In a variety of instances and contexts, the president has described his responsibilities with heartening phrase: “We have an obligation and a duty to confront problems and not pass them on to future generations.”
Of course, we’ve known for a quite a while that Bush doesn’t mean a word of it. On the environment, the president is desperate not to confront problems and to absolutely pass them off to someone else. On the budget and fiscal policy, Bush wants to spend and cut taxes with impunity, leaving someone else to make tough choices later.
And when it comes to Iraq, as soon as his policy deteriorated and it was obvious that success wasn’t going to happen, the president’s plan became clear: figure out a way to hand this mess off to someone else.
Indeed, Bush admitted this way back in December, telling Robert Draper his goal was to get to this fall, at which point he can “get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” so U.S. forces can “stay…longer.”
In light of this week’s testimony from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the LAT drives the point home that Bush has no intention of ending this war before leaving office. It’s a welcome development; most news outlets have avoided mentioning this altogether.
The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush’s plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor. […]
“Bush has found his exit strategy,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former government Mideast specialist now at the Brookings Institution.
That would be Bush’s exit from a position of responsibility; not the nation’s exit from a civil war.
According the vague assessments from Gen. Petraeus yesterday, probably more than 100,000 U.S. troops will be in Iraq when the next president is inaugurated in 16 months.
As Petraeus met with lawmakers and unveiled chart upon chart showing declining troop levels, the U.S. commander seemed to have opened a new discussion about how the United States would wind up its commitment to Iraq. Yet viewed more closely, his presentation, and that of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, were better suited to the defense of an earlier strategy: “stay the course.”
And, in a twisted kind of way, some GOP leaders believe that as long as troop deployments drop in 2008, the party may not suffer negative consequences in next year’s elections.
Bush’s approach also gives some support to Republican allies on Capitol Hill who have been anxious about entering the 2008 election season carrying responsibility for the war.
Now the Republicans will be able to claim that the war is winding down and the troops coming home, even if fewer than 20% are scheduled to return in the next year.
The GOP shouldn’t count on this. If there are 100,000 pairs of U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq on Election Day 2008, and Republicans are applauding this as a success story, there’s no reason in the world for them to feel confident about their chances.