Still waiting for Iraq answers

4/1/08

Maybe a year from now, when President McCain confers with newly installed Defense Secretary Joseph I. Lieberman, we’ll finally get a sense of what we’re doing in Iraq. That will be about the six-year anniversary of “Mission Accomplished,” so maybe that would be a good time to hear some answers.

The prognosis will probably sound something like this — conditions are improving, but not to the point that we can expect to leave anytime soon. That will line up with pretty much every official statement about the war since 2003.

We’ve reached the point today when the president can admit that he willfully lied to the public on multiple occasions about the war’s progress and no one bats an eye.

Speaking of positive statements he made during the summer of 2006, President Bush said this: “Look, you can’t have the commander in chief say to a bunch of kids who are sacrificing either, ‘It’s not worth it,’ or, ‘You’re losing.’ I mean, what does that do for morale?”

Much better for morale to flat-out lie. Didn’t we used to impeach presidents on this sort of thing?

Bush is an afterthought at this point, and his meanderings on the topic of the day don’t amount to much. (He also, in the same interview, admitted he was OK with top White House staff getting together to approve torture techniques. Whatever.)

So none of this would matter much if we didn’t have a candidate running for president who promised four more years of Bush foreign policy. But the McCain-Lieberman team is all in on Iraq, and their election would guarantee we wouldn’t be changing anything as long as they stayed in office.

Lieberman’s personal descent into self-parody, of course, continues as usual. Asked if he thought Senate colleague Barack Obama was a Marxist, he answered, “Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question,” before deeming Obama’s positions “far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.”

Just read that line again. Lieberman is equating his own positions with that of “mainstream America”? The same mainstream America that turned against this war years ago and wants nothing more than to just get out? The same mainstream that thinks maybe bombing Iran while we’re fighting two other wars might not be the smartest move at the moment?

Joe, too, knows his time is running short unless he can drag McCain over the finish line. When Senate Democrats, as seems likely, improve on their slim majority after November’s elections, party leadership will no longer be dependent on Mr. Sanctimony to stay in their caucus. Unless he gets that McCain cabinet post he’s surely counting on, no more “Meet the Press” for him.

When Lieberman delivers the keynote address at the Republican National Convention this year, proving to independent voters how eager McCain is to reach across the aisle to someone who thinks exactly like him on most issues, he’s sure to tell us we’re on our way to victory in Iraq. Since we’re so far past the point of even knowing what “victory” means, it will be interesting to see if anyone calls him on it.

It may not matter much. Americans like a winner, after all. We’re not into “retreat and defeat” or “the blame game,” but we do enjoy a good rhyme scheme, apparently.

So what’s to be done? We aren’t in a dramatically different position on Iraq now than at any time over the past five years. The violence ebbs and spikes, U.S. troop deaths continue unabated, up to 10 percent of the Iraqi population has been killed or displaced from their homes by the fighting — but our presidential debates focus on flag lapel pins.

McCain has made his promise. “There’s going to be other wars,” he says. We won’t be able to say he didn’t warn us.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6233 or by e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.