The film Fahrenheit 9-11 is overlong and lacks narrative drive in parts but it does contain some devastating passages of anti-Bush vitriol. One example is the series of clips showing how the US president tricked his country into war with a web of deception about Iraqi WMDs and links to Bin Laden. In a brilliantly edited section, Bush is shown on the stump in 2002 using the words “Saddam” and “al-Qaida” over and over again.
The staccato finally ends and the editor allows the US president an entire sentence: “He (Saddam) hates the fact, like al-Qaida does, that we’re free.” As he finishes the word “fact”, Bush swings his head and breaks into the smuggest grin imaginable. “I can’t believe they’re buying this” you can almost hear him thinking.
But buy it they most certainly did. Dubya’s spiel about the “threat” of Saddam propelled his party to victory in the 2002 midterms, winning a majority in both the Senate and the House. No Republican president had enjoyed such a powerful position for decades.
What a difference a war makes. Back in 2002 Bush couldn’t mention the word “Iraq” enough, it was electoral gold dust. But now three years later, Republicans are worried that the “I” factor could hurt them in the 2006 midterms. Some GOP figures, like Walter "freedom fries" Jones, have called for a timetable for US troop withdrawal. As his attitude to international diplomacy would suggest, Jones is no dove, but he is smart enough to know a quagmire when he sees one, and sensible enough to put some distance between him and it.
Nothing serves as a better symbol of the collapse of the neo-con dream than this tale of two midterms. The confident pre-war talk of easy victory and Iraqi-financed reconstruction have given way to grim words about "staying the course" against a decade long insurgency. Would the Americans who voted for war in 2002 have done so if they knew the consequences of this conflict, not just for Iraq, but for the US?
Let us review the wreckage: First and foremost, tens of thousands of Iraqis lie dead, most of them innocent civilians. Nearly two thousand US soldiers have lost their lives, with thousands more wounded. The war has cost the American taxpayer 300 billion dollars which their debt-ridden economy could ill-afford. In return for all that green, Uncle Sam has got a thirty month long advertisement for global jihad. Two years on from their “liberation”, Iraqis still struggle with water and electricity shortages. To top it all of, just to really sicken those who were hooting and hollering for Bush back in 2002, there were no WMDs and no link between Saddam and al-Qaida.
Given all this, it is no surprise that some of the more savvy Republicans are disassociating themselves with the architects of this disaster. By this time next year Bush may find himself in the same position as his best bud Tony Blair - disowned by the party he leads. Precious few Labour candidates in May’s general election thought it prudent to put their leader’s inane grin on their election literature.
It is still early days though, the midterms are more than a year off. But only the most determined optimist would predict that Iraq 2006 will look significantly better than Iraq 2005. It may well look a good deal worse. Should this be the case, then the GOP elephant, which is currently trotting away from Bush, may break into a gallop. Don’t be surprised if many more Republicans jump on the “bring the troops home” bandwagon before polling day.
To go from pro-war to pro-withdrawal will take a certain amount of ideological acrobatics from the fools and the yes-men (both Republican and Democrat) who rubber-stamped this conflict in the first place. But for those who planned and executed this debacle, rather than those who merely went along with it, there is no way to flip-flop out of responsibility. Barring something extraordinary in the next three years, Bush’s tenure in the White House will be remembered for one disastrous policy - Iraq. Like Johnson with Vietnam and Nixon with Watergate, Bush looks set to go down in history for a monumental folly.
Given all the misery he has inflicted, his coming humiliation brings the slightest of recompense. Yet Bush remains defiantly oblivious to all this. In fact, he’s as smug as ever.