One of President Bush?s strengths in the first six years of his presidency has been his ability to project decisiveness. He has dubbed himself “the decider,” a characterization that has bought him some derision. But until recently at least, there was not much doubt that, as Harry Truman once said, “the buck stops here,” at the Oval Office.
Now, however, that decisiveness seems in retreat, as the current occupant agonizes over how best to find the “new way forward” he has promised in Iraq. His earlier reputation for, and practice of, making quick decisions and sticking to them is awash in the prolonged quest for the answer, postponed into the new year.
As the commander in chief, the president must and will make the ultimate ruling on how the U.S. military effort goes forward in Iraq. But as he continues to probe for solutions from his new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, and his military leaders here and in the Middle East, he seems caught in contradictions with his previous certitude.
Until the midterm congressional elections that confirmed wide public discontent with his leadership of the war in Iraq, the president was consistent in his statements that when it came to “boots on the ground” there, he would give his military leaders whatever they asked for.
Fortunately, as long as Donald Rumsfeld, a believer of less-is-more, was in charge of the Pentagon, little was heard there or from the field about a need for a major manpower boost in Iraq. And the notion of increasing the American commitment beyond the current 140,000 troops clearly risked generating an outburst of public protest at home.
In fact, the chief U.S. commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, pointedly said he did not favor any significant increase, contending that neither the Army nor the Marines had the available manpower for it, given the pressures already imposed by the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Only a few influential voices were being heard to raise the force level, and when Sen. John McCain, a 2008 presidential hopeful, called for sending 30,000 or more American forces to Iraq, his political judgment was questioned as unwisely bucking public opinion. This was particularly so as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group of prominent civilians recommended the opposite ? start to draw down the American military presence with a target date of the first quarter of 2008.
But in the president?s obvious resistance to the group?s report, the idea of a short-term “surge” to combat violence in Baghdad of the dimensions of McCain?s proposal began to find favoritism in the White House, where “winning” remains the objective. Not only Abizaid but the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their former chairman, retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, also have made their opposition known.
Powell has pointed out that a similar “surge” last summer and fall had failed to curb the violence and that if he were still the Joint Chief chairman he would want to know what specific mission the troop transfusion would have, and whether it could reasonably be achieved.
In Bush?s year-end news conference,he waffled on his earlier position that he would make his decision based on what his generals said they needed. But he said he agreed with them that “there?s got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished.”
It?s a measure of the difficulty of finding “a way forward” at this stage of the military chaos in Iraq that the man who self-confidently labeled himself “the decider” now finds himself agonizing over advice that clashes with the concerns of his military leaders. All he would say at the news conference was that “the opinion of my commanders is very important. They are bright, capable, smart people whose opinion matters to me a lot.”
Harry Truman, however, never said the buck stopped with his generals in the field, or with his Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the end George W. Bush must make up his own mind, regardless of previous buck-passing to the generals.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
