President Bush admitted last night that he should have increased the troops in Iraq last year, according to Joseph Curl and Stephen Dinan in The Washington Times.
Mr. Bush yesterday said he was wrong both in his decision-making and in his assumptions.
"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me," he said. "The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me."
But by pushing for an escalation, Mr. Bush runs smack into Democrats, the new majority party in Congress, who say they reflect American voters’ desire to begin bringing troops back home.
And it will be interesting to see how the Democrats play this. Up to now they have criticized the president without offering an overall strategic appreciation. It’s worked so well for them that we should not expect any changes.
The president announced, in fact, a change in tactics at what the Germans used to call the operational level. The goal still appears to be to “stand up” the Iraqi government so that it can succeed as the sole monopoly of force in Iraq.
Maybe it will work, and maybe it won’t. The point is that, win or lose, the strategy in the Middle East appears to be unchanged. It is to preserve Israel and contain the aggressive intentions of Iran.
The bigger question is whether Islamic radicalism is a global threat to democratic capitalism or whether it is a wildfire that will eventually burn itself out. Obviously the response depends on how seriously you take the threat.
Whatever the actual threat, it seems unlikely that 300 million Europeans, a billion Chinese and a billion Indians—let alone 300 million North Americans—will just sit down and let a rich-kids’ Islamic teenage gang take them out.
But you never know.
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