Bush Would Rather Fight Than Switch
BARNES, FRED
Bush Would Rather Fight Than Switch The president stands by the surge. by Fred Barnes White House officials were pushing the line last week that President Bush would soon take a positive new tack...
...This was the same day that Baker's story ran...
...But that happy-talk argument is not one he's ready to make, much less emphasize...
...by Fred Barnes White House officials were pushing the line last week that President Bush would soon take a positive new tack in defending the war in Iraq...
...A White House official said the president might have dropped emphasis on the post-surge era from his speech out of annoyance over the leak to Baker...
...Once more, the aftermath of the surge got short shrift...
...Quite the contrary, he believes...
...But he's not one of them...
...Bush understands his lack of popularity—and the diminished influence that comes with being unpopu-lar—has not crippled his presidency...
...Or, since he was speaking from scribbled notes, he might just have forgotten...
...Another way to put it—exaggerating a bit—is that his aides were fearful of political repercussions and he wasn't...
...Sure, the president said at a private session with journalists last week that lasted an hour and 35 minutes, he could talk about "what success will bring" in Iraq...
...When President Reagan deployed Pershing missiles in Europe in 1983, the Soviets stormed out of arms talks in Geneva...
...Bush, of course, actually does think the surge will work, that a drawdown of troops will begin, and better times really are ahead in Iraq...
...He failed to, except to note in passing that, with enough troops to secure Iraq, "we can be in a different position in a while...
...No doubt about that...
...His strategy is the equivalent of football's prevent defense...
...Reagan wasn't, however, and he told his aides not to worry...
...But that's not the "most useful tool" in shoring up support for the war...
...Bush is not a complainer...
...In wartime, their task is to focus on the high stakes and perils of defeat...
...They wanted to keep the defectors from joining antiwar Democrats angling to force the president to bail out of Iraq...
...It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous...
...He accepts responsibility for the way the war has turned out...
...Peter Baker of the Washington Post was told Bush "will launch a campaign emphasizing his intent to draw down U.S...
...White House officials were particularly nervous about the defections of a few Republican senators—Richard Lugar of Indiana, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, George Voinovich of Ohio—on Iraq...
...They believed the president should change his talking points on Iraq to emphasize the good times that victory would produce...
...That, in a nutshell, is what Bush does...
...It would mean that we'd be risking mass killings on a horrific scale...
...I've got a lot of tools to affect this debate," he said...
...If the strategy works, the surge will be protected from being called off or cut short with an artificial deadline that requires American troops to begin pulling back from a combat role...
...I recount this episode because it makes a simple point: Bush's aides may be eager to soften his message on Iraq, but the president isn't...
...But he didn't make it sound like a burden...
...Two days later, Bush had a prepared text for his opening remarks at a press conference...
...because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it will be good politics...
...You don't know what it's like to be commander in chief until you are," he said...
...Bush said he's told Petraeus to assess the surge without "trying to please" the White House...
...He intends to use all of them: the veto, his power as commander in chief, filibusters by Republican senators, the bully pulpit...
...And of course they soon did...
...Instead, Bush said, the most compelling case for persevering in Iraq is "what failure will look like...
...The president would deliver his "vision for the post-surge," an aide told Baker...
...And they wanted to prevent more defections...
...There are lots of talkers in Washington," he said...
...With that, he was just getting wound up...
...Indeed, I talked to two White House officials who mentioned the plan for Bush to stress the bright future in Iraq rather than the dimmer present...
...This is an unpopular war...
...He'd talk about what Iraq would look like after the "surge" of American troops in Baghdad had succeeded and the soldiers were beginning to come home...
...forces next year...
...The Soviets would soon return to the talks, he said...
...I understand the polls," Bush said...
...It's not unusual for presidential aides to be more anxious than the boss...
...At the press conference, he said withdrawal now "would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda...
...And does relentlessly...
...He will rely for advice on General David Petraeus, the mastermind of the surge, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who report to him and to Congress in September...
...Washington was in a tizzy, as were some of Reagan's advisers...
...The closest he came was this comment: "When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will be Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...I'm optimistic," he said, about the surge's chances...
...This clever scheme lacked one important ingredient, the participation of Bush himself...
...But he doesn't accept responsibility for leaks to the press, including the one about his supposed new approach to defending the war by saying it's about to wind down...
...Presidents can't afford the luxury of anxiety or doubt...
...It's designed to prevent congressional Democrats from stripping away his authority as commander in chief and Republicans from wearily giving up...
...I'm not on the phone chatting with the people who write those stories," the president insisted...
...It would mean we'd allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan...
...And on the subject of Iraq and the war on Islamic jihadists, the president is the most steadfast and unflinching guy at the White House, and the least willing to sugarcoat the case for war...
...He was supposed to play up the post-surge in a 77-minute speech in Cleveland...
...It's not strong enough...
Vol. 12 • July 2007 • No. 42
