Why Washington Is Playing with Fire

By Joe Klein

An important press conference was not held in Washington last week. The leaders of the Democratic Party did not say, "We'd like to thank President Bush for his new, realistic tone about the war in Iraq. In his recent speeches, the President has acknowledged that U.S. military strategy has been defective, especially in the Sunni triangle. He has made clear the difficulty we have had in training Iraqi security forces. He has expressed concern about the power that ethnic militias have overthose forces. He has expressed dismay about the corruption rampant in the new democratic Iraq. He has admitted that large reconstruction contracts given to U.S. corporations like Halliburton have been a failure. He has repeatedly asserted that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the intelligence that caused him to attack Iraq was wrong. We applaud the President for finally acknowledging those mistakes. Given the Administration's sad record of incompetence in planning and executing this war, we do have concerns about the President's ability to bring it to a successful conclusion. In the meantime, we hope he will continue to be candid about the difficulties we are facing in Iraq."

Or something like that. Jujitsu is an ancient and honorable political strategy: if you are clever, you can upend your opponent by leveraging the force of his own assertions. But these are not clever times in Washington. The President has taken to the manic repetition of the word victory, apparently on the advice of a Duke University professor, Peter Feaver, a new addition to the National Security Council staff. Feaver conducted a cold-blooded review of recent polling and concluded that the American public would be more tolerant of the carnage if victory, whatever that means, were the likely result. And so Bush gave a speech at the Naval Academy where plan for victory signs were festooned wantonly. But spin was mitigated by the substance of the speech, which was followed by an even more substantive effort last week at the Council on Foreign Relations. The President is finally using the right words to describe the nature of the enemy, the difficulties on the ground and the more pragmatic steps needed for counterinsurgency and reconstruction. But he remains weak--to the point of being purposely deceptive--on the time and resources needed to succeed with those plans. The Feaver slogan seemed like half a fortune cookie: "You should plan for victory ... but expect something less."

Indeed, the most effective Democratic criticism of the President's "victory" offensive came from two West Point graduates who had opposed the war, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island and General Wesley Clark, and both took Bush to task for the skimpiness of the Iraq effort. Clark wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece offering a thoughtful list of suggestions for a more successful prosecution of the war that he had opposed, including the deployment of more troops (which he would transfer from other regions). Reed pointed out that the President, despite his talk of limited success in the reconstruction of the cities of Najaf and Mosul, "didn't tell the American people how we're going to replicate that success in other parts of Iraq ... how many more teams of Americans, both military and civilian, need to go into these communities (and) what it will cost us." Most important was Reed's tone--quiet, humble, dispassionate, substantive.

Such sobriety seems beyond the reach of most Democrats. They make fools of themselves even when they speak the truth. The party chairman, Howard Dean, was not inaccurate when he said, "The idea that we are going to win this war ... is just plain wrong." If Dean had added the word militarily, most generals would agree with him. The trouble is, Dean--as always--seemed downright gleeful about the bad news. He seemed to be rooting for defeat. More subtle but no less feckless is the curious case of John Kerry, who has been calling for the withdrawal of 20,000 American troops as soon as the Iraqi elections are completed on Dec. 15. He has said this knowing full well that the Pentagon is planning to reduce the force by 20,000 after Dec. 15 as part of its normal troop-rotation schedule. One hopes he won't be so crass as to take credit for the drawdown when it occurs. But then Kerry--and many other Democrats--have been calling for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, based on progress in Iraq, as if that were some sort of bold and different idea. It isn't. It is precisely what the President has said he will do.

And now the Republicans are preparing to retaliate by running a vomitous television ad portraying Dean, Kerry and others as "retreat and defeat" Democrats, waving the white flag of surrender. In this holiday season, out of respect for the dead and wounded, and the enormity of the tragedy, wouldn't it be nice if all those rabid partisans--on both sides--just gave it a rest for a while?