Melvin B. Miller
Editor & Publisher

A failed strategy

Americans respect the office of the president. There is a national proclivity to admire the person in the White House — he is the leader of the nation, and people want the sense of security that their interests are being efficiently and fairly handled.

When he was elected in 2000, President George W. Bush persuaded many Americans that he would introduce an era of “compassionate conservatism.” Following his 2004 re-election, he promised to make the country safe from future terrorism, such as the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Had there been no 9/11 attacks, perhaps Americans would have been more skeptical about the Bush administration’s decision to wage war against Iraq. It required an act of faith to accept the presidential rationale. Many Americans were frightened into believing that an even more deadly terrorist attack was imminent.

Bush’s first assertion was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them against the West. However, U.N. inspectors had been unable to find the WMDs, leaving many major industrial powers unwilling to support Bush’s plans to attack Iraq, at least until the U.N. weapons inspection was completed.

Without the discovery of any such weapons, Bush launched a pre-emptive strike against Iraq on March 20, 2003. To this day, U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq have not found any WMDs. This forced Bush to find another reason for the attack.

The slogan then became “regime change in Iraq.” The reason for the strike, according to Bush, was to remove from power a cruel dictator. But if this was truly the rationale for the war, U.S. troops should have come home shortly after Hussein was toppled from power.

Other reasons soon followed. We were told that U.S. troops had to oversee democratic elections. Then we heard that the U.S. had to help stabilize the burgeoning Iraqi government, which was under attack from terrorists. And most recently, at a campaign stop at the North Island Naval Air Station in California, Bush said that terrorists would take over Iraq and “they’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions” if the U.S. troops left.

Opponents of the war had asserted early on that the real objective was to gain control of the Iraqi oil fields. The Bush administration and its supporters dismissed that position as absurd, but now that all subterfuge has failed, this underlying motive comes to the surface. What is still unclear, however, is Bush’s vision for victory in Iraq.

Even projections about the cost of the war have been deceptive. The administration first estimated that the war would cost between $50 billion and $60 billion. This was a salable figure because Operation Desert Storm had cost $60 billion in 1991. But Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Japan had paid for most of that bill. When Lawrence B. Lindsey, the president’s chief economic advisor, predicted that a more realistic cost would range from $100 billion to $200 billion, he was promptly fired. The cost of the war is now $341 billion, and still growing.

The war has also been very costly in human life. Almost 3,000 members of the U.S. military have been killed, and another 21,000 have been wounded in combat. About 50,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by coalition military action, Iraqi insurgency and criminality. According to Iraqi officials, the death toll is actually higher at around 150,000. There seems to be no end to the conflict.

Finally, after more than three years of war, the American people realized that it was time to end this failed policy. On Nov. 7, they voted for the Democratic Party to control Congress once again. But George W. Bush, the author of this travesty, still occupies the White House. Americans will have to wait until November 2008 to finish the job.