MB Civic

By Scot Lehigh  |  June 16, 2006 |  The Boston Globe

PRESIDENT BUSH was upbeat at the Wednesday news conference that followed his lightning trip to Iraq, and certainly some foreign-policy experts say his visit was a smart move.

That the president took the risk to travel there confers a vote of confidence that should bolster the new government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, they say.

I’d like to think they’re right. And yet I can’t help suspecting the trip was really designed for domestic political consumption, a gambit to build on some of the rare good news the administration has had from Iraq recently.

The president said he had met with Prime Minister Maliki, had appraised his fledging government, had satisfied himself as to its resolve, and had been briefed on its plans to improve security, rein in the militias, reorder the Iraqi forces, strengthen the judiciary, revitalize the economy, increase energy production, and engage the international community. And that he’d outlined the ways the United States would help. All in less than five hours.

“I appreciated very much the agenda he’s laid out . . . He’s got a plan to succeed,” the president said.

I’d like to believe the president is right, and that all those things can happen, I really would. And yet the president and his team have proved themselves so wrong about so many things so many times that I no longer trust his judgment.

It’s certainly true that after long, frustrating months we’ve seen some progress in Iraq recently, starting with Maliki’s government. There’s also a deep satisfaction in the elimination of terrorist thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

I’d like to think that with Zarqawi’s death the violence will finally diminish. I’d like to believe, as the president said Wednesday, that something different is happening in Iraq.

But we’ve seen or heard of so many putative turning points, from mission accomplished and the end of major combat operations to the capture of Saddam Hussein to the turnover of sovereignty to an insurgency supposedly in its last throes to the Iraq elections — to name just some of them — that I just don’t believe.

The president also asserted he’d make his decisions on troop levels in Iraq based on the recommendations of our military commanders. That sounds disciplined and determined, but I don’t believe it either, not when I recall the way this administration treated General Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, after he told Congress he thought several hundred thousand troops would be needed in post-invasion Iraq.

The president spoke of how he listens to critics of his Iraq policy and how he appreciates their candor and advice. And we’ve all heard about the change in tone in a White House said to be newly interested in reaching out for different points of view.

That’s how a wise president should operate, especially in time of war. So I’d like to believe that this chief executive really is weighing what critics have to say, and that there’s a real change in governing style.

But I just don’t. Not after five-and-a-half years of watching a man defined by a stubborn inflexibility that has too often substituted ideology for reality. And certainly not when Karl Rove has just told a crowd of GOP loyalists in New Hampshire that the administration was right to go to war and need make “no excuses” for it.

Really? What of the supposed weapons of mass destruction? The alleged ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam?

Rove, however, contended that the people who should face tough questions are those who favor a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Accusing those Democrats of reverting to “that party’s old pattern of cutting and running,” Rove said that if US Representative John Murtha’s view on speedy withdrawal had prevailed, the United States wouldn’t have gotten Zarqawi.

There you have an instructive contrast. The president is asking for the nation’s patience in pursuit of a palatable solution for a pre-emptive war that has borne out none of its primary justifications. In the very same week, his top political operative is using the death of Zarqawi to rally the faithful, impugn Democrats, and put Bush’s critics on the spot.

This administration can’t have it both ways. The president can’t credibly pose as an above-the-fray leader searching for the best national solution to Iraq even as his political id picks up the hatchet.

I’d like to believe the American people will come to recognize the hypocrisy.