The War Comes Home
Seething anger--and looming new doubts
Another wave of deadly bombings in Baghdad. An embarrassing delay in approving an Iraqi constitution. Saturation coverage of Cindy Sheehan's dramatic antiwar protest. Rising voter doubts about the Iraq occupation and an ongoing decline in President Bush's job performance ratings.
It hasn't been a very pleasant August for the commander in chief so far--certainly not the idyllic five-week vacation he envisioned when he started chopping cedar and riding a mountain bike at his Texas ranch as the month began. And while Bush is scheduled to hit the road this week trying to reverse the slide, it's unlikely to make much difference. There seems to be a deepening sense of unease among Americans about U.S. involvement in Iraq, adding up to an unexpected summer of discontent and, quite possibly, an unhappy watershed for the Bush presidency.
"The problem is the slow loss of people's confidence that things are going well in Iraq," says a senior White House strategist. A former adviser to two previous Republican presidents adds: "Bush's credibility is at stake. Because of Iraq, his leadership on all other issues gets questioned. And it appears that Bush doesn't want to hear from anybody who opposes him. Bush and his people have charted a course, decided they're right and [that] God is on their side. But people are asking, 'What's the strategy for winning? When will we see progress?' "
Slow going. Progress was certainly hard to find last week, as scores more Americans and Iraqis were killed in a continuing series of insurgent attacks and as Iraqi politicans failed to reach agreement on a constitution by an August 15 deadline. The failure to approve the constitution could well be reversed this week, but the setback was the latest psychological blow to the Bush administration's hopes for building momentum toward an eventual drawdown of U.S. troops. The biggest obstacle appears to be the ethnic and sectarian divide among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Hopes for compromise were damaged in particular by the demands by Kurds for wide-ranging autonomy and by lack of agreement on the status of women in Iraqi society. U.S. officials are still optimistic about an agreement, even though such a "solution" would almost certainly mean delaying resolution of the most contentious issues.
U.S. officials now concede that their original goals for Iraq were overly ambitious. The training of Iraqi security forces, arguably the administration's highest priority, has been seriously flawed. Only a fraction of Iraq's security forces are considered battle ready. "The training is not going all that well," concedes a State Department official. U.S. News has learned that in some instances, sessions with U.S. trainers and Iraqi recruits in Jordan have devolved into small melees sparked by what one official calls "culture clashes."
Back home, the public seems upset not just by casualties but by the entire war effort. "People see it as one big thing, which is a mess," says a senior administration adviser. "People ask, 'When is it going to be calm or peaceful? Give us a sense it's going well.' "
Beyond that, White House officials are concerned about a broader erosion of support for the Iraq war from military families. Senior administration strategists say that if relatives of slain or active-duty soldiers turn against the conflict en masse, wider public opinion could quickly follow. So far, however, polls suggest that most military families still support the war, according to White House insiders. But if a pattern emerged of military families turning against Bush's policies in Iraq, says a senior Bush adviser, "that would be problematic."
That's one of the reasons the White House seemed so rattled by Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., whose son Casey died in Iraq. Sheehan began a vigil August 6 on the side of the road about 2 miles outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and eventually attracted more than 100 followers. Last week, the group moved to a larger area adjacent to a Secret Service checkpoint, just a mile from the ranch. Two top administration officials met with Sheehan shortly after she arrived, but the president has so far declined to do so--a strategy that has drawn criticism even from Republicans, like Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran.
Sheehan's protest seems to have galvanized the beginnings of a more public antiwar movement. Last week, some 1,500 candlelight vigils in suport of Sheehan were held nationwide by Americans opposing the war; the effort was coordinated by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org.
Many Americans, of course, are still supportive of the Iraq effort, but there's little denying a creeping sense of restlessness about the course of the war. The community of Brook Park, Ohio, which lost 13 Marine reservists from the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, in Iraq earlier this month, provides an illuminating snapshot. The last of the dead were buried last week, but people continue to visit the makeshift memorial set up at the fence surrounding the headquarters of the reserve unit in this blue-collar suburb of Cleveland. Most of the sentiments at the memorial seem to support the war--teddy bears, flags, and handwritten signs of thanks--but some fissures do appear. One button pinned to the fence says "Support Our Troops. Bring them home."
John Kubit, 47, supported the war from the start, and the losses suffered by the Brook Park unit have only strengthened his resolve. "I've been for the cause of defeating terror," he says, "and their deaths just underscore the point." He recently brought his son Joe, 15, to the memorial. "I wanted him to see what people are doing for the men and women who died for us," says Kubit.
But doubts are gathering. "I feel like we have no business being there," said Pete Inithar, a 79-year-old World War II Navy vet who visited the memorial last week. "It's a shame. Just seeing this makes me very emotional." He accused Bush of equating support for the war with patriotism. "If you say something against him and his war, they call you unpatriotic," Inithar said. "That's not right."
Another Ohioan who has turned against the war is Paul Schroeder, father of 23-year-old Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder, who was killed in a roadside bombing near Haditha on August 3. "Mr. President," Schroeder said, "your refusal to support our troops at adequate levels needed to do the job required in Iraq has cost our son's life and the lives of so many others . . . . Now you have to deal with us and a growing number of Americans who think you have created a mess that you do not have the capacity to end."
James Sheppard, 43, of Homerville, Ohio, watched his son Clinton head off to war in late March, and is thankful that Clinton has now returned after suffering from repeated heat strokes. But Sheppard is not a happy man. He supported the war in Afghanistan because he felt it was important to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. But Iraq, he says, is another story: "I'm a registered Republican, but I wouldn't trust my president to run a McDonald's right now." Sheppard says he finds himself thinking back now to all the young marines he met in Akron in January, when his son's unit was shipping out. "You meet these kids, you look back on their faces, and now you know some of them are dead," he says. "It disgusts me."
Some of the ill will can be traced to the contrast between the current reality in Iraq and the historical rhetoric. On Nov. 15, 2002, for example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told an Infinity Radio call-in show: "The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind, I think, is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990 [in the Persian Gulf War]. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." President Bush declared famously on May 1, 2003: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." As recently as May 30, only three months ago, Vice President Cheney told CNN's Larry King that the Iraq insurgency was "in the last throes."
Polling indicates that the president is indeed suffering from a credibility gap. A July poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 49 percent of Americans said Bush is trustworthy, compared with 62 percent in September 2003. Other recent polls don't have much good news for Bush either. A Gallup Poll taken August 8-11 showed only 45 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, while 51 percent disapprove, nearly the same as a month earlier. "If he is sitting at 44 or 45," says a senior Bush adviser, "his bullhorn gets weaker." The president's senior advisers are no longer sure, as they were as recently as two months ago, that Bush's hard-core conservative support will prevent his job approval from falling below 40 percent, which could be seen as a sign of serious weakness.
White House officials admit that Bush's much-publicized rash of bill signings this month has done little to convince Americans that the administration and congressional Republicans are on the right course. Bush signed a transportation bill and an energy bill in early August in ceremonies designed to show that the White House and the GOP-controlled Congress are working on the public's business. But the public isn't very impressed, partly because voters are much more concerned about healthcare, rising gasoline prices, and Iraq.
Agendas. Not that everything looks bleak. Bush has been underestimated before, and he could surprise his critics again. The president seems likely, for example, to win Senate approval for John G. Roberts for the Supreme Court, and he has an aggressive agenda for the fall, including a Social Security overhaul, immigration reform, and tax changes. But they are all divisive issues that won't lend themselves to easy passage.
Democrats don't seem to have viable alternatives to Bush's agenda, either at home or in Iraq. Yet so far, this lack of Democratic alternatives isn't giving Bush much of a boost. "Americans don't know what to do about Iraq, other than being angry with the Bush administration for not knowing what to do about it," says Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. "Iraq is constantly in the background as a source of disappointment and discontent." This is one factor giving Democrats an 8-point lead over Republicans in generic matchups on whom voters prefer to represent them in Congress--not exactly a good omen for the GOP heading into the 2006 midterm elections.
Yet despite all the problems, Bush seems more assured and serene than ever. "The re-election really freed him up," says a confidant. "He had felt weighted down because he felt the burden of winning a second term because his father couldn't do it. Now that he's won, he's less concerned about the political ramifications of things."
With one big exception. Bush is eager for a Republican to succeed him in the White House, which he would consider the final validation of his presidency. This eagerness, friends say, may cause him to pay more attention to the growing discontent in the country and to demonstrate a new flexibility--even in Iraq.
U.S. Military Death Toll in Iraq
Iraq has passed important political milestones since President Bush declared the end of "major combat operations," but at a growing cost of U.S. military lives.
Cumulative U.S. military fatalities* in Iraq (Monthly casualties)
*reflects both hostile and non-hostile deaths
March 20, 2003 through August 19, 2005: 65 (65), 176 (37), 254 (48), 319 (30), 445 (82), 532 (47), 602 (50), 817 (80), 913 (54) 1,059 (81), 1,259 (137), 1,437 (106) 1,531 (36), 1,663 (80) 1,857 (63)
March 20, 2003: War begins
May 1, 2003: End of "major combat operations"
Dec. 13, 2003: Saddam Hussein captured
June 28, 2004: Sovereignty returned to Iraqis
November 2004: U.S. military offensive against insurgents in Fallujah
Jan. 30, 2005: Iraqi elections held
Source: AP
Graphic by USN&WR
With Kevin Whitelaw and Mike Tobin
This story appears in the August 29, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.