Why Bush Is (Still) Winning the War at Home

By Joe Klein

"I was up there in the cockpit of that airplane coming into Baghdad," the President told the press corps assembled on the White House lawn after his dash into and out of the war zone last week. "It was an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling." In fact, George W. Bush's body language--let's call it the full jaunty--was reminiscent of his last, infamous cockpit trip, onto the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to announce the "end" of major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a mission accomplished sign. His public language is more cautious than it used to be, but he seemed downright frothy in a private session with the congressional leadership after his press conference.

He called the new Iraqi Defense Minister an "interesting cat" and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the deceased al-Qaeda leader, "a dangerous dude." Bush had reason, finally, to strut. The al-Zarqawi raid had netted valuable intelligence data that were enabling U.S. and Iraqi forces to roll up al-Qaeda cells--the best haul since the capture of Saddam Hussein, which made it possible for U.S. forces to disable much of the dictator's inner circle in early 2004. What's more, the first elected Iraqi government was finally fully in place. Back home, Karl Rove was officially unindicted in the cia leak case, and the Democrats were busy being Democrats--divided, defensive and confused about the war, with Bush's favorite punching bag, Senator John Kerry, leading the charge.

Kerry gave an eloquent speech to a group of left-liberal activists on the day of Bush's Baghdad trip. "It is not enough to argue with the logistics [of the war] ... or the manner of the conflict's execution or the failures of competence, as great as they are," Kerry said, to wild cheers. "It's essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake." It was an appropriate act of contrition, but then--as is his awkward wont--Kerry overreacted and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year. It was a proposition that garnered all of six votes on the Senate floor when Senate Republicans gleefully submitted Kerry's idea to a vote later in the week.

And so, a mystery: How is it possible--with 2,500 U.S. solders dead, no discernible progress on the ground and a solid majority of the public now agreeing that the war in Iraq was a mistake--for the Democrats to seem so bollixed about the war and for the President to seem so confident? A good part of it is flawed strategy. Democrats keep hoping that the elections can be framed as a referendum on the Bush policy, and Republicans keep reminding the public that elections are a choice, not a referendum. Last week, in the opening salvo of the 2006 congressional elections, Bush and Rove were reminding voters that the choice would be between the Democratic strategy of "cut and run" and the Republican war against Islamic "fascists," as the President called them. It was clear, yet again, that Bush and Rove would surf the complexities of the conflict for their political advantage. "See, Iraq is part of the global war on terror," the President said. "And if we fail in Iraq, it's going to embolden al-Qaeda types." Rove helpfully added in a New Hampshire speech that al-Zarqawi wouldn't have been nailed if we had pulled out of Iraq, as Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, recommended last winter.

Rove's assertion was scurrilous and inaccurate. Al-Zarqawi had been eliminated through terrific intelligence work and air power, neither of which required a substantial U.S. ground presence in Iraq. The President's line of attack was accurate but lethally incomplete. His poorly planned invasion of Iraq created the atmosphere that enabled al-Qaeda--and the local sectarian conflicts--to flourish. Iraq had become, in small part, a war against al-Qaeda; for the most part, it is a local sectarian conflict--because of American incompetence. If the President had not allowed General Tommy Franks to "cut and run"--that is, to close his headquarters and begin drawing down the U.S. military presence on May 1, 2003, the very same day as Bush's first cockpit stunt--the U.S. forces might have had a better chance to contain the insurgency. But those are complicated arguments to make in a political campaign. And even the wildest accusations, like Rove's disgraceful Murtha gambit, will force a candidate onto the defensive.

What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months--and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."