Whither Bush in Iraq: Between the rock and the hard place

But there he was at the press conference on April 13, looking a bit uncomfortable in the glare of the cameras as 41 million Americans tuned in to hear what he had to say about Iraq. You notice I didn't qualify "quagmire" with "growing" because it's obvious even with the best of the Bush administration's spin that the U.S. is mired in a quicksand of its making and is sinking slowly by the day.

In the press conference Bush vowed that the U.S. will "finish the work," but he didn't provide any specific plan on how it would be done. That's an extremely important point, since the insurgency continues to grow in strength and numbers and a June 30 deadline looms for the handing over of power in Iraq to a new government.

Also, Bush needs to be forthcoming with specifics because with each passing day more American soldiers and contractors are reported missing or killed, while supply lines continue to be sabotaged. It's evident that the coalition forces are losing strategic control of Iraq. About a week ago, one defence contractor told the Knight Ridder news service that "the situation is getting worse" and "while the U.S. led coalition controls pockets within Iraq, the insurgents control the roads."

As I wrote this column, the yahoo web site was reporting that the coalition had closed two major highways into Baghdad on April 17.

Given Iraq's instability, it's remarkable that the Bush administration still insists it can meet the June 30 deadline. With less than eighty days to D-day, it's not even clear to whom the U.S. plans to turn over the reigns of power. That's just one deadline remember. People tend to forget that just six months after the June 30 deadline elections are supposed to be held.

What can the Bush administration do to turn the crisis around? Will sending more American troops into the Iraq cauldron help stabilise the situation so that Uncle Sam can achieve its objectives?

The fact is the neo-con juggernaut has put itself between the rock and the hard place. Failing to meet the June 30 deadline will reinforce suspicions that the U.S. wants to keep "control" of Iraq indefinitely. That will certainly lead to more widespread resistance in Iraq. On the other hand, a disorderly transfer of power will not be in the Uncle Sam's best interests either.

But who will take charge? Paul Bremer has been on American television a lot lately, defending Bush's Iraq policy, but he has never provided any specifics to answer the big question.

As the clock ticks, it's imperative that this question be answered. I find it disturbing how easy the American public and its elected leaders are letting the Bush administration off the hook. No one is demanding to know what role the U.S. will play after the turnover, how long U.S. troops will remain in Iraq or what will be the bottom line cost for the Iraq experiment. If Bush expects to spend another four years in the White House, he needs to provide answers before next November's elections.

It's being suggested that the UN can bail the U.S. out in Iraq. After all, it does have valuable expertise in rebuilding postwar nations. A major UN role would most likely bring more foreign countries on board, but why would that make any difference? Many Iraqis see the UN as an appendix to U.S. power. Lest we forget -- that's why the UN headquarters was bombed to smithereens last August. Why should we expect broader international involvement to dampen growing Iraqi anger against the foreign presence in their country?

At the end of the day, the odds are long that the U.S. will achieve its professed strategic objective in Iraq: establishing democracy, whatever that's supposed to mean. It took the colonists who came to America 150 years to establish a democratic form of government, and it can be argued that our democracy is still a work in progress.

But here we are, a mere year after the so called liberation of Iraq, and the country is supposed to have all the prerequisites it needs to move on the fast track to democracy. In a country with no democratic tradition, the mullahs are the real power in Iraq, as current events are showing, and they have a lot to lose if Western style democracy is established. The mullahs will not leave gently into the night.

We really need to ask: does the Bush administration really want democracy in Iraq? In a prescient op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Carolyn Eisenberg, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Hofstra University in Philadelphia pointed out that Iraq's interim constitution signed by the 25-member Iraq Governing Council last March 12 was a "deceptive document designed to obscure the proposed transfer of power."

Professor Eisenberg put the Bush-neo con shell game in a nutshell. "While desiring the appearance of democracy for domestic and international purposes, it is afraid to surrender authority," she wrote. "Its problem is that a free Iraq is unlikely to implement the U.S. agenda: a secular state, permanent military bases, American direction of the oil industry, a privatised economy and a foreign policy consonant with Washington."

Ron Chepesiuk, a South Carolina based journalist, is Visiting Professor at Chittagong University, a Research Associate with the National Defence College in Dhaka, and a former Fulbright Scholar to Bangladesh.