“We’re
Not Leaving So Long As
I’m The President.”
By Patrick Martin
23 August 2006
World
Socialist Web
President
Bush’s press conference Monday gave a glimpse of the deepening
political crisis of the US administration over the failure of its policies
in Iraq and the broader Middle East. Bush was on the defensive throughout
the session, struggling with questions which, if not overtly hostile,
focused attention on the contradictions in his shifting rationale for
the Iraq war.
Although Bush gave an opening
statement on Lebanon, the press returned again and again to the Iraq
war, both to the deteriorating security situation in the country and
the dwindling public support for the war within the United States.
So great has been the turn
in public opinion against the war that Bush himself was compelled to
admit the extent of the mass opposition. He made several comments on
this theme, clearly rehearsed ahead of time, acknowledging the opposition
while declaring it mistaken:
“There’s a lot
of people—good, decent people—saying: Withdraw now. They’re
absolutely wrong. It’d be a huge mistake for this country.”
“There are a lot of
good, decent people saying: Get out now; vote for me; I will do everything
I can to, I guess, cut off money is what they’re trying to do
to get the troops out. It’s a big mistake.”
“And there’s
a fundamental difference between many of the Democrats and my party.
And that is: They want to leave before the job is completed in Iraq.
And again, I repeat: These are decent people. They’re just as
American as I am. I just happen to strongly disagree with them”
“I will never question
the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me. This has nothing to
do with patriotism. It has everything to do with understanding the world
in which we live.”
This evidently was one of
the main talking points Bush’s handlers had rehearsed with him
before the press conference. It reflects concerns that the McCarthy-style
baiting of Iraq war opponents in recent statements by Vice President
Cheney, chief Bush political aide Karl Rove and other Republican spokesmen
has backfired, provoking even greater popular antagonism towards the
administration.
At one point Bush was directly
asked about the comments of Cheney, who said that Connecticut voters
who denied renomination to Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman because
of his support for the Iraq war were “emboldening Al Qaeda-types.”
Bush reiterated the mantra
that “leaving Iraq before the mission is complete will send the
wrong message to the enemy and will create a more dangerous world.”
He sought to soften the slur against opponents of the war, adding, “Look,
it’s an honest debate, and it’s an important debate for
Americans to listen to and to be engaged in.”
This shift in public posture
is purely cosmetic. Despite the conciliatory rhetoric Monday, the White
House and the Republican National Committee are seeking to whip up right-wing
support in the November election by suggesting that opposition to the
Iraq war is treasonous.
For that reason, Bush grossly
exaggerates the “antiwar” credentials of the congressional
Democrats, who support the goals of the war—conquest of Iraq to
obtain oil resources and strategic dominance in the Middle East—but
have criticized the Bush administration’s incompetent execution
of this neo-colonial exercise.
The hollowness of Bush’s
statements about the necessity and legitimacy of political debate over
the war is revealed in his refusal to actually engage the arguments
of those opposed to the war. His version of “debate” was
to repeat, in almost robotic fashion, his other main talking point of
the day, the necessity to “finish the job” in Iraq.
Bush dismissed a question
about whether the US invasion and occupation had made matters worse
in Iraq, repeating for the thousandth time his administration’s
long-discredited claim that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world
and was on the brink of building weapons of mass destruction.
He refused to address seriously
the growing Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq, despite the statements by top
American generals that the country may be on the brink of civil war,
and that sectarian killings, not the attacks of terrorists, are the
principal threat to the establishment of a stable US occupation regime.
This unwillingness to face
reality has become the target of criticism in much of the mainstream
press. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, for instance, cited
Bush’s comments about the mounting death toll among civilians
and asked: “Does he believe it would be a sign of weakness to
admit that the flowering of democracy in Iraq isn’t going exactly
as planned? Does he believe saying everything’s just fine will
make it so? Is he in denial? Or do 3,438 deaths really just roll off
his back after he’s had his workout and a nice bike ride?”
At one point, asked what
Iraq had to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush
blithely admitted, “Nothing.” Then he added, “Nobody’s
ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by
Iraq.”
In fact, virtually every
top administration spokesman made that connection, including Vice President
Cheney, who peddled the claim, long after it had been discredited, that
alleged 9/11 plot leader Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in
the Czech Republic before the attack. Condoleezza Rice warned that the
next 9/11 would be “a mushroom cloud” if Saddam Hussein
was not dealt with.
Bush also distorted the basis
of the opposition to the war, suggesting it was simply the result of
squeamishness over the bloodshed in Iraq. “You know, nobody likes
to see innocent people die,” he said. “Nobody wants to turn
on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists.”
The opposition to the war
is fueled, however, by popular revulsion to the havoc wrought by the
United States, along with its allies Britain and Israel, in the region.
More fundamentally, the most politically conscious elements in the popular
opposition to the Iraq war reject not only the methods employed by the
imperialists, but their goals, which are not to “democratize”
the Middle East, but to reduce Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and other
countries to the status of semi-colonies, completely subordinated to
the interests of American capitalism.
While Bush repeatedly claimed
that the goal of the United States in Iraq was to foster democracy,
he made it clear that he felt no accountability to the democratic will
of the American people. Whatever the popular sentiment in the US, he
declared, “We’re not leaving so long as I’m the president.”
This contradiction was spelled
out in two comments made by Bush in the course of the press conference.
He declared that the “war on terror” was directed against
an ideology opposed to democracy: “And the only way to defeat
this ideology in the long term is to defeat it through another ideology,
a competing ideology, one that—where the government responds to
the will of the people.”
But towards the end of the
press conference, asked whether he still hoped to convince the American
people, or whether “this is the kind of thing you’re doing
because you think it’s right and you don’t care if you ever
gain public support for it,” Bush replied bluntly: “Look,
I’m going to do what I think is right and if, you know, if people
don’t like me for it, that’s just the way it is.”
Nor is Bush’s policy
accountable to the “will of the people” of Iraq, since he
has declared the US troops will remain, no matter what, until he leaves
office.
Such assertions inevitably
beg the question, what will Bush do if the majority of the Iraqi people
or the majority of the American people seek to bring an end to the bloodbath
prior to January 20, 2009?
Bush’s categorical
statements imply that his administration recognizes no limits on its
war powers, and would be prepared to defy Congress in the unlikely event
that it imposed a deadline for the withdrawal of US troops. As for the
political situation in Iraq itself, if the supposedly democratically
elected and sovereign regime attempted to cut its strings and respond
to popular sentiments by demanding the removal of American forces, the
US would have no compunction in organizing a coup and installing a new
government.