Iraq: Trying to spin the
unspinnable By Ashraf Fahim
CAIRO - In the modern age, politicians are
accustomed to being rescued from the tar pit of
failed policies by the wondrous powers of spin.
The administration of US President George
W Bush, for example, when faced with a public
outcry over Iraq, has with great effectiveness
disseminated expertly crafted, razor-sharp talking
points into the ether to persuade voters to
believe what they hear
and not what they see.
The power of spin is not infinite,
however, as the administration is
now discovering. The
consequences of its invasion of Iraq are now so
transparently catastrophic that Republican control
of Congress is threatened in the November 7
mid-term elections, in which Iraq is the
hot-button issue.
Bad news has cascaded
out of Iraq at such an astonishing pace that it
defies credulity to suggest that the war has not
drastically worsened the lives of Iraqis. At the
same time, the initial rationale for the war has
itself been further undermined.
The
administration has nevertheless tried to spin the
unspinnable as the elections near, with many
Republican candidates fighting for their political
lives and choosing to distance themselves from the
White House on Iraq. Only the fifth anniversary of
the September 11 attacks on the US has offered the
administration any respite, providing an
opportunity it did not squander to tell voters,
ad nauseam, that Iraq is the front line of
its "war on terror". The most immediate
public relations challenge facing the administration
is Iraq's civil war. The United Nations now
estimates that 100 Iraqis at least are dying every day
in sectarian violence. Dozens of bodies turn up
daily in Baghdad, the victims of torture and
execution by death squads, and bombs in public spaces
turn everyday life into slaughter. Baghdad's
central morgue alone counted 1,536 violent deaths
in August.
President Bush's feeble
response has been to split hairs, calling Iraq a
"bloody campaign of sectarian violence" but not a
civil war. The American people err on the other
side of the semantic fence, however. A CBS News
poll in June showed that 82% believed civil war
was under way.
At the same time, most
polls show that Americans do not believe the
situation is likely to improve. Public cynicism,
unlike official pronouncement, is firmly rooted in
the worsening realities on the ground, as two
recent events have made apparent.
First was
the revelation on September 11 of a classified report
written by the chief of intelligence for the
US Marine Corps in Iraq, who concluded that the
United States had lost control of al-Anbar, Iraq's
western, Sunni-dominated province. The political
situation there was beyond repair, he said,
and the US military and insurgents had fought
to a "stalemate".
Second is the debate
in the Iraqi parliament over federalism,
which threatens to bring down the government and
tear the country apart. At issue is an October
22 deadline, put in place over Sunni objections
by the constitution passed last year, for the
mechanisms for federalism to be established. In
addition to Sunni Arabs, some Shi'ite groups,
notably backers of nationalist cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr, oppose any legislation that would create
independent regional blocs with control of their
own resources and security.
As Iraq tears
itself apart, US forces continue dying in large
numbers. Nearly 2,700 have perished and 20,000
have been injured, and there is no end in sight -
in recent testimony before Congress, Pentagon
officials said US troops could remain for five
years or longer.
Spinning this catalogue
of doom has been understandably difficult. The
last time Bush was publicly upbeat on Iraq was
August 30. "Oh, I know the news is full with
terrible suiciders, and it shakes our will. I know
that," he said. "But when you really think about
it, amazing progress has been made."
The
shift in emphasis is noticeable. "During 170
minutes of speeches containing more than 20,000
words, Bush did not once repeat the phrase
'amazing progress', and he made only fleeting
reference to the Iraqi elections, the unity
government and the advances in security that had
been the mainstay of his previous addresses,"
wrote Marc Sandalow in the San Francisco Chronicle
on September 8.
As electoral
defeat looms, rather than portraying Iraq as a
success story unheralded by the ambulance-chasing media
(as was his wont), Bush now switches the topic to
a proven winner, conflating Iraq with the "war on terror".
"The security of the civilized world
depends on victory in the war on terror, and that
depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not
leave until victory is achieved," he said
recently.
The Iraq-al-Qaeda connection was
one of the original justifications for the war, of
course, with officials contending that Saddam
Hussein had given al-Qaeda contractor Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi safe haven. But in a startling blow to
Bush, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced
on September 8 that its investigations had found
no evidence of any link between al-Qaeda and
Saddam, including the Zarqawi theory.
Bush's contention that Iraq was now a hub
of al-Qaeda-inspired activities was given a boost
by the same study that concluded that Anbar was a
lost cause. That study also concluded that no
government institutions were functioning in Anbar
and that al-Qaeda in Iraq was the most significant
political player in the province.
The
problem for Bush, however, is that many Americans
are now connecting the dots and realizing that
Bush's own actions brought terrorism to Iraq. So
his pleas to stay the course and fix the problem
he created can only garner limited sympathy.
With the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan
and Osama bin Laden still at large, Bush is also
being pilloried once again for diverting resources
from an unfinished war to an unnecessary one.
Even as Bush tells Americans to stay the
course, appealing to their sense of duty, Vice
President Dick Cheney does the dirty work by
implying that it is treachery to say otherwise.
Anyone who says US troops must be withdrawn,
Cheney said recently, "validates the strategy of
the terrorists".
"The people obviously are
frustrated because of the difficulty, because of
the cost and the casualties, but you cannot look
at Iraq in isolation," he continued. "You have to
look at it within the context of the broader
global war on terror ... If Saddam Hussein were
still in power, we would be in a vastly worse
position."
This bullish attempt to
continue tying Saddam to the "war on terror",
despite the recent Senate investigation,
demonstrates what little faith the administration
has in the US public's collective memory or
ability to discern spin from reality.
It's
a strategy that has worked in elections past, but
there are signs that the administration has tried
to sell this bridge once too often. Cheney's
stubbornness may shore up support from Bush's base
on the right, but the middle may be dropping out -
indeed the poll numbers are sobering.
Some
polls show that as many as six in 10 Americans now
believe that invading Iraq was a mistake, which
makes all the more astonishing Cheney's recent
statements that the US would have done so even if
the Central Intelligence Agency had told the
president that Iraq had no weapons of mass
destruction.
In a poll by Zogby
International, 58% of respondents said the Iraq
war had not been worth the cost in American lives,
and other polls suggest the number of Americans
who believe Iraq was a major part of the "war on
terror" is as low as 32%.
Republican
candidates, cognizant of the polls, are now
parting company with Bush on Iraq. And, as Time
magazine concluded on September 10, "Democrats,
having largely steered clear of national-security
issues in the 2002 and 2004 campaigns for fear
their war reservations and civil-liberties
concerns would brand them as effete, are embracing
the topic, and they appear to have found their
voice with a steady insistence that Iraq has been
mishandled."
Many Republicans are
forsaking campaign appearances with Bush, much the
way Democrats fled former president Bill Clinton
after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The
Democrats need to pick up 15 seats to take back
the House of Representatives and six seats to take
the Senate. With many races neck-and-neck, and
Iraq, according to a Fox News poll, considered
twice as important as any other issue by voters,
more than one Republican has had a deathbed
conversion.
This phenomenon was spurred by
staunchly pro-war Democratic Senator Joseph
Lieberman's loss in the Democratic primary to
anti-war neophyte Ned Lamont, who ran a one-issue
campaign. That election has focused the minds of
pro-war incumbents, to say the least.
One
such convert is Curt Weldon, a Republican
congressman from Pennsylvania. Such a true
believer in the war was Weldon that as recently as
June he said the "jury is still out" on whether
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But with an
unexpected challenge from Democrat Joe Stark, who
wants US troops home by 2008, Weldon has seen the
light - he is sponsoring legislation that would
speed the withdrawal from Iraq by using milestones
determined by military leaders.
Then there
is Christopher Shays, a Republican congressman
from Connecticut and hitherto one of Bush's most
forthright backers on Iraq. Shays now believes a
timeline for withdrawal should be considered. A
stiff challenge by anti-war Democrat Diana Ferrell
has doubtless helped to jerk his conscience.
On the other hand, Democratic Senator
Robert Menendez is now in a statistical dead heat
with Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr, whose
standing has been boosted by his calls for
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign,
and his stark criticism of Bush's stewardship of
Iraq.
As it stands, Iraq is looking like
the trump that could return Congress to Democratic
control for the first time since 1994. In an
Associated Press-Ipsos poll on Friday, Democrats
held a 14-point advantage over Republicans when
voters were asked whom they would cast their vote
for if the election were that day. They also held
a six-point lead when voters were asked which
party would handle Iraq better. In a cautionary
note to Democratic hopes, however, it should be
said that US elections do not always reflect
national polling numbers.
As public
support drains away, Bush's rhetoric has become
more extreme. "They made clear that the most
important front in their struggle against America
is Iraq," said Bush, referring to letters between
al-Qaeda leaders. "Bin Laden and his terrorist
allies have made their intentions as clear as
[Vladimir] Lenin and [Adolf] Hitler before them.
The question is, will we listen?"
The
polls suggest that Americans are not listening,
and have become somewhat inured to such hyperbole.
Years of unrelenting war have stripped away their
belief that the Republicans can unlock Iraq's
blood-soaked riddle or that they should be allowed
to keep trying.
Ashraf Fahim is
a freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based
in New York and London. His writing can be found
at www.storminateacup.org.uk.
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