Whatever It Takes?

This Op-Ed piece is a little better than William Safire's dismissive merchants of dismay, but the key question is whether national resolve will hold firm if violence in Iraq does not abate. I am afraid that W has bitten off more than he can chew. Most commentators gloss over the cut-and-run response of the Reaganites after the truck bombing of the U. S. Marine encampment in Beirut in the early 1980s. Iraq is making the losses in Beirut look like a Sunday School picnic. Whatever it takes. Bring 'em on. Mission accomplished. Where are the WMD? Where is the Dickster? Vice President Cheney is as invisible as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. So many questions, so few answers. $87B? The casualties are approaching 500. If this be (fair & balanced) treason, make the most of it.

[x NYTimes]
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Whatever It Takes
By DAVID BROOKS

The Bush administration has the most infuriating way of changing its mind. The leading Bushies almost never admit serious mistakes. They never acknowledge that they are listening to their critics. They never even admit they are shifting course. They don these facial expressions suggesting calm omniscience while down below their legs are doing the fox trot in six different directions.

Sunday night's presidential speech was a perfect example. The policy ideas Bush sketched out represent such a striking series of policy shifts they amount to a virtual relaunching of the efforts to rebuild Iraq. Yet the president unveiled them as if they were stately extensions of the policies that commenced on Sept. 11, 2001.

Fortunately, while in public members of the administration emphasize their own incredible foresight, in private they are able to face unpleasant facts and pivot in response. Sometime around the middle of August, while the president was on the ranch, members of the Bush team must have done a candid and scathing review of how things were going in Iraq.

This was the time, remember, when leading Republicans were falling out of love with Donald Rumsfeld. They were outraged with Rumsfeld's unwillingness to even consider the possibility that the U.S. might need more troops in Iraq and a much bigger Army over all. Several Republicans were also coming to doubt the competence of the people running Iraq policy. While on visits to Baghdad, they were finding that civilian reconstruction efforts were absurdly underfinanced and understaffed. What's more, there were no Iraqis in Paul Bremer's administrative headquarters. The Iraqi Governing Council had been appointed, but its members were being treated like figureheads.

By the time the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was bombed on Aug. 19, President Bush was willing to strike out on a new course. It was in a phone call that day with Condoleezza Rice, a close Bush adviser reports, that Bush observed that the tragedy of the bombing might be turned into an opportunity to internationalize the rebuilding effort. Colin Powell was dispatched to talk with Kofi Annan about a resolution authorizing a greater U.N. role. Annan was receptive.

The decision to go to the U.N. is not the most important policy revision Bush executed. The coming U.N. debate will give a lot of second-tier powers the chance to preen about sending troops they don't have and making contributions they can't afford, but nobody should fool themselves into thinking it is in any way crucial to the region. Powell has estimated there may be a mere 10,000 to 15,000 additional international troops. Some technocrats from the Sorbonne may supplement the ones from Johns Hopkins, but the U.N. offensive is a long journey for only a modest reward.

The truly important initiatives Bush launched were, first, to sharply increase the level of spending on Iraq, and therefore increase the likelihood that major infrastructure problems will be addressed. With this, Bush is not only taking on the antiwar Democrats, but also the so far silent but oh-so-sullen fiscal conservatives in his own party.

Second, Bush has finally signaled that the U.S. is going to hand over real authority to newly selected Iraqi ministers. Yesterday, Bremer released a seven-step process for handing power back to the Iraqis that reads like a treatment program for Imperialists Anonymous. If this process is carried out, Americans administrators will be serving Iraqi executives, not the other way around.

Some close advisers suspect the violence may not abate in Iraq until early next year, and it will be interesting to see whether Americans can sustain their morale over that time. Still, as Bush makes these pivots, I'm reminded of the way Ronald Reagan made his amazing policy shifts at the end of the cold war, some of which outraged liberals (Reykjavik) and some of which outraged conservatives (the arms control treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev). Presidents tend to be ruthless opportunists, no matter how ideological they appear. Even as he announced his strategy on Sunday night, Bush left open the possibility that he might be compelled to shift again and send in more U.S. troops if circumstances warrant.

The essential news is that Bush will do whatever it takes to prevail, and senior members of his administration are capable of looking honestly at their mistakes. You will just never be able to get any of them to admit publicly they've ever made any.

Copyright © 2003 The New York Times Company