Bush stuck between Iraq and a hard place

One would think that coming off an election year we would be very well-informed about our government’s plan to deal with the Iraq puzzle. Sadly, after being force-fed abundant campaign slogans and talking points from both political extremes, Americans are left thinking in terms of only two heavily-flawed strategies for dealing with Iraq: “Cut and Run” and “Stay the Course.”

Still, James Dobbins, a national security expert with experience in the past three administrations, claims that there are “some options between keeping 160,000 troops on the ground and just pulling out.” With that said though, what exactly are our potential options and more importantly, will both political sides, especially President Bush, embrace them?

Most of the United States’ strategic options will be explored in an upcoming meeting between the president and the Baker-Hamilton commission; a 10 member bipartisan Iraq research group led by former Secretary of State James Baker III.

While not all the details are known, the commission’s report will be eagerly adopted by the policy-hungry Democrats as their strategy on Iraq, especially since the report is expected to be a serious wake-up call for the president to change course. Yet if the report calls for Bush to make many drastic changes to his policies, one must wonder if the president will man-up, accept his mistakes and embrace the new strategy. I believe he will.

For example, one of the Baker commission’s new suggestions to the president will be to use diplomacy to ease the situation in Iraq. Baker has publicly said that in order to reduce insurgency financing and weapons supplying, he favors opening talks with regional adversaries Iran and Syria, something Bush has refused to do. However, coming off such an election “thumping,” which most view as a national referendum on Bush’s current Iraq policy, it is hard not to imagine the president adopting this harmless tactical adjustment, in which he has much to gain and little to lose.

The biggest uncertainty though, is how will Bush respond when the commission tells him to rule out the possibility of victory in Iraq? According to leaked portions of the report, the group will candidly tell the president to begin a gradual withdrawal from Iraq and to exchange the country’s brittle democracy in return for stability. Many experts expect the commission to suggest installing a strongman (military ruler) or splitting the country into three parts as the best ways to achieve this stability. If President Bush follows either of these recommendations it would mean changing his policy in radical and humiliating ways, not something this president is used to doing. Yet if recent events are any indication, we will continue to see the president succumb to the political pressure, like all politicians do, and adopt the Baker-report in order to save himself.

Consider that merely two weeks ago the president was extolling Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and exclaiming that he would stick with him for the remainder of his presidency, yet only one day after the resounding referendum, Rumsfeld was let go. Such an action by Bush immediately following an election upheaval is indicative of the president being driven by political survival and not by his customary self-righteous cause to bring democracy to Iraq no matter the cost. Couple the firing with the fact that Bush chose Robert Gates, a member of the Baker commission, to be Rumsfeld’s replacement and it becomes clear that Bush intends to use the Baker commission’s policies as political shelter from the Iraq storm.

President Bush has staked his entire presidency on this war, so there is a strong chance he might not adopt any of the Baker commissions’ recommendations, as it would be admitting years of failure. Nevertheless, watching President Bush’s actions in the immediate fallout of a disastrous election, one can’t help but think he has been humbled by the American people and might be looking at the commission as his last chance to salvage the remainders of his tattered political legacy.

Patrick Molnar is a business sophomore and Mustang Daily political columnist.