The doubt we feel about the President’s New Way Forward derives from a consistent pattern of being wrong on just about everything having to do with Iraq. The American people rightly wonder if they’ve been lied to or led by sheer incompetence. We are beginning to recognize the possibility that decisions are made with ideological blinders. Either way, it hardly matters. We are wary and skeptical of what the President and his people are saying.
The skepticism derives from a sense that they may be wrong or misleading again. Why does the President keep talking about 9/11 in reference to Iraq when everyone knows the two had nothing to do with each other except in the President’s mind? Why did he challenge Iran and Syria in a speech on Iraq? Is there another plan there? Why did he lecture the moderate Arab states in the region? Why does he think the Iraqi government can or will deliver now what it has repeatedly promised and failed in the past? Why does he believe that 21,500 additional troops will change the balance when the same troop levels failed before? Why can’t he provide clear objectives and milestones, as well as a –planned course of actions in case those milestones are not met? The American people have all these questions, and the President has no answers.
Because he has never provided good answers, the American people doubt the President has any answers. We wonder what the real agenda is. Why would he call his new plan the “New Way Forward” when the Iraq Study Group’s plan was called “The Way Forward”? Deliberate obfuscation? Americans are increrasingly tired of this shell game. We want a successful response, but we increasingly doubt that the President can get us there.
