Bush Talking into a Familiar Void

President Bush was stripped down to essentials in his speech tonight. There was no smirk, no swagger, no inspiring anecdotes, no Michael Gerson poetics, no vibe with his audience, and no real effort to convince. All George Bush offered was an "I'm going to keep doing this" to a public that was not interested in listening. In fact, you could almost feel the contempt of the American public on President Bush as he spoke, feel the depth of our desire not to see or hear him anymore. Peering into this particular void is something that President Bush has done many times, as a drunken son confronting his father, a thoughtless student seeing his teachers, a failed businessman meeting creditors, and losing Congressional candidate seeing the rejection in the eyes of his voters. Perhaps President Bush is as familiar with this experience as he is with anything else in the world. Perhaps he has had the tragic sense that he would face the depths of contempt again as President.

Many people learn from failure and rejection and become more thoughtful, mature, and wiser men and women as a result. To the contrary, much of what has defined George Bush as a person has been his refusal to learn from his failures or grow as a human being.

That refusal to mature was on painful display again in tonight's speech. Although President Bush has switched some of the tools in his Iraq policy kit, he is not changing his thinking in any substantial way. As was the case at the time of the invasion, President Bush's speech tonight employed a set of magical assumptions to make the transition from American occupation to democratic self-government seem plausible in Iraq.

Before last November's Congressional elections in the United States, Bush and his advisers assumed that elections would have the magical effect of reconciling Shiite and Sunni, drying up support for insurgents and militias, and creating effective Iraqi government. The opposite has been the case. Elected Iraqi politicians have been so lackadaisical that it took them six months to even form a government while the government itself has been monumentally corrupt and ineffective. It was also riddled with militia loyalists. Thus, when the Samarra mosque was destroyed Shiite militias were armed to the teeth, committed to militancy, and ready to engage in the death squad campaigns that have since engulfed Baghdad and the surrounding area.

In tonight's speech, President Bush claimed that there were no magic bullets for the situation in Iraq, then made several magical assumptions anyway. The first was that embedding the extra five brigades of American troops in Iraqi units would make it possible for the Iraqi Army to take the lead in secure Baghdad. Embedding American troops in Iraqi units was a suggestion of the Iraq Study Group and Iraqi troops certainly have fought better alongside Americans. However, the assumption that the Iraqi Army can take the leading role in reconquering Baghdad is pie in the sky thinking on a large scale. Shiite militias like the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army are already embedded in the Iraqi Army and it is unlikely that the Iraqi Army is going to be either motivated to fight or perhaps even fight at all when they are called upon to invade Shiite neighborhoods and confront the Shiite militias. Moreover, an American/Iraqi invasion of Shiite neighborhoods could spark the same kind of mass revolt among Shiites as the American presence in Anbar has sparked among Sunnis. Ultimately, the new American policies for Baghdad have a better chance of making things worse than better.

After President Bush assumed that Baghdad would become secure, he further assumed that security would bring about reconciliation between the Sunnis and Shiites around the elected government. This is not a plausible way of thinking. It is the fathers and sons of those Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods that the American/Iraqi forces are going to be attacking this spring. If neighborhood men of military are either killed or (more likely) forced to move out, there is going to be a small likelihood of any kind of reconciliation with the Iraqi/American military let alone their traditional sectarian enemies. As the philosopher John Locke noted, military conquest usually results in a continued state of war between the conqueror and the subject population. That has been the case between American troops and the population of Anbar. Even if American forces and our allies reconquer Baghdad, it is likely that the population will remain hostile to both us and their usual enemies.

President Bush has always thought that if he showed enough "will," these kinds of problems would just go away. Like magic! Of course, that hasn't been the case and that's why all the previous Bush administration plans for "Victory in Iraq" have failed so completely. As he enteres the last two years of his administration, President Bush is letting the American public know that he is about to change his thinking now. He's listening to us as little as we're listening to him.