Bush misses the mark
There can be little doubt there was sufficient cause for the American military to invade Iraq, unfound WMDs and United Nations' resolutions notwithstanding. Saddam Hussein had violated numerous elements of the 1991 ceasefire, any of which sufficed to allow the president to ask Congress to declare war against Iraq. Nor can there be any doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was a positive step for the various Iraqi peoples, who suffered under decades of his savage tyranny.
Still, the defeat of two minor military powers by the greatest military machine history has ever known does not make George Bush a great wartime president. Indeed, the jury is far from in on the question of whether he can even be considered successful at this juncture. It is even possible that he will come to be judged a complete failure in the execution, just as Bill Clinton failed at the preparation.
The primary reason for my concern about the conduct of this so-called war - still undeclared - stems from this quote from Clausewitz, the military theorist:
Our position, then, is that a theater of war, be it large or small, and the forces stationed there, no matter what their size, represent the sort of unity in which a single center of gravity can be identified. That is the place where the decision should be reached; a victory at that point is in its fullest sense identical with the defense of the theater of operations.
The administration is either being disingenuous or deceptive about the theater of what it calls a war on method. The very concept is wrongheaded on its face, as there can be no unity or identifiable center of gravity to amorphous terror. This would seem to indicate deception and conjures images of "1984," with its endless war that justified Big Brother's "boot in the face forever." But even if the administration is innocent of all malevolent intention and the Patriot Act is as innocent as its freedom-loving Republican supporters claim, this lack of focus is troubling.
For if the war is not against terror, but against violent expansionist Islam as the jihad claims is the case, then Iraq is a strange place to try and win it. It is clear that the theater of the war is the breeding ground of the jihad's global soldiers, the seething cauldron of the Middle East. And there are only two serious candidates for a place of where it can be said: "In this one enemy we strike at the center of gravity of the entire conflict." Neither is Iraq.
Iran is the operations center of global terrorism. The mullahs of the Islamic Republic fund and control Hezbollah and Hamas as well as the Mahdi militia of al-Sadr. Even more important, though, is the spiritual center of the jihad in Saudi Arabia, where government clerics preach war against America as the government funds the establishment of mosques worldwide in the deliberate attempt to lay the groundwork for global Sharia.
The conquest of Iraq no more brought about an end to the global jihad than did the conquest of the Rhineland-Palatinate mean the end of World War II. Nor could it have. Berlin had to fall before the defeat of Nazi Germany could even be contemplated, and it's bizarre to suggest that the occupation of a peripheral Arabic province could end the war while the Clausewitzian center of gravity remains unmolested.
The commander in chief must either make the case to the Congress and the citizens of America about the true nature of the struggle in which they find themselves engaged, or continue to obscure the truth. He would do well to remember that for all his power, he is not capable of forcing the nation to engage in war. The president can no more dictate the hearts and minds of American citizens than he can control the hearts and minds of the Shiites at the center of the current battle.
If George Bush chooses to continue to leave the American people in the dark and ignore the Constitution as he fights his own war, against an enemy he refuses to identify, he will surely lose. Moreover, he will deserve to lose.
Iraq is not the end, it is only the end of the beginning. What that end will be, only time will tell.