Getting Us Out
Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is currently working on a book about America's policy toward political Islam over the past 30 years.
As long as we are remembering Vietnam analogies, here’s one: after the Tet Offensive in 1968, after Eugene Mc Carthy’s stunning electoral showing in New Hampshire, a group of elite American policymakers (graybeard, Clark Clifford-types all) read the riot act to Johnson about Vietnam: get out! A month later, LBJ announced a bombing halt and then said he would not run for re-election that year. It wasn’t the end, of course. Eugene McCarthy didn’t get the nomination, Tricky Dick got elected, and the war dragged on for five more years.
Still, Johnson was humbled. Is there any chance that can happen to George W. Bush? It’s the only hope for Iraq now. An establishment, bipartisan elite must emerge to order the bumbling president out of Iraq, now. Protests won’t do it, nor reason. Passionate speeches, even the best ones, such as Robert Byrd’s April 7, won’t do it. President Bush’s Iraq policy is now certifiably criminally insane, and only a soft coup d’etat, a la 1968, can stop him.
The neocons, though weakened, are still calling the shots. Any chance that Bush will break with the war party on his own is zero. Here’s why: First, Bush is notorious for thinking in black and white terms, eliminating the possibility that he could consider a more complex solution to the quagmire in Iraq. So he is likely to heed those who want to hit back, and hard. Second, the U.S. military, whose leaders never supported Bush’s war, is now in full hoo-ah mode since Fallujah, and wants revenge. So the brass isn’t likely to be looking for an exit strategy, only bloodletting. And the neocons themselves are out for blood, demanding what Bill O’Reilly calls the "second war in Iraq." The always-delightful Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, says the crisis in Iraq doesn’t change a thing: "There has been no fundamental change in our views. I have been wrong on some things but I don't think I would fundamentally repudiate anything I wrote. The Middle East is complicated and some places can never be reformed. It is a wild overstatement to say that containment is a thing of the past. . . we are not abandoning that."
The neocons call for a crackdown includes demands for more U.S. forces in Iraq, tougher tactics, and, as Bill Safire wrote in The New York Times April 7, "no more Mr. Nice Guy." So America is firebombing mosques, surrounding entire cities with armor and barbed wire, and turning a whole nation into a free-fire zone. Bush has unleashed demons that perhaps can’t any longer be controlled. Iraq is headed for a 10-year war of resistance if America stays, and a catastrophic, ethnic-cleansing civil war if we hand the country to Ahmad Chalabi and the Governing Clowncil later this year.
So this is a full-blown crisis, and our leader will not, or cannot, resolve it. It’s time to put partisan politics aside. John Kerry the statesman has to replace Kerry the politician. Sane Republicans like Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Senator Dick Lugar have to join with leading Democratic statesman in an ultimate showdown with the White House. President Bush has to be forced to admit that his entire Iraq policy was wrong-headed, and if he won’t decline to seek re-election, than he has to fire Don Rumsfeld and ease Dick Cheney off the ticket and seek a consensus for a new Iraq policy. Byrd has to convince other Democrats, such as clear-headed colleagues like Ted Kennedy, to resist the urge to see Iraq as an electoral tool against Bush. What is happening in Iraq is far more important than a partisan electoral issue. And anti-neocon Republicans have to ignore the temptation to rally behind the the bungling Bush administration, for the good of the country and for the salvation of Iraq. Perhaps they can convince President Bush 41 to step in, too. Whatever it takes. There is still a slim chance that a U.S. decision to withdraw all its troops by year’s end, combined with a United Nations takeover and the involvement of Iraq’s Arab neighbors, can stop Iraq from its nightmarish plunge into chaos.
Remember March 1968!
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Published: Apr 08 2004
