President Bush has never been one for apologies or admitting
mistakes.
His “Wild Wild West” attitude might seem charming to
a movie audience, but it is hardly an attitude befitting the leader
of the free world.
In reality, this mentality comes off as blindly ideological,
willfully disconnected and terribly pathetic.
Only months after an election in which much of his party was
removed from both the House and the Senate, Bush still believes
that his past mistakes in Iraq do not warrant skepticism from the
American people and members of Congress.
“I’ve spoken with many of you in person (about the
war in Iraq),” the president noted in his speech. “I
respect you and the arguments you made.”
He then went on to explain the decision he made after hearing
what the people’s representatives had to say about the issue:
“We’re deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000
additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq.”
President Bush may have spoken with members of Congress about
Iraq, but evidently he did not listen to them.
In a resolution recently introduced in the Senate, Republicans
and Democrats alike boldly voiced their opposition to increasing
the number of troops in Iraq.
In November, voters sent a clear message to the White House: We
want out of Iraq as quickly and responsibly as possible. Troop
escalation is far from being the only solution to the quagmire in
Iraq.
Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware has proposed
decentralizing Iraq into three separate ethnic regions united by a
central government in Baghdad. Other Democrats have proposed
various phased-withdrawal solutions that aim to prevent Iraq from
falling in the hands of Islamic extremists.
Rather than pretending to listen to Democrats, the president
should get serious about creating a new bipartisan consensus on the
war in Iraq and the war on terrorism at large.
To his credit, Bush used his address to reach out to Democrats
on the issues of immigration, energy independence and fiscal
responsibility. He needs to apply this strategy to his foreign
policy with equal enthusiasm before the situation in Iraq
deteriorates any further.
Unlike the Daily Bruin editorial board, Bruin Democrats is not
asking the president for an apology. The truth is, we know our
country will never get one. However, we do believe that he could do
our country a lot of good by simply acknowledging reality.
To put it mildly, the president needs to face the facts. A
recent Washington Post-ABC opinion poll recorded his national
approval rating at a mere 33 percent. If the president wants to win
legitimacy for his decisionmaking in Iraq, he has no choice but to
forge a true bipartisan consensus.
As the sun sets on his administration, the president must step
outside the role of lone ranger and work with the Democratic Party
to save Iraq.
If he does not, the party will heed the call of Sen. Jim Webb,
D-Va., and “show him the way.”
Whatley is a third-year political science student. He is the
media relations director for Bruin Democrats.