Should Bush Resign If He Doesn't Shift on Iraq?

George W. Bush had a point when he disparaged the Baker-Hamilton commission's plan for gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq by saying "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever." It's now obvious that there can be no exit from Iraq -- graceful or otherwise -- as long as Bush remains President.

Despite wishful thinking about Bush "making a 180" and taking to heart the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations, the President is making it abundantly clear that he has no intention to reverse course, negotiate with his Muslim adversaries or pull American combat troops out of Iraq. Bush continues to present the Iraq War and the broader conflict in the Middle East as an existential battle between good and evil, a scrap between black hats and white hats, not a political struggle that can be resolved through respectful negotiations and mutual concessions.

In Bush's view, the only resolution is for troublesome Muslims to submit to his terms. But that is a possibility receding with the speed of water being pulled out to sea before the surge of a fast-approaching tsunami. In this case, there is a tidal wave of anti-Americanism about to crash across the Middle East. While the Democratic congressional election victory and the scathing assessment from the Iraq Study Group may have shifted the political ground in Washington, Bush refuses to let go of his uncompromising vision of an "ideological struggle" requiring a near-endless war against Muslim militants abroad and elimination of constitutional liberties at home.

Tough Talk

At a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Dec. 7 -- just a day after the release of the Iraq Study Group's report -- Bush jumped back into his stump-speech rhetoric demanding "victory in Iraq" as the only acceptable result for "the civilized world." "I believe we'll prevail," Bush said. "Not only do I know how important it is to prevail, I believe we will prevail. I understand how hard it is to prevail. But I also want the American people to understand that if we were to fail -- and one way to assure failure is just to quit, is not to adjust, and say it's just not worth it -- if we were to fail, that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future. …

"I believe we're in an ideological struggle between forces that are reasonable and want to live in peace, and radicals and extremists. And when you throw into the mix radical Shia and radical Sunni trying to gain power and topple moderate governments, with energy which they could use to blackmail Great Britain or America, or anybody else who doesn't kowtow to them, and a nuclear weapon in the hands of a government that is -- would be using that nuclear weapon to blackmail to achieve political objectives -- historians will look back and say, how come Bush and Blair couldn't see the threat? "That's what they'll be asking. And I want to tell you, I see the threat and I believe it is up to our governments to help lead the forces of moderation to prevail. It's in our interests."

Along with his grim vision of an open-ended global war, Bush added his usual mix of false history and faulty logic to fan the fears of Americans. Back, for instance, was Bush's old canard about how the 9/11 attacks ended American complacency that the two oceans protected the country from attack, a belief that actually disappeared more than a half century ago with the advent of Soviet nuclear missiles. Bush said:

One of the things that has changed for American foreign policy is a threat overseas can now come home to hurt us, and September the 11th should be a wake-up call for the American people to understand what happens if there is violence and safe havens in a part of the world. And what happens is people can die here at home.

Bush also continued to posit how his favored Middle East forces are pro-democratic and his enemies are anti-democratic, though the evidence actually is that the popular wave sweeping across the Middle East is one of intense anti-Americanism.