WASHINGTON – President Bush appealed directly to the American people Wednesday night to support a renewed campaign to pacify Iraq, saying it was necessary to add new troops so that the beleaguered Iraqi government can regain control of the streets of Baghdad and revive the process of political reconciliation and economic rebuilding.
In a nationally televised address from the White House, Bush acknowledged for the first time that he had not sent enough troops to provide security in Iraq last year. Standing in the library of the White House, Bush described the situation in Iraq as “unacceptable” to the American people and to himself.
“Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do,” he said. “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”
Bush said he was ordering 21,500 soldiers and Marines to help the Iraqi government provide security in Baghdad and fight the Sunni insurgency in Anbar province. But he emphasized that Iraqi soldiers will take the lead in the new fighting, and said that the focus of American troops would be advising and supporting the Iraqi forces, with the additional U.S. soldiers embedded in Iraqi units.
In some of his sharpest language to date, he squarely placed the burden for improving conditions on the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has promised but not delivered on an array of reforms and security measures.
“I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended,” Bush said Wednesday night. “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people – and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act.”
Even before the president began speaking, Democrats in Congress were mobilizing against his new plan. Just two months after Republicans lost their majorities in both the Senate and the House in an election widely seen as a repudiation of his policies in Iraq.
“More troops does not equal a new approach in Iraq,” said Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash.
The Everett resident said the results of the November election showed that the American people did not expect an escalation of American troops in Iraq.
The 132,000 troops there now are “keeping a lid on a civil war. The American people don’t expect our troops to be fighting a civil war,” Larsen said. “It’s fundamentally unfair to ask our men and women in the military to solve that problem. They should be fighting terrorists.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the president “proposed an escalation of the fighting in Iraq. Despite the warnings of his top generals, and the message sent by the American people, the president has again decided to go it alone,” Murray said.
Instead of escalating the war, Murray said troops should be redeployed, require the Iraqis to take control of their own political and military stability and work with neighboring countries in the region on a broader stabilization effort.
Bush’s speech signaled that he is essentially choosing to deepen the American involvement, gambling that more focused execution and improved tactics will result in success that has so far eluded the United States.
“The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad,” Bush said Wednesday night.
“Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons,” Bush said. “There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does.”
Bush made clear that his plan for Iraq goes beyond military measures. A central element of Bush’s revised strategy will focus on expanded economic assistance to complement the new security plan for Baghdad.
“A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations,” the president said. “Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities.”
The United States will allocate more than $1 billion for three programs to create jobs and help reconstruction in neighborhoods, as they are secured by Iraqi and U.S. forces. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been particularly concerned that any new deployment not happen in an economic and political vacuum.
U.S. officials concede that the previous “clear, hold and build” program cleared areas of militants but failed to either hold or secure them afterward, allowing neighborhoods to fall back under the control of militants.
The United States will also add nine new Provincial Reconstruction Teams – which are joint Pentagon and State Department programs to help rebuild the country from the bottom up, from schools to local government and political interest groups.
Reflecting the revised strategy’s heavy focus on only two areas of the country, six of the reconstruction teams will be in Baghdad and three will be in Anbar province, home to the Sunni insurgency and al-Qaida extremists, the State Department said. Washington will dispatch about 150 new personnel to add to the 250 already manning the teams.
The United States will provide $400 million in quick-response funds to address urgent civilian problems, and add $350 million to the Commander’s Emergency Response Program that allows local field commanders to have discretionary funds to help improve the lives of Iraqis depending on local problems.
The U.S. effort is designed to supplement a $10 billion reconstruction and infrastructure program, finally channeling an oil revenue surplus into rebuilding areas.
The administration has long pressed Baghdad to use its resources, particularly in Sunni areas to prove that the Shiite-dominated government is sincere in wanting to take care of the country’s Sunni minority. Offering the Sunnis some sense of hope and inclusion is considered critical to helping defuse the insurgency and winning over loyalists to former President Saddam Hussein.
The president and his top advisers said they expect their new approach to succeed where previous ones failed because of a new commitment from al-Maliki to provide resources and crack down on violent sectarian militias, even Shiite ones. But they are placing great faith in an untested Iraqi government that has not yet demonstrated a capacity to bridge the sectarian divisions that have caused an upsurge in violence over the past year.
Bush set no goal or timetable for the removal of the new American troops nor did he condition any U.S. assistance for the Iraqis on meeting political goals such as a new law for the equitable distribution of oil revenues and holding provincial election, both seen as critical to winning political support for the Shiite-led government from disaffected Sunnis.
He did not embrace the idea of high dialogue with Iran and Syria to stabilize Iraq, a key recommendation of the Iraq Study Group chaired by James Baker, former secretary of state, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, which had been hoping to restore bipartisan consensus around a new Iraq policy.
Even with the increase in troops, moreover, the resulting U.S. total of about 153,000 soldiers in Iraq will amount to less than the roughly 165,000 deployed in December 2005, the high-water mark for U.S. troop strength in Iraq. His economic proposals Wednesday night, including more than $1 billion in additional funding for economic reconstruction and jobs, are largely expanded versions of current programs.
In stark contrast to the Iraqi Study Group recommendations last month, the Bush administration intends to increase its operations against both Iran and Syria, Bush said. Bush vowed to “interrupt the flow of support” from Iraq’s two key neighbors and to “seek out and destroy” networks providing weaponry and training to U.S. enemies in Iraq.
In a clear warning to the hardline government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bush announced the United States will deploy Patriot air defense systems and expand intelligence sharing “to reassure our friends and allies.”
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