Did George W get the message?

In his first press conference after the Election Day debacle which saw his Republican Party lose control of both the US House of Representatives and Senate for the first time in 12 years, President George W. Bush didn’t console himself with the history of what happens to incumbent administrations in mid-term elections during a President’s second term: They tend to lose control of the Congress.

Instead, US media said, he made clear that the message from the electorate had been heard loud and clear, and that whether the US economy is doing just fine, as the Republicans insist, or not, as the Democrats argue, the issue that trumped all others at the polls was Iraq. In other words, it wasn’t the economy, stupid! It was the war…stupid?

The first thing Bush announced was that lightning-rod Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was gone, and that former Central Intelligence Agency director Robert Gates would be the new guy at the Pentagon. The former spy chief, a CIA veteran of over 27 years, was appointed head of that agency by President George Herbert Walker Bush, George W’s dad.

Gates’ appointment supposedly signals a shift to more realism and pragmatism in Bush policy towards Iraq, as well as a fresh breath of "humility" which Rumsfeld allegedly never had. The former Defense Secretary, according to some overjoyed Democrats, had a tendency to "act as though he alone had all the answers."

Indeed, in his farewell speech at the White House, Rumsfeld claimed that the government’s Iraq policy was difficult and little understood, clearly implying he was among the few who truly understood that complex policy.

That new air of pragmatism will be welcomed in Washington, D.C. Almost two years ago, when the newly-appointed Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had just assumed office, fellow Stanford professor Josef Joffe urged her in a Time magazine Viewpoint piece to follow the example of Ronald Reagan who "forsook the mean streets of the cold war for the high road of history-making diplomacy."

He suggested to Rice, whom he described as having been "raised in the realist tradition of statecraft," that she counsel Bush that, in the "grandest tradition of American global leadership," the proper maxim was "to cajole rather than confront, argue rather than annoy, persuade rather than provoke." Above all, he told Rice, "be true to your realist faith, whose first commandment insists: Thy grasp shall not exceed thy reach."

History does not record that Rice ever followed Joffe’s advice, but history will record that, in fact, Bush’s grasp did exceed his reach. Most analysts, including conservative think-tanks, now think that the US cannot win the war in Iraq.

George W disagreed with that assessment. A week before the elections, in campaign sorties for Republican candidates, he kept on saying, "We’re winning…The only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done." But because there was no clear public understanding of precisely what that "job" was, except perhaps in the mind of Rumsfeld who was one among very few who claims to have understood it, a plan for when and how the US would leave Iraq was left up in the air.

To many voters, including Republicans who told poll-takers they were going Democrat this year, that statement meant that Bush had no real idea of how long the US would stay in Iraq. It’s already taken longer than the original 18 months he estimated in 2003 it would take to "do the job."

His policy – maintaining over 140,000 American soldiers in Iraq, at a total cost of well over $300 billion so far, and counting, while hoping that a newly-minted Iraqi Army would eventually be competent enough to handle the rapidly deteriorating domestic situation – was perceived as drift, and as unsustainable. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in last week’s Newsweek, "To recognize this reality does not mean that there is no hope in the years to come. There is – but hope is not a policy."

Gates’ arrival is meant to transform this hope into a realistic plan for future US action in Iraq. He is a member of the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and Democratic former congressman Lee Hamilton, which is drawing up recommendations aimed at formulating a new bipartisan approach to Iraq.

The options reportedly being considered include a phased withdrawal of US troops, resulting eventually in a much smaller force remaining in secure bases throughout the country and providing a rapid-response capability. At the moment, an immediate and total withdrawal is out of the question since escalating sectarian strife would cause a bloodbath. It appears that only the US can oversee an orderly transition to civilian government.

There is also serious consideration being given to dividing the country into three autonomous regions, to address fears among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish militants of dominance by one group or the other. Iraq would thus become a loose confederation, with the three communities sharing government jobs and, more importantly, oil revenues. But the devil is, as usual, in the details, such as a proposed amnesty and disbanding of all armed militant groups.

Part of "pragmatism" and "realism" is for the US to get down from its "spread of democracy" high horse and accept what Fareed Zakaria calls "a gray ending." Such an ending would be unsatisfying to everybody but prevent "the worst scenarios" from coming to pass, secure "real achievements" and allow the US to "regain its energies and strategic compass for its broader leadership role in the world."

Zakaria suggests that the best we can hope for in current circumstances is something like the closing of the Korean War in the early 1950’s. That war, he says was not a defeat for America, but it was certainly not a victory. The US is, of course, still in Korea. But, at the moment at least, while there are tensions, there are no armed hostilities.

Still, the real question is, can American pragmatism take it, after the experience of another, more recent, war. Will George W. Bush be able to withstand comparisons to Vietnam? Will his political party be able to suffer the inevitable second-guessing about his "failed" Iraq policy? In many ways, it’s too early to say. But this, I guess, is what humility means, after one’s soaring ambitions come crashing down to earth.