http://nypost.com/2014/09/11/schlock-and-awe-obama-polls-war/Schlock and awe: Obama polls war
By William McGurn
September 11, 2014 | 10:46pm
There exist any number of fair criticisms of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy — that he underestimated the resistance we would encounter, that he deferred too long to failing generals, that the surge ought to have come sooner, and so on.
The one thing that can’t be said about him is this: that his war policy was driven by the polls and politics. This is the operative difference between Presidents Bush and Obama, which the latter drove home in his prime-time address Wednesday evening.
On the surface, there are similarities between the two.
Like Bush’s Iraq reset, Obama’s comes near the midway point of his second term. Obama is today low in the polls, as was Bush when he announced the surge.
Though Bush’s Iraq problems stemmed from getting in whereas Obama’s come from getting out, each president was dealing with what had become an obvious policy failure in Iraq.
There the similarities stop.
In January 2007, Bush told the American people, “It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq,” spoke candidly about why “our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed” — and then bet the farm on a new, counter-insurgency strategy that involved a surge of thousands of US troops.
Those of us involved with helping Bush prepare his remarks that evening knew every single poll showed that no one — not the Pentagon, not the GOP leadership on the Hill, not the American people — wanted to hear about more US troops bound for Iraq.
And it would have been relatively easy for President Bush to bug out: The Iraq Study Group offered a bipartisan path to a dignified retreat.
In this week’s Iraq speech, President Obama did the opposite of President Bush.
He looked at polls showing Americans saying that his administration has failed, that he’s been too weak in foreign policy and that they want ISIS to pay for its crimes. He then stuffed his speech with poll-tested pleasers.
Start with the president’s declaration that he will “degrade” and “destroy” the Islamic State.
Continue with his assertion that a “core principle” of his administration is that “if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” Not to mention his assurance that “the United States of America is meeting [the threat from ISIS] with strength and resolve.”
The Churchillian growls are then softened by a kicker also designed for poll appeal: “It will not involve American combat troops on the ground.”
Translation: Though ISIS today is a greater threat than al Qaeda was in 2001, we’re going to defeat them and guess what? It will be completely painless.
What a contrast with President Bush, who was up-front about the blood, sweat and tears: “Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue — and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties.”
At the time, of course, anything Bush said on Iraq was filtered to the public through the press caricature of a Texas cowboy too pigheaded to change.
But unlike President Obama on Wednesday, President Bush showed with his surge he was capable of changing, standing his former war policy on its head — and making clear where the buck stopped.
“Where mistakes have been made,” he said, “the responsibility rests with me.”
When Bush spoke, moreover, his remarks were directed not only at the American people but at allies and enemies alike wondering whether we were going to cut and run.
When Obama spoke, the emphasis plainly was on reversing the polling damage done by earlier statements, from his dismissal of ISIS as a “junior varsity” threat to his more recent admission that “we have no strategy in Iraq.”
It’s all of a piece with his record. When Obama announced his own surge of troops for Afghanistan at West Point, he sounded retreat in the very next sentence.
In retrospect, it’s clear the only reason he had a surge at all is because his campaign critique of Bush’s Iraq policy was that it had distracted America from the “necessary war” we needed to win in Afghanistan.
Today we know Obama’s own defense secretary, Robert Gates, had concluded President Obama didn’t “believe in his own strategy” even as he sent troops into battle.
Gates further records a conversation in which then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted her opposition to the Iraq surge had been political, and says Obama implied his had been, too.
Back in 2007, President Bush looked into the TV cameras and gave the speech no one wanted to hear — betting that delivering results would reverse the looming catastrophe in Iraq.
This week President Obama looked into those same cameras and gave the speech he believed everyone wanted to hear — hoping his words will change the catastrophe he now sees in the polls.
