President's address on Iraq leaves questions unanswered

There is clearly ambiguity in the way Americans think about the past and future of the war in Iraq.
A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Nov. 11-13, showed that 63 percent of those questioned disapproved of the manner in which President Bush was handling the situation in Iraq. The same survey showed that 54 percent of respondents believed it was a mistake to send troops to the region.
Yet only 16 percent of the people in another recent poll favor an immediate withdrawal of troops, indicating that the vast majority of Americans do not want the administration to fail in Iraq. But two-thirds of Americans want to see a reduction in troops in Iraq within a year.
In his speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Bush seemed willing to speak only to that side of America that doesn't want an immediate withdrawal. He gave no hint at a timetable; indeed he rejected any suggestion that there should or could be a timetable.
More troubling than that, that the president's speech and the 35-page National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (which can be read at www.whitehouse.gov) appear to set the bar for success so high that there is no time in the foreseeable future that the United States will not have troops in Iraq.
Shades of Churchill
The president told cheering midshipmen: "We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory."
And how does the White House strategy ultimately define victory? An Iraq that is "peaceful, united, stable and secure" and a "full partner in the global war on terror."
If those are the goals and criteria Americans are fighting for in Iraq, there will be U.S. boots on the ground there not for years, but for decades. The costs in lives lost, bodies shattered and treasury defy calculation.
Some members of Congress are calling for a timetable for withdrawal. The president argues persuasively that announcing specific dates for withdrawal would encourage insurgents to keep their powder dry and attack only after our forces have left.
We're not asking for a timetable. We are asking the administration to provide the American people with its realistic assessment of what it will take to reach even a semblance of a "victory" in this war.
There are now 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The cost of the war is about $1.5 billion a week.
The day President Bush spoke at Annapolis, the Pentagon listed 2,107 Americans dead and 15,568 wounded in Iraq. More troops have died since June 2004, when U.S. governance ended and Iraq assumed sovereignty, than during the invasion and first year of occupation.
President Bush referred Wednesday to having trained Iraqi units in a range of between 42,000 and 96,000 soldiers. That's quite a range. And it raises a few mathematical questions that the president should be able to answer with some degree of accuracy: How many Iraqi troops will be needed before the United States can begin reducing its forces; how long will it take to train enough troops to allow full withdrawal; does the president envision full withdrawal, or is Iraq the South Korea of the 21st century (where we have 37,000 troops more than 50 years after the cease-fire)?
Perfectly proper
These are not "timetable" questions, but they are among the questions that the American people have a right to ask, and which the administration has a duty to answer.
President Bush has given five speeches in recent months as public support for the war has waned. In each case the addresses were made to military audiences, virtually assuring an enthusiastic response.
But he has chosen not to respond to a 79-19 bipartisan vote by the U.S. Senate last month that asked him to provide a "schedule" for meeting U.S. objectives, including "the reasons for any subsequent changes to that schedule."
We need fewer presidential appearances before friendly audiences and more of a true accounting to the American people. There should be a vigorous national debate about realistic goals for the American military in Iraq and realistic estimates of what it will cost to reach those goals.
President Bush used phrases and cadences reminiscent of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Wednesday's speech. He has not, however, chosen to emulate the brutal candor of Churchill, who told his citizens in 1940, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
It is time for President Bush to discuss plainly the degree of sacrifice he believes will be necessary from Americans before victory is declared in Iraq.