Bush says "turn that frown upside down!"
Our nation's mission in Iraq is difficult, and we can expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead.
Yet I am confident in the outcome. The Iraqi people are growing in optimism and hope. They understand that the violence is only a part of the reality in Iraq. Each day, Iraqis are exercising new freedoms that they were denied for decades...
-- President George W. Bush, radio address, June 25, 2005
Who believes this man? The rhetoric is only making everything worse, and even supporters of the war are lashing out.
The Los Angeles Times spells it out:
For months, President Bush has struggled to maintain public support for the war in Iraq in the face of periodic setbacks on the battlefield. Now he faces a second front in the battle for public opinion: charges that the administration is not telling the truth about how the war is going.
Bush and his aides have delivered a positive, if carefully calibrated, message. The war is not yet won, they acknowledge, but steady progress is being made. "We can expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead," the president said in his weekly radio address Saturday. "Yet I am confident in the outcome."
But last month, Vice President Dick Cheney broke from the administration's "message discipline" and declared that the insurgency was in its "last throes." The White House has been paying a price ever since.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who supported the decision to go to war in Iraq, complained that the White House was "completely disconnected from reality." Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), another supporter of the war, charged that Bush had opened not just a credibility gap, but a "credibility chasm."
Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.
Regardless of Biden's, and Hagel's possible 2008 presidential run (and their obvious effort to distance themselves from Bush), that's harsh stuff.
Turn the page...
A few days ago, I was talking to my neighbor, who's a Vietnam veteran. He was ranting about the Iraq war, saying that it's frighteningly similar, at least from his point of view.
It looks like at least one historian agrees:
Historian Robert Dallek, a biographer of President Lyndon B. Johnson and an outspoken critic of Bush, said: "Analogies are imperfect, and I hate to press this one, but this is so much like Vietnam. It has echoes of the Vietnam experience when senators like [Arkansas Democrat J. William] Fulbright began to hammer Johnson on our aims and goals and credibility....
"It's a cumulative process. It takes time. We're not at the full-blown stage on this yet. But it's heading in that direction."
As we all know, Bush's approval ratings have taken a nosedive, and public support for the war is waning. The LA Times article examines this effect on GOP politicians' rhetoric:
But complaints about the administration's credibility issued last week from some supporters of the war as well as opponents, and from Republicans as well as Democrats.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a supporter of the war, called on Bush to deliver a tougher message to the public about the danger of losing in Iraq. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), another supporter, complained that although the Pentagon claimed it had trained 170,000 Iraqi security forces, it refused to say how many were ready for military operations -- "the key element to success," McCain said.
Underlying their criticism was a steady erosion in public support for the war.
"We will lose this war if we leave too soon. And what is likely to make us do that? The public going south," Graham told Rumsfeld. "And that is happening, and that worries me greatly."
Several recent polls have found that a majority of Americans now believe that the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq, and increasing numbers -- but not a majority -- said they want U.S. troops to be withdrawn immediately.
"What's interesting in this decline in support for the war is that it has sprung from the public itself," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. "It wasn't led by politicians or by an antiwar movement. It started back in May, when the focus in Washington was on other issues."
On Tuesday, Bush will give a pep talk from Ft. Bragg. I have a feeling he won't be able to convince anyone, including members of his own party.
As Hunter said last night, "Clap Harder" Doesn't Seem to be Working. Bush's speech simply won't help at all.