Incapable of Change

President Bush gave another speech this week trying to resell his Iraq war "strategy", but his rhetoric never went beyond its usual shallowness. For Bush, looking strong means never changing your mind or your phrasing, no matter what the consequences. And faced with withering pressure from Congress this week, Bush remained stuck in old habits.

Rejecting calls for a timetable of withdrawal, Bush stated: "I will settle for nothing less than complete victory." He went on to explain that, "Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."

Unfortunately, the underlying problems preventing these objectives are the result of our occupation, and didn’t exist previously. More distressing is the fact that Bush's stated objectives are a virtual impossibility. Even if we stay for another decade, the terrorists and Saddamists will still threaten Iraq from within, as terrorists will continue to threaten our nation long into the future. And though the Iraqi security forces may be able to provide something approximating security someday in the distant future, Iraq will be a safe haven for terrorists as long as there are large groups of Iraqis who resent our invasion, resent other tribes or resent other religious sects. Which is to say, forever.

Bush’s black-and-white mindset consistently keeps him from a clear view of reality, which is gray and complicated. And his "complete victory" sloganeering is a ridiculous, childish farce. If his objective is to kill all the terrorists, he will fail miserably, and we with him. Clearly, for every terrorist we knock down, two more pop up.

Bush has learned nothing in office and his response to the growing concern from both parties is confirmation that he is incapable of change and unable to get us out of the mess he and his Iraq-obsessed posse created. And his denial of reality and absolutist rhetoric renders future flexibility and policy adjustment as likely as global cooling. So the bigger the Iraq mess gets, the more he’ll try to convince us it’s not a mess, rather than do something different in order to clean it up.