2004 Year in Review

Back to John Legler's Column Listing | Back to Year in Review Index

What is President Bush's plan for Iraq?

If President Bush has a plan to pursue or end the war in Iraq, isn't it a good time to tell us what it is before November?

David Ignatius in the Washington Post today raises some interesting questions about President Bush's plans for the war in Iraq.

He argues that it is now clear that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, yet no one has told the soldiers. He also argues that President George W. Bush has a duty to tell the American people before the election how he plans to deal with Iraq and the Middle East.

Facing such reversals in Iraq, what does the Bush administration plan to do in a second term? Will the United States double its bets in Iraq and fight a bloody new war to pacify the country, or will it tolerate more murky but pragmatic Iraqi solutions? Will it expand the war against Islamic militants by threatening Iran and Syria, or will it seek to enlist those nations as allies in maintaining regional stability? Will it accept a broad (and sometimes anti-American) coalition for change in Iraq and the Arab world -- broad enough to include even a Moqtada Sadr -- or will it hunker down with a narrower group of allies?

These questions remind me of the situation with President Lyndon Johnson before the 1964 elections. Although he ran in 1964 as the peace candidate, tape recordings show that he had plans to escalate the war in Vietnam after the elections. He didn't share this plan with the American people because he thought it would cost him the election.

Johnson cynically painted Republican Barry Goldwater a hawk for calling for more aggressive action against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. He was then re-elected by a large majority. He escalated the war after the election. The result was 58,000 American deaths in Vietnam, which Americans never voted for.

President Bush has an obligation to tell us what he plans to do in Iraq after the election. The result of an expanded conflict could be the drafting of your sons and daughters, who may now be in high school or college. This is not an inconsequential issue.

It may also require the Congress to raise taxes to pay for the war. Wars are very expensive propositions and the US taxpayer has already paid over $200 billion.

An expanded war which could include Syria and/or Iran, both of whom the Bush administration has consistently threatened, would cost even more American lives and treasure. It may actually increase global terrorism, an unintended result of the Iraqi war, as Ignatius mentions:

America's dilemma in Iraq now, so obvious that people rarely state it, is that a war meant to contain terrorism has had the effect of creating more of it. Most of the new terrorism is in Iraq itself, which was to be a platform in combating terrorism but has instead become a magnet for it.

If President Bush intends to continue his aggressive policies in Iraq and the surrounding area, shouldn’t he tell the American people before the election when we can still make a choice? If he has other plans to extricate the US from this conflict, he should tell us that, too.

Senator John Kerry should also be much more specific in his plans for Iraq under his administration.

by John Legler, Guest Columnist
August 31, 2004