REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Winning in Iraq
The public puts Abu Ghraib in perspective.
When all else fails, look to the good sense of the American people. Even amid a 24/7 news frenzy fed by dreams of Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, the U.S. public isn't even close to buying. In almost inverse proportion to the bizarre perceptions of political reality that obsess those inside the Beltway, recent polls show a 2-to-1 majority of Americans rejecting any move to oust the Secretary of Defense.
To put it another way, even amid one of the worst weeks the Bush Administration has endured in Iraq, the American people have digested the disgusting photographs from Abu Ghraib and put them in proper perspective. They understand that what's really at stake at this moment--underscored by yesterday's news of the beheading of an American civilian captured in Iraq--is the far larger question of American purpose. We read the overwhelming support for Mr. Rumsfeld as evidence that the public wants America not merely to stay in Iraq but to win.
We'll get back to winning in a moment. Most of the Rumsfeld survey results have been relegated to the back pages or their cable equivalent, so it's worth taking a fuller look at what they reveal. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, seven in 10 Americans agree the prison abuse story is "a big deal." No attempt at denial here. But by the same number, 69%, they don't want to see Mr. Rumsfeld go (20% desired resignation). A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll yields almost the exact same percentages.
If similar findings released by the National Annenberg Elections Survey are any clue, moreover, this support for a Rumsfeld Defense Department cuts across huge swaths of the American landscape. In this survey, 66% of respondents come down for keeping Rummy on. More telling still, when broken down into subgroups--Republicans, Democrats, African-Americans, Latinos, men, women--not a single category reported a majority favoring Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster. Even among those who describe themselves as "liberals," only a third want him given the boot.
We relay these results not so much to defend Mr. Rumsfeld, who is quite able on that score, but to add what has sorely been missing from the media bonfire the past week: perspective. Yes, Abu Ghraib is abhorrent, but as yesterday's hearing on Major-General Antonio Taguba's report made clear, this does not represent the behavior of most, or even many, U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
The war's domestic opponents are too obviously eager to expand the misdeeds of a few into a general repudiation of the war and all involved in it. For example, we are now reading that Geneva Convention status should be accorded to illegal combatants such as those at Guantanamo. We suspect the U.S. public understands that terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who wear no uniforms so as to more easily murder innocent civilians, do not deserve the same status accorded legitimate prisoners of war.
We went into Baghdad promising to liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, to ensure that the country would no longer be a safe haven for those who mean America harm, and to hand power over to a free Iraqi people. Right now that is what is being put to the test. The terrorists' bet is that we don't have the stomach to fight a nasty, guerrilla war designed to transform last year's resounding military victory into a humiliating strategic defeat.
As Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong put it eloquently in his speech last week to the Council on Foreign Relations, "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail." This was much the same point, made more brutally, by the tape put up on an al Qaeda-linked Web site yesterday showing the beheading of Nick Berg, an American from Philadelphia recently captured in Iraq.
In the face of these challenges and atrocities, Americans don't want to hear about "staying the course." They want to hear our commander-in-chief tell us how we are going to win. Primarily this means making good on our promise to go ahead with the June 30 handover of power to Iraqis and hold elections as soon as possible.
If Iraqis are to have a fighting chance of success, we need in the meantime to ensure that they are not menaced by those seeking to turn Fallujah into a Baathist protectorate or stir up a Shiite rebellion in the South. The news now coming out of Najaf--that our forces seem finally to be taking care of Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia--gives modest reason for hope.
If we end up losing in Iraq it won't be because the American people were too soft or unwilling to stick with the President and his team when the going got tough. The public understands something the pundit and political classes have mostly forgotten: We're still in a war. Our enemies understand that too. And we trust that even the most political part of the White House understands that the bigger challenge it faces is not who wins in November but who wins in Iraq.
