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Opinion

Bush's Fatal Mistake

By Gerhard Spörl

In his State of the Union address, US President George W. Bush repeated his pledge to stay the course in Iraq -- despite warning of a "nightmare scenario" if violence spreads to the country's neighbors. But he was wrong to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

Iraq is an orgy of blood, butchery and barbarism -- a bleak example of what men can do to other men given the chance and the justification. American soldiers are dying, too, their country is disillusioned, and US President George W. Bush will go down in history for his ill-fated attempt to create a new order in the Middle East. But how can things be improved? And how can America extract itself?

When the non-partisan Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and the former US Representative Lee Hamilton, made its proposals late last year, most of the world breathed a deep sigh of relief. Many Americans thought the roadmap for a withdrawal from Iraq would be an offer that George W. Bush couldn't refuse.

The proposals boiled down to two ideas. First, it would be best to withdraw troops and let Iraq fix itself, since the presence of occupation troops was making the conflict worse. Secondly, it was time for diplomats to take over from the generals and meet with both the region's good guys and bad guys -- namely Syria and Iran -- in an international conference which would try to make the best of a disastrous situation.

Cut and talk -- that was the message. Its charm lay in its clarity and simplicity, which made people think the president would get it. There was also the irony that the president's father, George Bush Sr., who'd been a measured, even boring, professional in the White House, was giving assistance to his son, the eternally over-burdened amateur, via the Commission: James Baker is a confidante of Bush Senior, while the new defense minister Robert Gates is a family friend.

It didn't turn out that way, though, as we now know. The incumbent president is not planning to take the recommendations of his father's old cronies to heart. Ironically, he is both right and wrong at the same time.

He is right, because Iraq should not be left to its own devices quite so easily and quickly. It might even be useful if more American soldiers were transferred to Baghdad. That may sound cynical, because it does after all increase the number of targets, but it's not meant that way.

He is wrong, because he also threw out the Commission's idea to set up an international conference in which the countries of the region could have taken part in determining its destiny themselves.

Hence the US is continuing on the same course as before, only differently and without any illusions. Since the rejection of the Iraq Study Group's proposals, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been jetting here and there, talking with the Jordanians, Egyptians, Israelis, Saudis, Lebanese and Palestinians. She isn't talking to the Syrians or the Iranians, though. She isn't talking with Syrian President Bashar Assad, even though several experts say he's worth talking to. She isn't talking with the man who profits most of all from the failed experiment in Iraq, namely Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It's the same old game -- talks can only take place under pre-conditions. That is honorable, except that it doesn't advance things any -- as one can easily see, if one wants to.

It would be good to discover the ol' two-pronged approach, which combines soft power (diplomacy) with hard power (military resolve). Or, to put it another way, Bush with Baker. It's good for diplomats if they can have something up their sleeves. It's good for generals if the end of an operation is part of the agenda. And if politicians regained the right to scan the horizon for solutions it would mark the return of flexibility.

The reality in Iraq -- the daily deaths, the hopelessness -- should actually strengthen Washington's pragmatism. When the either/or approach wins the upper hand in foreign policy, then the bloodthirsty win too -- whether they are called Muqtada al-Sadr and command death squads in the south of Baghdad, or Hassan Nasrallah and let Hezbollah off their leash. One does not achieve much against them using military means alone -- and equally little against Ahmadinejad, who would love nothing more than the opportunity to live out his power fantasies.

One has to reduce the number of their friends and increase the number of their enemies -- through politics, through a two-pronged approach and through a flexible pragmatism.

Whether we like it or not, and whether the good and bad guys in the rest of the Middle East like it or not, almost everything depends on the American president and on the US -- on their willingness to learn and on their rediscovery of the two-pronged approach.

As Winston Churchill once put it, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else." President Bush had better fulfill the second half of the British wartime leader's bon mot quickly.