|
tasy that the victory of democracy in Iraq will democratize the entire Islamic world and establish his own place in history. "A free Iraq," as President Bush said yesterday, "will stand as an example to reformers across the Middle East."
Other reasons - oil, Israel, the search for military bases in place of Saudi Arabia, liberation of Iraq from a monstrous tyrant - are secondary compared to the historic mission for which the Almighty has chosen him.
To accomplish the mission, Mr Bush has transformed the basis of American foreign policy. For the nearly half century of the Cold War, US foreign policy was founded on containment plus deterrence. Mr Bush scrapped that. The new basis of US foreign policy is preventive war. As President Bush has said, "We must take the battle to the enemy... and confront the worst threats before they emerge.''
The immediate reason that Mr Bush opened Pandora's box in the Middle East and invaded Iraq was his moral certitude that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was working in close partnership with Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida. Those convictions turned out to be delusions. This denouement does great harm to Mr Bush's credibility and to that of the United States; it has got us into a ghastly mess in Iraq; and it has diverted attention, resources and military might from the war that should have commanded the Bush administration's highest priority - the Afghan war against al-Qa'ida and international terrorism. Meanwhile Afghanistan is a mess too. Mr Bush chose the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The impact of the war on the election is hard to predict. In international crises, the American instinct is to rally round the flag and the President - for a while at least. Thus far, the protests against the war have not been extensive. But Fallujah has been compared to the Viet Cong's Tet offensive in 1968, which set in motion a process that drove President Lyndon B Johnson from the White House.
The war's impact depends on the success of the American occupation in stopping the disintegration of Iraq and achieving a measure of stability. It depends on the possible capture of Osama bin Laden. It depends on the possible trial of Saddam Hussein. It depends on all sorts of unforeseeable variables. As Harold Wilson used to say, "In politics, a week is a very long time.'' Six months is an eternity.
In a democracy, elected leaders must be held accountable. The war on Iraq was a matter of presidential choice, not of national necessity. The rekindled memory of Vietnam calls to mind a highly decorated young naval lieutenant returning from Vietnam named John Forbes Kerry, who put a poignant question to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 22 April 1971: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?''
The author is a former Special Assistant to President Kennedy, 1961-4, and author of 'The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941-1966'
|
|
