4th and Long
President Bush's Commitment of more troops to Iraq isn't just unpopular-it's a last-ditch gamble against tough odds
U.S. officials concede that the plan will result in higher numbers of killed and wounded Americans. "If you have more troops in Baghdad, obviously you'll have more chance of casualties," says a U.S. military official in the Iraqi capital. American soldiers will find themselves more frequently in dangerous urban combat situations like the daylong street battle that raged on Baghdad's Haifa Street last week. Defense Secretary Robert Gates promises that no areas will be off limits. "In the last six months, quite candidly, we've been in reactive mode," says a senior military official, who adds that the military will be freed from Iraqi restrictions on the targeting of extremist leaders.
For Bush, it marks the riskiest initiative of his presidency. "This is the hardest choice he could have made politically," says a senior U.S. official. Even key Republicans decried Bush's announcement. "I've gone along with the president on this, and I bought into his dream," said Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio. "At this stage of the game, I don't think it's going to happen." Long-time war skeptic and possible presidential hopeful Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican, was irate, declaring Bush's plan to be "the most dangerous foreign-policy blunder in this country since Vietnam-if it's carried out."
The most dubious part of the new Bush plan is its reliance on the Iraqi government to achieve the very same set of goals it has failed to accomplish in the past year. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte told Congress last week that "the various parties [in Iraq] have not yet shown the ability to compromise effectively on the thorny issues of de-Baathification, constitutional reform, federalism, and central versus regional control over hydrocarbon revenues." His list is eerily similar to the list of benchmarks Bush laid out for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. While suggesting that the U.S. commitment was not open-ended, Bush refrained from any specific threats. "If the Iraqis don't perform, the strategy won't work," a senior U.S. official tells U.S. News. "This part of the plan I have the least confidence in."
Bush's new plan amounts to a repudiation of much of Donald Rumsfeld's six-year legacy at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld had staunchly refused to give U.S. troops the mission of keeping the Iraqi people safe. "You couldn't really have that change until Rumsfeld was gone," says a senior U.S. official. Bush also announced a broader expansion of the badly strained Army and Marines, which effectively reverses Rumsfeld's efforts to create a smaller, more nimble force. Bush would increase the overall size of the military by some 92,000-that's 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines-over five years. Congress has allowed the Army to temporarily grow by some 30,000 soldiers beyond its previous cap of 482,000. Today, it is about 5,000 soldiers short of that goal.
"A bad marriage." Along with the additional military deployments to Iraq, the Bush administration is trying to rejuvenate some of its political efforts in Iraq. Pledging to wade into the battle between moderates and extremists, U.S. officials want to find ways to support Iraq's dwindling number of political moderates. With much of this struggle occurring far from the U.S. diplomatic presence in the fortress of Baghdad's Green Zone, the White House is dispatching as many as 400 additional civilians to staff joint military-civilian teams around Iraq.
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