Bush's focus on "victory in Iraq," a necessary matter to ponder, is not matched by any hard analysis of that specific situation and the larger struggle with violent, radical Muslim extremists. Instead, we are treated to platitudes ("stay the course"; "don't cut and run") when thoughtful men want to know what we are fighting for. Indeed, Bush's performance has left us with the prospect that any "victory" in Iraq will only be a Pyrrhic one, that is, one attained at too great a cost. That prospect HAS to be examined if the military and its civilian leaders are worth their stripes.
I will not suggest but state outright that Iraq is but one (unwisely precipitated) battle in the overall war. The object was not to satisfy one's hard-on for Saddam, or indeed to end his repressive, violent regime, or to establish an outpost of (Western) democracy in a hostile region. Those aims, stripped bare, do not meet the international law tests for starting such a belligerency. While the WMD "threat" got us in and provided us cover for as long as it lasted, it was not a cause until itself. Even accepting the administration's premises as to Saddam's threat and the need to address it, with time and retrospect we can see that the wider war is the critical struggle, not a backwater like Vietnam.
This gains significance -- departing from Bush's dullard warning of "Iraq being the critical battle in the War on Terror" in conventional terms, that is, vanquish them or we lose ... big -- when we realize that as with an insurgency or guerilla campaign generally (taking the overall struggle against Islamic extremism as such), we must win hearts and minds, transform vistas, provide a more attractive vision of our joint future, all to accomplish two goals: provide a counter-thesis to terror and dry up the support the extremists have in critical parts of the Islamic world.
Bush has not emphasized this; indeed, he has produced nothing of consequence on this critical front. Instead of intoning words of unity (with the ones who could unite with us) and providing visions of peace-yet-challenge to guide our future life together, he is still saying, "Bring it on!" His Wild West mentality is a clear detriment to this nation and this world when a statesman is needed. He is incapable of that.
This is not to say that military conflict will not be necessary going forward; it will be. But it is only A PART of the overall armatarium we should employ. Bush had better get help soon, because he doesn't know what he's doing -- and he's making things worse, not better.
Indeed, is Iraq really a cause celebre or rather a cause de guerre for the extremists?
