Pushing Back
President Bush appears to be pushing back against the Baker group rather forcefully today in Jordan. According to the Washington Post (which cheerfully acknowledges the groups leaky way of doing business), Bush stated, flatly, that, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."
AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 30 — President Bush delivered a staunch endorsement of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday morning and dismissed called for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq as unrealistic, following a summit meeting in which the two leaders discussed speeding up the turnover of security responsibilities. "He's the right guy for Iraq," Bush said an a news conference in the Jordanian capital, as he stood next to a somewhat stiff and unsmiling Iraqi premier. At the Pentagon, meanwhile, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff announced plans to shift more U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell rising sectarian violence there.
In Amman, Bush sought to pre-empt the growing clamor to draft plans to withdraw the more than 140,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, most notably by a high-level commission headed by former Secretary of State James C. Baker III and former Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton. Although he was not asked directly about the panel's recommendations, which will be made next week but were partially leaked to news reporters late Wednesday, Bush seemed to have the group in mind when he said, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."
Bush has a track record of changing policies on a dime, such as when he ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld only days after saying he would stay until the end of his term. But his comments today, coupled with other statements in the past few days, seemed to set firm lines on Iraq beyond which the president will not be pushed, despite growing discontent with his policy at home.
These include no major troop withdrawals, no partition of the country, no direct talks with Iran and Syria as part of a broader diplomatic effort in the region and continued strong support for Maliki–despite a leaked memo from National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley questioning whether the current government has the capacity and will to crack down on private militias responsible for much of the violence gripping Baghdad and beyond.
You are seeing the so-called professionals way of doing business in Washington on full display here. Leak after leak after leak in an attempt to force public opinion into a certain form. The problem with this cynical business is that you only see what the leakers want you to see, not the full context or the dissenting opinions.
But the president appears to understand what the "realists" do not. You cannot simply talk to the very people who are stirring the problems up in Iraq and pretend they are just nice folks there to help. That old, Cold War realpolitik is more than a little to blame for the situation in the Middle East today. Going right back to it will not solve the problem. It will just bring back the bad old days again.
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Wake up America — Thursday, 30 November , 2006 @ 9:26 am
By syn, Thursday, 30 November , 2006 @ 7:53 am
Good for President Bush. All throughout the 1990’s I could not understand why we maintained an idea that stability by appeasement was good for peace and wondered why no leader was willing to change the status quo.
Finally a leader did come along and challenged an obviously failed appeasement policy.