Is Bush's Surge Vindicated?

Recently, Bush’s supporters have been chirping that the president’s troop surge into Baghdad has been vindicated because violence in Iraq is in a downward trend. The prospect of a full-scale civil war seems to have abated, and there are encouraging signs that al-Qaeda in Iraq is in retreat. These are welcome tactical developments, but using words like “success” or “victory” would be wholly inappropriate in the context of a war that has otherwise been a strategic and moral calamity for the United States.

For the religious right, however, the campaign in Iraq is not just the central front in the war on terror, but also the central front in a cultural and political crusade to wrest control of the national narrative from the secular left. In other words, the religious right desperately wants to claim some sort of victory in Iraq so that they can declare that God and the tide of history are on their side. When things looked hopeless in Iraq the right insisted that it would be some decades before Bush is vindicated. But when a few encouraging developments materialize the right immediately claims vindication and insists that opponents of the war are in denial.

In reality, the war in Iraq has greatly complicated and compounded the challenges the United States faces. Future historians are more likely to say the Iraq War was “Mission impossible” than they are to say the mission was accomplished, but there are too many variables to know how Iraq will manage to turn out in the end. It is quite possible -- indeed I think it is likely -- that Iraq will be quite better off some decades from now than it would have been under Saddam’s Baath Party rule. However, the benefits of Iraq turning out all right may prove more negligible and irrelevant to America’s interests than the architects of the war ever imagined.

The Iraq War must be understood in a context that includes: the rise of China and India, the twilight of the hydrocarbon era, the challenge of militant Islam, and global warming. The invasion of Iraq has done little to alleviate these challenges; indeed, the botched occupation has drained America’s resources away from these and other pressing issues. It is impossible to tie a single hurricane, wildfire, or similar ecological catastrophe to climate change. But if the United States continues to suffer record economic and environmental devastation predicted by scientific authorities, then even a successful outcome in Iraq will look like an imprudent use of American resources.

The strategic rationale for invading Iraq included the idea of exerting hegemony over the region’s petroleum resources in order that the United States would benefit from China’s voracious appetite for oil. To put it bluntly, the Bush administration wanted to insure that: U.S. and British oil firms benefited from China’s phenomenal economic growth and that oil purchases would be denominated in dollars (which confers enormous benefits to U.S. financial firms). To date, however, the price of oil has risen to $100 a barrel (a five-fold increase since the Bush administration took office) while the dollar is sinking to new lows. In short, invading Iraq has precipitated the exact opposite of the Bush administration’s strategic aims, not just on the economic and energy fronts, but also in so far as it has boosted the jihadist cause worldwide.

The Bush administration is going to have to expend a lot of energy just to undo the damage its ill-considered and ill-executed invasion has wrought. To this end, Condoleezza Rice has organized a Middle Eastern Peace conference to try and contain Iran and ameliorate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An administration that at one time believed to road to peace in the Middle East went through Baghdad, Tehran, and Syria (i.e., regime change) has now flip-flopped in so far as it is embracing diplomacy in a last ditch effort to salvage Bush’s legacy.

The prospects for a positive outcome in Iraq have increased marginally in recent months, but they are still dim. Simply put, the Bush administration’s legacy is at the mercy of external events and the next administration. Unless some cataclysmic event dramatically changes public opinion, neither the next administration nor the American people are likely to be inclined to sustain Bush’s nation building efforts in Iraq. All the parties jockeying for power in Iraq recognize this and they are laying low. As one observer put it, the current lull in violence we are seeing now will be revealed as a great deception.

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