Bush's Triumphalist Amnesia

A Democratic Response

From Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid: "As we mark this week the start of the sixth year of the Iraq war, we are proud of the warriors who have fought hard to reduce violence in Iraq in recent months. But America is not secure and the costs and consequences of the war continue to mount.

"Al Qaeda is stronger than it has ever been since 9/11, Osama bin Laden remains at large, the readiness of our Army and Marine Corps is at its lowest levels since Vietnam, and trends in Afghanistan are deeply troubling. And at the end of the surge this summer, more troops will be in Iraq than before the surge began -- that is not what Americans were led to believe would be the result of this tactic.

"America still has not heard from this Administration -- or from their Republican allies -- a winning plan for achieving the political solution we need in Iraq and hastening the day when our troops can redeploy home. Instead, we hear reckless statements about staying in Iraq for 100 years.

"The military has done its job; it is time for this administration and Iraq's political leaders to do theirs."

Opinion Watch

Fred Kaplan writes on Slate: "[I]sn't the surge working? Well, it depends what you mean by 'working.' In recent months, casualties--American and Iraqi--dropped substantially. However, three points need to be made. First, casualties are rising once more, though not to 2006 levels. Second, while the surge was certainly a factor in reducing casualties, it was far from the only factor. There were also the alliances of convenience between U.S. forces and Sunni tribesmen against the common foe of al-Qaida in Iraq (an alliance that preceded the surge); the moratorium on violence called by Muqtada Sadr and his Shiite militia (a policy that may be suspended as the Sunni militias grow stronger); and the fact that many areas of Iraq had already been ethnically cleansed.

"More to the point, as Gen. David Petraeus has said many times, there is no military solution to Iraq. The surge has always been a means to an end--a device to create a 'breathing space' of security in Baghdad so that Iraq's political factions can reach an accommodation. Without a political settlement, the surge--for that matter, the entire U.S. military presence, the blood we have shed, the treasure we have spent--will prove to be little more than a pause."

Juan Cole writes on Salon: "Each year of George W. Bush's war in Iraq has been represented by a thematic falsehood. That Iraq is now calm or more stable is only the latest in a series of such whoppers, which the mainstream press eagerly repeats. . . .

"The most famous falsehoods connected to the war were those deployed by the president and his close advisors to justify the invasion. But each of the subsequent years since U.S. troops barreled toward Baghdad in March 2003 has been marked by propaganda campaigns just as mendacious. Here are five big lies from the Bush administration that have shaped perceptions of the Iraq war.

"Year 1's big lie was that the rising violence in Iraq was nothing out of the ordinary. . . .

"In Year 2 the falsehood was that Iraq was becoming a shining model of democracy under America's caring ministrations. . . .

"In Year 3, the Bush administration blamed almost everything that was going wrong on one shadowy figure: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. . . .

"In Year 4, as major sectors of Iraq descended into hell, Bush's big lie consisted of denying that the country had fallen into civil war. . . .