January 14, 2007 No.

How New is Bush’s “New Course”?

Roni Bart

President George W. Bush announced a “new strategy” in Iraq: a substantial

improvement in the security situation in order to provide time for political
arrangements to stabilize the country. The main points in his program are:
• Making security the most urgent priority, especially in Baghdad. Only the
Iraqis themselves can deal with this problem, and their government has
prepared an aggressive program to deal so while avoiding a repetition of
previous mistakes – too few troops and political limitations (i.e., a pro-
Shi’ite tilt) on their employment.
• Reinforcement of the Iraqi force to be deployed in Baghdad with about
17,500 American troops. Their mission is clear: to help the Iraqi forces take
control of the city, to guarantee the security of its residents and to ensure
long-term control.
• Making it clear that “the American commitment is not open-ended. If the
Iraqi government does not meet its obligations, it will lose the support of
the American people.”
• Insisting that the Iraqi government carry out the headline goals it has set for
itself: assuming security responsibility for the whole country by November,
enacting an Oil Law that will provide for a relatively equal allocation of
revenues to the different ethnic and confessional groups, holding local
elections during the year, rescinding the law that bars former Ba’th Party
members from working in the public sector, and passing constitutional
amendments as promised to the Sunni minority.
• Posting an additional 4,000 American troops to predominantly Sunni Anbar
Province.
• “Disrupting and destroying” support networks sending men and weapons
from Syria and especially Iran.

According to President Bush, the more popular alternative of reducing American

force levels in Iraq would bring about the collapse of Iraqi government, cause more
bloodshed, and make it necessary for the American army to remain even longer. At
this critical juncture, he insists that support must instead be increased in order to

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break the cycle of violence. The coming year will undoubtedly see much violence,
but, he argues, the new strategy will ultimately succeed. Any victory will not
resemble tactical victories of the past. However, it will produce a democratic Iraq,
certainly not perfect in every respect but one that can nevertheless fight terrorism
rather than serve a sanctuary for it. “The challenge in the Middle East,” says Bush,
“is the decisive ideological struggle of our time,” and the new strategy is meant to
ensure the future of an emerging democracy in region of critical importance to the
United States.

What the President did not say was that the troop reinforcement will be brief. Nor
did he set out a rigid timetable for the achievement of the headline goals by the
Iraqi government. Nor did he specifically warn that failure to meet them would
lead to the withdrawal of US forces. Bush did not stipulate that the response to
Syrian and Iranian activities would be confined to Iraq and he did not repeat the
well-worn phrase that “failure is not an option,” referring instead to “victory” only
in the context of lowering expectations.

Is this really a “new course”? The program does shift the main military effort to
Baghdad and it does intensify the effort to transfer the main burden to the Iraqis. It
also makes clear, for the first time, that the American commitment is not open-
ended. Nevertheless, little in the strategy is really new. During the past three
years, there have been several operations to clean out Baghdad (and other centers
of violence). All these have failed. What the new program promises is basically
more of the same. Bush was aware of this and has therefore argued that the
chances of success are better this time because the Shi’ite-dominated government is
showing a determination to fight violent elements in both confessional camps and
is allocating enough forces to do so.

However, there are still two major obstacles to success. The first is opposition by
the Democrat-controlled Congress. The Congressional leadership, backed up by
voters, has demanded that the President not send more troops to Iraq. But while
Democrats are united in their opposition to Bush, they do not agree on an
alternative policy. The moderates among them will settle for non-binding
resolutions and critical hearings in committee; a few may also try to delay the
program with oversight and control measures. More radical opposition forces,
however, have already suggested trying to block Bush by passing legislation or
wielding the “power of the purse” (the program will cost about $7 billion).
Because the Constitution gives the President considerable discretion in using armed
force, and because most Democrats won’t want to risk be labeled as “unpatriotic,”
the President will probably prevail over Congress.

The second and more serious obstacle is the Iraqi government, on which the
success of the program actually rests. Bush hopes that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki will now have both the will and the capacity to act forcefully against all
the sources of violence in the country. That is a very optimistic expectation, since
it implies that the Iraqi government will not only confront the Shi’ite militias but

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also act to conciliate the Sunni minority by implementing the headline goals largely
intended to cultivate its acquiescence. Thus far, the government has shown no sign
of doing either. In fact, even the decision to send more American troops to
Baghdad appears not to be favored by the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government –
because it views an American buildup and a tightening of American security
control as contradicting its own desire to gain sole authority over Iraq as quickly as
possible. Besides, many Iraqi units are actually part of the problem rather than part
of the solution. In brief, Bush will almost certainly discover that the Iraqi
government is a very weak reed on which to lean.

Although the President has staked everything on a bet that Iraqis do want to coexist
peacefully under a government determined to transcend confessional
considerations, there is little evidence that his reading of Iraqi reality is more
accurate now than it was when the US first took control of the country in March
2003.

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