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Bush's Double Talk on IraqA close reading of the president's latest speech.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008, at 3:58 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

"Our work in Iraq," Bush said, "will still demand sacrifices from our whole nation, especially our military, for some time to come."

Clearly, the military is sacrificing, but someone tell me what sacrifices the rest of us are making. We're not assuming even a financial burden. The costs of the war are merely stoking the deficit. Our growing national debt is being carried by China's central bank. Granted, our children and, possibly, grandchildren will be hit with the interest payments.

"To ease the burden on our troops and their families," Bush said, "I've directed the Secretary of Defense to reduce deployment lengths from 15 months to 12 months for all active Army soldiers deploying" to Iraq or Afghanistan.

This is a welcome and much-anticipated move. But note the next sentence: "These changes will be effective for those deploying after August 1st." According to an Army spokesman, one brigade, from the First Armored Division, will be deployed to Iraq in May. Those soldiers—and all the others who are there now—will be there for 15 months.

"Recruiting and retention have remained strong during the surge," Bush said.

That depends on how you define strong. Senior Army officers are in a panic over the effect that this war is having on precisely this issue. Recruitment targets are being met—but only by drastically reducing standards. Retention statistics look fine—but only because of extravagant bonuses, and, even then, the Army is hemorrhaging talented captains and majors.

The president then disputed the idea that the war is costing too much. He noted that during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, the "defense budget rose as high as 13 percent of our total economy." During the Reagan years, it accounted for "about 6 percent of GDP." Now, it's down to "just over 4 percent … a modest fraction of our nation's wealth."

He has a point, but a fairly flimsy one. Defense used to account for a larger share of the economy, but so did taxes. The people were actually putting up the money for the defense budget. Now we're not. Social programs, especially during the 1940s and '50s, were puny compared with those of today. Which ones is the president suggesting we cut back to the levels of yesteryear? Finally, GDP itself is much, much larger, even measured in real terms. Whether the budget is too small, too large, or just right has nothing to do with what share of the GDP it consumes. Bush put his finger on the right issue when he added, "We should be able to agree that this is a burden worth bearing." In fact, this is exactly what we are not able to agree.

Also, he said, the cost of the war "pales when compared to the cost of another terrorist attack on our people."

But what does the war in Iraq have to do with a terrorist attack on the United States? Where is the link?

If we pull out of Iraq, the president warned, as he has many times before, al-Qaida "would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions, and they could gain safe havens in Iraq from which to attack the United States, our friends and our allies." At the same time, he said, "Iran would work to fill the vacuum in Iraq." All this "would diminish our nation's standing in the world, and lead to massive humanitarian casualties, and increase the threat of another terrorist attack on our homeland."

Let's parse these three claims.

First, it's true that al-Qaida could claim victory if we withdraw totally—but no major American politician is advocating that course. Even those Democrats who call for substantial troop reductions say enough should remain to go after al-Qaida in Iraq.

Second, if the Iranians do "fill the vacuum," wouldn't they start going after al-Qaida? (Iran is Shiite, al-Qaida Sunni.) And would they fill the vacuum? What would the other Sunnis do about that? What would Iraqi Shiites who bitterly fought Iran for eight years do? A more likely scenario is that Iraq might descend into anarchy if we pulled out totally and right away. But a) that's something else, and b) nobody is calling for a total, instant withdrawal.

Third, if Bush is worried about our standing in the world, humanitarian casualties, and the threat of a terrorist attack, he should realize that all those things are also damaged by our continued presence in Iraq and his adamant refusal to consider even a moderate change of course.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at .
Photograph of George W. Bush by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.
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