Is Bush doomed?

Is Bush Doomed?
by Paul Craig Roberts

Fear must be coursing through President Bush's veins as he realizes
the Iraqi trap in which the neocons have placed him. Bush is caught
between an Iraqi civil war and a wider insurgency.

Desperate to extricate himself from the weekly carnage well before the
November election, Bush can neither deliver on his promise of
democracy via direct elections nor impose his plan for an Iraqi
assembly elected indirectly by caucuses.

If Bush delivers on his democracy promise, the Shi'ites with 60% of
the population will be elected, and the country will break out in
civil war. If he tries to water down Shi'ite representation with his
plan for an assembly elected indirectly by caucuses, the so far
peaceful Shi'ites are likely to join the violence.

If the Shi'ites become violent, the insurgency would be too large to
be contained by our present occupying force. Moreover, the outbreak of
a general rebellion in Iraq would spill over throughout the Middle
East where unpopular secular rulers are sitting on a smoldering Islam.
Our puppet in Pakistan would likely bite the dust. Israel would then
face countervailing Muslim nukes.

If you think more US troops are needed now in Iraq, imagine how many
more would be required to deal with a wider conflagration. Where would
they come from? The US military is already so thinly stretched that
soon 40% of the occupying troops will be drawn from the National Guard
and reservists, resulting in tremendous disruption in the affairs of
tens of thousands of families.

Pilots and troops are shunning the cash bonuses offered for
reenlistments. The troops recognize a quagmire even if their neocon
overlords cannot. The only source of troops is the draft.

A Shi'ite insurgency that brought back the draft would deprive Bush of
reelection. A civil war with the prospect of a Kurdish state would
bring in the Turks. On January 14 Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said
that Turkey will intervene in the event of Iraq's disintegration.

The Shi'ites and the Turks are forming an alliance as both have the
same interest in maintaining the geographical integrity of the Iraqi
state. The US could come dangerously close to military conflict with a
NATO ally.

All of this was perfectly clear well in advance of the ill-considered
invasion. If Bush wasn't smart enough to see it, why didn't his
National Security Advisor or his Secretary of State? How did a handful
of neocon ideologues hijack US foreign policy?

Bush did not campaign on a neocon policy of conquest in the Middle
East. There was no public debate over this policy. The invasion of
Iraq was the private agenda of the neocons.

Why have the neocons not been held responsible for their treason in
abusing their presidential appointments to substitute their personal
agenda for America's agenda?

Bush has been the neocon's puppet for so long that he is now stuck
with responsibility for their horrible mistake. With no way of his own
to get out of his trap, his arrogance toward the "irrelevant" UN and
our doubting allies has disappeared. Come bail me out, he pleads.

Bush, desperate to be extricated before doom strikes him is
experiencing a reality totally different from the chest-thumping of
neocon megalomaniacs, such as Charles Krauthammer, who declared the US
so powerful as to be able to "reshape, indeed remake, reality on its
own."

Bush now knows that he lacks the power to deal with the reality of
Iraq. Indeed, Bush cannot even deal with his own appointees.

January 17, 2004

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute
for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover
Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the
Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall
Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Copyright © 2004 Creators Syndicate

Paul Craig Roberts Archives





Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page