Bush's pyrrhic victory

President George Bush this week will achieve a pyrrhic victory over the opponents of his plans in Iraq, by securing funding for military operations there through the 2008 fiscal year.  Yet this merely postpones the political reckoning -- and will create serious challenges for his Republican party during the upcoming election year.

The top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on September 10-11 made a compelling case to Congress that major troop withdrawals would lead to a horrific upsurge in violence.  They presented more mixed evidence that the recent US troop ‘surge’, which boosted US forces from approximately 130,000 to 160,000, had reduced rampant sectarian violence in certain localities.  This was sufficient to convince most congressional Republicans not to abandon the president’s camp, and continue funding for the campaign.

Yet Petraeus and Crocker poured cold water on the strategic rationale for the surge, which was designed to give the Iraqi government a chance to effect national reconciliation, allowing Iraqi Army and police forces gradually to assume responsibility for security.  Both of these efforts have comprehensibly failed; Petraeus made clear that continued stability depended entirely on the presence of US troops. 

Bush, in a nationally televised address on September 13, sought to portray the surge as a “success”, while characterising the withdrawal of the 30,000-troop ‘surge component’ by July 2008 as a bipartisan compromise.  However, Democrats were quick to point out that this merely returns US troop numbers to pre-surge levels, unaccompanied by any strategic gains.

Bush has won the debate, without alleviating the disaster in Iraq.  Historian Thomas Powers recently remarked that the Iraq war would likely consume two presidencies, given the political and strategic mess that confronts Bush’s successor.  His grim prediction appears more likely by the day.