Chicago Tribune November 04, 2004
Bush faces dual challenge in Iraq: Elections and wider support
By Stephen J. Hedges
WASHINGTON --
President Bush's victory Tuesday leaves him with the double challenge of staging secure national elections in Iraq in early 2005 while renewing the effort to win broader international support for the U.S. mission there.
Though Bush received voters' approval for his Iraq strategy, that may fade quickly if casualties continue to mount and he cannot show movement toward bringing troops home.
Overall, Bush's win could bolster his Iraq strategy, which includes offensives--perhaps within days--to take back cities held by insurgents, a push for a national election by the end of January, the training of an Iraq National Guard and a reduction in U.S. forces there.
In Afghanistan, where national elections were held last month, about 20,000 U.S. troops are battling Taliban remnants and terrorism suspects.
"We'll help the emerging democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom," Bush said in his victory speech Wednesday, "and then our servicemen and women will come home with the honor they have earned."
Sharply critical of Bush's Iraq strategy during the campaign, Sen. John Kerry suggested convening a summit on Iraq as a way to engage longstanding U.S. allies that have stayed out of the conflict. He pledged to win more involvement from nations such as France and Germany, a hope that even some of his supporters considered a long shot. Indeed, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told Cabinet members last month that "no one in the federal government is thinking about a change of position on Iraq."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been pressing U.S. allies to provide more military muscle for Iraq, and Bush's win may give that effort some leverage. But military analysts said Bush's re-election would do little to persuade other countries to join the Iraq effort.
"He [Bush] is going to have to make some broad gesture to them, approve the Kyoto treaty [to reduce global greenhouse gases] or the International Court, because it wasn't just what he did in Iraq, but his whole approach to them," said Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan.
Even on the day of his victory, however, some help was lost. Shortly before Bush's speech, Hungary set a date of March 31 to withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq.
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said, "We are obliged to stay there until the [Iraq] elections. To stay longer is an impossibility."
About 32 countries besides the U.S. have committed 22,000 troops to the effort in Iraq, the largest number of them--9,000--from Britain. But several have pledged to withdraw forces as the violence escalated in recent months. NATO nations have agreed to help train Iraq security forces, but they have balked at sending troops.
In Iraq on Wednesday, the violence marched on. A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb outside Baghdad, and five more contract workers were reported kidnapped. Bush's re-election means that ground operations will not be interrupted, military analysts said.
Situation on the ground
"I think the commanders in Iraq are focused on the tactical situation right now," said retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a former commandant of the Army War College. "They're finding out when will be the opportune time to open up the no-go zones, and tracking the Iraq National Guard and making sure they're ready to carry their load."
Scales also said Bush's re-election will bring with it the responsibility "to get on top of this conflict" and to perform a "midcourse assessment of where we go from here."
Central to that assessment will be finding ways to bring relief to the overstretched ground forces that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some units are returning to, or preparing for, a second deployment.
Korb suggested that Bush may force the Pentagon to reorder its spending priorities and acknowledge that ground forces are playing the leading role in the war on terrorism and in Iraq. Bush's defense budget reached $417 billion this year, but it included new fighter jets and other weapons programs, such as the $10 billion-a-year missile defense project.
Strain on defense budget
"Are you going to go for a bigger Army?" Korb asked. "If you increase the size of the Special Forces and go ahead with missile defense, how do you fit that all into the budget?"
The Iraq war's cost, while not part of the annual Defense Department budget, also will draw more scrutiny in Congress as the fighting continues. Through September, the conflict cost about $119 billion, including reconstruction funds, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
And even as they worry about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials and Pentagon commanders have to prepare for what many believe will be Bush's next international challenge: halting Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"What are we going to do about mullahs and their atomic bomb?" said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a national security organization, referring to Iran's ruling clerics. "Either we will have taken it away from them by the end of his [Bush's] second term, or we're giving diplomacy a chance, and diplomacy has been tried and has already failed."
© Copyright 2004, Chicago Tribune
