can all say 'we told you so' but just about everything that has happened in Iraq was predictable - and was predicted - before the invasion. If only the likes of Colin Powell (I have still not forgiven him, let alone Tony Blair - they both knew the truth) would have made a stand when it mattered, Bush and his neocons and his 'Christian Talibans' might not have gone for it. Now we are well and truly buggered. If we cut and run from Iraq Vietnam-style then God alone knows what the consequences will be - actually we are getting a taste of them every day. Probably they (our governments) will end up cutting a deal with the 'bad guys' and we will with a great democratic fanfare foist a Sadaam mark II on the Iraqis.

Al Baraka

Mr Bush must start to tell America the truth 
By Patrick Bishop
(Filed: 22/08/2005)

Iraq's parliamentarians have been struggling to agree on a draft constitution. If they fail, the current assembly is supposed to dissolve, seriously undermining claims that, behind the obscuring smoke of the insurgency, real political progress is being made. If they succeed, we can expect more bright talk from Washington and London that the Iraq project is on track and that the attendant sacrifices are worth it.

 

Dodgy rhetoric and tactical silences have been an enduring feature of the enterprise. Doublespeak was employed to get us into the war. Subsequent progress reports have been bathed in high-beam optimism. When nothing good can be found to say, the policy has been to say nothing at all.

An honest assessment of what is happening in Iraq has to conclude that things are very bad indeed. Iraqis were promised a democratic wonderland. Many, especially in the capital, find themselves trapped in a waking nightmare of violence, fear and uncertainty. They have been saved from Saddam Hussein only to fall victim to a multitude of mini-monsters who are even more contemptuous of human life.

The reports in this newspaper of Thomas Harding and Oliver Poole from Baghdad tell of a world where security is virtually non-existent. Leaving one's home means risking death or injury from roadside blasts, suicide bombers or misdirected American fire. Staying indoors is not much safer.

Shia on Sunni and Sunni on Shia tit-for-tat killings are common. Kidnap gangs prey on anyone they reckon to be good for the ransom money. It is no wonder that so many are leaving. The Mansour district of Baghdad, once home to the wealthy, has emptied. Perhaps 150,000 have taken refuge next door in Jordan, sitting it out until they reckon it is safe to return. They are businessmen, doctors, lawyers - precisely the professionals needed to create the modern democracy that George W Bush and Tony Blair hoped for.

Daily life is an ordeal, especially now that the dead heat of summer lies heavy on the city. Electricity is on for one hour in six. Petrol is rationed to one tankful every five days. A tiny scrap of good news is that water supplies are back to normal. The suicide bombers seem to be less active than usual - but that may just be because they are keeping their powder dry for a post-constitution blitz.

On Saturday night a group of journalists was searching for some patch of sunlight among the stacked cumulo-nimbus of gloom. "Depressingly, sadly, disappointingly, we had to admit that nothing is getting better," said one.

Outside the capital, life may be more secure but this has little to do with the rule of law. In many areas local militias are in control, free to act more or less as they wish. In the British sector around Basra the army has gone for an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem and the streets are under the harsh authority of Shia fundamentalists.

The occupiers can hardly protect themselves, let alone those they came to liberate. Government takes place behind the blast walls of the Green Zone.

The insurgents have maintained a steady kill-rate against the American troops. The past 30 days have been among the most bloody months of the war. At least 42 of those killed were National Guard and reserve troops, thereby bringing the impact of the war still closer to US towns. The 2,000 mark of war dead will soon be passed.

The most depressing trend for journalists on the ground is the decline of hope. "People used to say 'things will get better when Saddam is captured', then 'things will get better when we have elections' or 'when we get a constitution'," said one. "Now the 'whens' are running out."

Given the awfulness of the situation, the least we are entitled to expect from the war's architects is some honesty. Instead the Bush team has peddled ludicrous optimism while surreptitiously rubbishing those who supported the war but are now worried about where it is going as wimps and turncoats.

For a man who likes to radiate bluff candour, President Bush is remarkably reluctant to talk straight with the American public about Iraq.

This weekend, at the start of a five-day campaign to persuade the public of the need to carry on, he made a few concessions to reality, mentioning those who had died. The administration has tended to regard the dead as something of an embarrassment.

But he went on to claim that fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq meant greater safety at home. The troops, he said in a radio talk, "know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets". The preposterous idea that it had been part of the plan all along to turn Iraq into a cockpit where America's enemies would flock to be exterminated was floated by American officials in Baghdad a few months after the insurgency began and was regarded then as a post facto fiction. It is now official policy.

The idea is to ram into American minds the notion that the Iraq war is an inescapable consequence of the events of 9/11. Mr Bush's assertion is echoed more succinctly in I Raq and Roll, by country musician Clint Black, which includes the line "our troops take out the garbage for the good old USA". Mr Black will be singing at the end of a Freedom Walk due to be held in Washington on September 11 to commemorate both the dead of that day and the casualties of the wars that followed, the most blatant attempt yet to establish a link.

The signs are that Americans are becoming less willing to accept government assurances that its policy in Iraq is sound. In a recent Gallup poll, 57 per cent of those questioned thought the war had made America less safe from terrorism.

The protest of Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in Iraq and who set up camp outside the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, is striking a sympathetic chord with more and more Americans. By and large, the administration has been gently handled by the media over its conduct of the war, in deference to the post-9/11 mood of national solidarity. That restraint is breaking down.

Some in Mr Bush's own party are getting restless. "Any effort to explain Iraq as 'we are on track and making progress' is nonsense," said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican leader of the house, recently.

If Mr Bush is to retain national support for the war, he has to start telling the truth. The first thing he should admit is that the goals he set for Iraq are never going to be achieved. This weekend, American officials trying to bang Shia, Kurdish and Sunni heads together at the constitutional talks dropped their opposition to having Islam enshrined in the basic law as "the" main source of legislation and not just "a" main source. So much for a modern democracy.

The President should also say clearly that the Iraqi police and army are many months away from taking responsibility for national security and that more American blood will be spilled and many more tears shed before US troops can honourably leave. 

Events in Iraq are going badly wrong. It is only by admitting as much that Bush stands any chance of putting them right.

 
 
 

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