http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56128-2005Jan7.html
Washington Post Friday, January 7, 2005
Bush rejects growing pessimism on US foreign policy By William Branigin
President Bush today rejected growing pessimism in the U.S. foreign policy establishment about stability in Iraq, asserting that "we're making great progress" there and that elections at the end of the month will be "an incredibly hopeful experience" for Iraqis.
In a photo opportunity at the White House, Bush was asked about comments by Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who served as national security adviser under presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and until recently chaired the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Scowcroft told a Washington luncheon yesterday that he expects "an incipient civil war" between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq after the Jan. 30 elections. He said the U.S. military presence in Iraq is inflaming the Middle East and hurting the war on terrorism, and he suggested turning the operation over to NATO or the United Nations.
"The Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have the great potential for deepening the conflict," Scowcroft said at the New America Foundation luncheon, expressing a view increasing sharedby both Democratic and Republican foreign policy specialists.
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Actually, there is not all that much difference between Bush and Scowcraft -- both are under the wild impression (or at least pretend to be) that there is a viaable way to let go of the tar baby. The hope for some acceptable closure under the U.N. or (!!!) NATO is as chimerical as is Bush's claim that the elections will make a difference.
One may speculate on what face-saving gesture the U.S. will make as it flees Iraq (and as to what machinations to maintain a puppet state will follow the departure), but the predictions some of us made just before the First Gulf War were obviously accurate: the U.S. cannot maintain an army indefinitely in Iraq, and following an invasion that army can only be replaced by a state hostile to the U.S.
Anti-War activists who take some version of the Scowcraft policy will look increasingly silly, if not cowardly.
Carrol