The politics of troop cuts

[Thom Little]

The smart money in Washington is betting that President Bush will make deep cuts in U.S. troops in Iraq before the coming November elections. Sages, journalists, legislators and staffers say Bush will be under irresistible pressure from Republicans fearful of losing Senate and House seats unless he clearly shows we're on our way out. They're wrong, as usual, because their perennial disease is to overestimate politics and undervalue presidential beliefs.

If we know anything about George W. Bush, it is that he is a true believer, and he believes in "staying the course" in Iraq to make sure, as he recently said, that Baghdad moves toward democracy and becomes an American ally in the war against terror. Not that he is incapable of changing his position when facing political defeat, as we saw before Christmas when he twirled around on the torture issue. But it is folly to underestimate a president's obsession with not losing a war.

And the odds stand very high that he believes Iraq will plunge into civil war if he makes reductions before November of about 50,000 troops out of the current total of 158,000 — no matter how much better deeper cuts would play in the campaign.

Bush is very likely to resist pressures for such deep troop cuts for much the same reasons that President Johnson did in 1968 during the Vietnam War. That's mostly because no president wants to be seen as losing a war. But also, Johnson wasn't running for reelection in 1968, and Bush won't run in 2006.



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gelb2jan02,0,3320810.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions