Early pullout from Iraq seriously contemplated in Bush administration
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Monday, September 20, 2004
Robert D . Novak  

Inside the Bush administration policy-making apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.

This prospective policy is based on Iraq’s national elections in late January, but not on ending the insurgency or reaching a national political settlement. Getting out of Iraq would end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world.

The United States would be content with having saved the world from Saddam Hussein’s quest for weapons of mass destruction.

The reality of hard decisions ahead is obscured by blather on both sides of the presidential campaign. With six weeks remaining before the election, President Bush cannot be expected to admit even the possibility of a quick withdrawal. Sen. John Kerry’s political aides, still languishing in fantastic speculation about European troops to the rescue, do not even ponder a quick exit. But Kerry’s supporters who have foreign-policy experience speculate that if their candidate is elected, he would take the same escape route.

Whoever wins the election will have to sit down immediately with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military will tell the election winner that U.S. forces in Iraq are too small to wage effective war.

That leaves three realistic options:
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• Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce troops in Iraq.
• Stay with the present strength to continue the war.
• Get out.

Well-placed sources in the administration are confident that Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his present national security team and that it would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as secretary of state, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley, Rice’s right-hand man, as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal.

Getting out now would not end the expensive U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq and certainly would not stop the fighting. Without U.S. troops, the civil war cited as the worst-case outcome by the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate would be a reality. At that point, it would then take a resolute president to stand aside while Iraqis battle it out.

The end product would be an imperfect Iraq, probably dominated by the Shiite Muslim majority seeking revenge over long oppression by the Sunni-controlled Baathist Party. The Kurds would remain in their current semiautonomous state. Iraq would not be divided, reassuring neighboring countries that are apprehensive about ethnically divided nations. That especially includes Turkey, which has a large Kurdish minority population.

This messy new Iraq is viewed by Bush officials as vastly preferable to Saddam’s police state, threatening its neighbors and the West.

In private, some officials believe the mistake was not in toppling Saddam but in staying there for nationbuilding after the dictator was deposed. U.S. military dead then totaled slightly over 100, while now more than 1,000 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq.

Abandonment of building democracy in Iraq would be a terrible blow to the neoconservative dream. The Bush administration’s drift from that idea is shown in restrained reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to seize more power. While Bush officials would prefer a democratic Russia, they appreciate that Putin is determined to prevent his country from disintegrating as the Soviet Union did before it. A fragmented Russia, prey to terrorists, is not in the best interests of the United States.

The Kerry campaign, realizing that its only hope is to attack Bush for his Iraq policy, is not equipped to make sober evaluations of Iraq. When I asked a Kerry political aide what his candidate would do in Iraq, he could do no better than repeat the old saw that help is on the way from European troops. Kerry’s foreign-policy advisers know there will be no relief from that quarter.

In the Aug. 29 New York Times Magazine, columnist David Brooks wrote an article, "How to Reinvent the GOP," that is regarded as a neocon manifesto and is not popular with other conservatives. "We need to strengthen nation states," wrote Brooks, calling for "a multilateral nation-building apparatus."

To chastened Bush officials, that sounds like an invitation to repeat Iraq instead of making sure it never happens again.

Robert D . Novak writes for Creators Syndicate .