[More on George W Bush]
WASHINGTON — For a man trying to convince Americans that he has a way out of Iraq, President George W. Bush had an unusual way yesterday of going about it.
He offered no timetables for withdrawal, no new benchmarks for when that could start and not a word about a possible drawdown next year, as others in his administration have hinted at in recent days.
In fact, Bush even appeared to raise the bar on what it would take to bring American troops out of Iraq — saying he would settle for nothing less than "complete victory," something he admitted would be hard to detect and harder to achieve.
It has been one of the vexing questions of this war — what will victory look like against a seemingly implacable insurgency no less deadly today than a year ago?
Bush offered his own definition yesterday — an Iraq that is "peaceful, united, stable and secure," according to his 35-page White House strategy document. Right now, most American generals probably would settle for just one of those, let alone all four.
Some experts yesterday questioned whether Bush had set his sights too high in a land as violent and fractious as Iraq by talking of "complete victory." That complicates efforts to start bringing troops home next year, as nervous congressional Republicans want ahead of the 2006 midterm elections.
"It just seems to be an unattainable goal," said John Mueller of Ohio State University, an expert on public opinion in wartime. "If he does start to reduce [troop levels], he won't be able to say this is complete victory. It would just be preposterous.
"It's a good applause line," Mueller said. "He would hope people would forget it."
Added defense analyst Loren Thompson of the conservative Lexington Institute: "We want this country [Iraq] to be something that it has never been."
Bush's speech ultimately had the challenge of putting forth two seemingly conflicting themes — digging in his heels against a withdrawal from Iraq while laying the groundwork for it. Not today, not tomorrow, Bush made clear, but seemingly sometime in the not-too-distant future, talking up the fighting prowess of Iraqi security forces.
Bush even hinted that he thought victory was in sight: "Our strategy in Iraq is clear, our tactics are flexible and dynamic; we have changed them as conditions required and they are bringing us victory against a brutal enemy," he said.
In that way, Bush's new and improved Iraqi exit strategy is the same as the old Iraqi exit strategy — build up homegrown forces, gradually hand over security duties to them and then have U.S. troops slowly fade into the background and eventually come home.
But Bush's strategy document also highlighted the uncertain nature of his plan, noting that the White House expects — "but cannot guarantee" — an unspecified reduction in U.S. troops next year.
Even so, most analysts believe Bush's plan can work. But they criticize Bush for being slow to take the training of Iraqi forces seriously and to adopt the "clear and hold" — staying in towns after the insurgents are cleared out — strategy that the administration has been pursuing for several months now. Bush himself admitted shortfalls there as well.
"It took us way too long to figure that out, but we've been doing it increasingly and it seems over the last four months to have finally taken hold," said Thomas Donnelly, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. "But it's not the quick approach. It's going to take a long time."
Time is the one thing Bush probably doesn't have, despite his tough talk about staying the course. One thing helping him is that the Democrats' message on Iraq has not been clear, with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi yesterday endorsing calls for an immediate withdrawal that even some in her party have rejected.
Two-thirds of the public wants Bush to start bringing home troops in the next 12 months, and a similar number disapproves of Bush's handling of the war. But Republicans seize on a different finding — less than one in five support immediate withdrawal, a sign that the public still wants Bush to succeed in Iraq.
So some independent analysts believe Bush probably bought himself a little breathing room with yesterday's speech, but only if the situation on the ground matches the picture he painted yesterday of Iraqi forces growing stronger every day.
Public opinion "is about as low as it's going to get," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at George Washington University. "It will improve when things improve on the ground, and not before that."
source: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uswar014534045dec01,0,1662772,print.story 1dec2005
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