Bush, like Johnson, is hearing voices

[kurth]

Bush follows Johnson's logic
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | March 22, 2006

WITH DISAPPROVAL ratings for his handling of Iraq now at 65 percent in the latest Newsweek poll, President Bush reached down into President Johnson's magic hat for an illusion. In a speech in Cleveland, Bush talked about the voters of Tal Afar. "The recent elections show us how Iraqis respond when they know they are safe," Bush said. Tal Afar is the largest city in Western Nineveh Province. In the elections held in January 2005, of about 190,000 registered voters, only 32,000 people went to the polls. Only Fallujah had a lower participation rate... This was reminiscent of a news conference President Johnson held in November of 1967, when the percentage of Americans who thought Vietnam was a mistake was closing in on 50 percent in the Gallup poll. "In the midst of all the horrors of war, in guerrilla fighting in South Vietnam, we have had five elections in a period of a little over 14 months," Johnson said... Four months later, a discouraged Johnson, his illusions shattered by the Tet Offensive, would announce that he would not run for reelection.

In Bush's case, the trick was picking one city that seems stable, despite our probable inability to stabilize the entire nation on our own. Rand military analysts determined that it would take 500,000 troops -- our peak Vietnam-era troop strength -- to achieve successful nation-building in Iraq. We currently have about 133,000 troops there... With 133,000 troops only being an outline of what security analysts feel is needed, Bush's illusion of the minimalist explodes with every car bomb. This is the White House that famously dissed the estimate of then-Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed in postwar Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy defense secretary, said Shinseki was "wildly off the mark."

This was the same Wolfowitz who said in the same testimony on Capitol Hill that success would come with minimal force in Iraq because, "There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia, along with a continuing requirement for large peacekeeping forces to separate those militias."

We know who was wildly off the mark now, with Iraq's former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, telling the BBC this weekend, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." This earned Allawi a personal dissing by Bush. In September of 2004, Bush praised Allawi for his courage and leadership. In a news conference yesterday, Bush answered a question about Allawi's statement to the BBC by saying, "There are other voices coming out of Iraq, by the way, other than Mr. Allawi." It is all a sign that Bush, like Johnson, is hearing voices.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/22/bush_follows_johnsons_logic/