Bush’s reckless invasion of Iraq has turned a man (Osama bin Laden) and an organization (Al Qaeda) into a philosophy and a movement.

Cindy Sheehan represents only a small part of America’s greater tragedy in Iraq.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Any other politician who had a Gold Star mother in his driveway would get the cameras rolling, give her a big hug and gain points for compassion. Instead of doing what should come naturally to a democratic leader, President George W. Bush deepened the crisis enveloping his presidency by arrogantly refusing to grant Cindy Sheehan an audience. He may have missed that opportunity for good now that Sheehan has rushed to California to see about her ailing mother.

Before Sheehan left Crawford, Texas, on Thursday, Bush explained to reporters that he needs to get on with his life, a remark stunningly insensitive to the thousands of maimed soldiers returning from Iraq, and the families of the more than 1,800 dead. Cycling, his new exercise narcotic, is important, he went on, because Americans want to know that their president leads a balanced life. No, Mr. President, we just want to know that you’re balanced, period.

There’s a war going on. Americans are dying, and so are Iraqis. August is already one of the bloodiest months since this ill-fated venture was launched more than three years ago. “Setting aside talking to Cindy Sheehan, he should be talking to [the American people],” says Marshall Wittman, a policy analyst with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and a former adviser to Sen. John McCain. Wittman supported the invasion of Iraq, but says the management of the war has been a failure. He can't think of a single Republican elected official who defends the way the administration is handling the war. “They’re hiding,” he says.

So is Bush. A five-week vacation is a luxury you’d expect of a French president, not an American leader in the midst of a war. Maybe he’s agonizing in private and rethinking his strategy, but his behavior conveys an unsettling disconnect from reality. His problem is not Cindy Sheehan and her heroic stand but the facts on the ground in Iraq and an administration in disarray over what to do. It’s becoming clear this is not a winnable war. The insurgency is not in its last throes, as the vice president claimed some months ago. It’s getting stronger, and the notion that an Iraqi Army can take over any time soon is pure fantasy. “We’re training up the civil-war factions of tomorrow,” says an aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Sheehan has been latched on to by lots of groups, with the notable exception of the Democratic Party. The party as a whole is terrified of doing anything that would leave them vulnerable to accusations they’re not supporting the troops, or they’re weak on national security, so they don’t get into the debate in any memorable way. Their risk-averse tactics bring back memories of the Kerry campaign, which was so frightened of making a wrong step, they couldn’t make a right step. The protest that began in Crawford and is spreading around the country got no help from the institutional Washington Democrats. It sprang from the grass roots, and that’s why it may endure after Bush’s summer solstice ends and hound him for the rest of his days as president.

Democrats did not support the war as robustly as Republicans, and the GOP could take a hit in the ’06 congressional elections if the war situation doesn’t stabilize. But because of their studied ambivalence (remember Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it”?), Democrats won’t get the benefit of being on the right side of public opinion now that the winds are shifting. Bush’s numbers are getting close to where Lyndon Johnson’s were in 1968, and LBJ’s announcement that he would not run for re-election set the stage for the long slog toward withdrawal. The scary thing about Bush is he doesn’t have to worry about re-election. He can get down to single digits in the polls and remain resolute in his determination to stay the course in Iraq. He doesn’t want his legacy to be a failed war. He’d like to shift that burden to the next president, Republican or Democrat.

Getting out of Iraq precipitously would almost certainly plunge that country into an all-out civil war, which could ripple through the Middle East and empower Iran in ways that would make Saddam’s rule look benign. But more of the same is unacceptable, and Cindy Sheehan could be the catalyst for Democrats to finally find their voice of opposition. Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold has begun calling for withdrawal by the end of 2006. He’s on the left of his party, and his proposal for an end date hasn’t yet been taken up by his colleagues on Capitol Hill. Feingold is the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s ideological heir, and like Wellstone, he’s one of those rare politicians not there just to feed his ego. He cares about issues and believes in what he’s doing without calibrating how it might impact his political future.

If only Bush’s biggest mistake was refusing to meet with Sheehan. She is a footnote to the greater catastrophe of Iraq, a war without end that we cannot win and cannot leave. As former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer puts it, Bush’s reckless invasion of Iraq has turned a man (Osama bin Laden) and an organization (Al Qaeda) into a philosophy and a movement, insuring a violent and bloody struggle that will continue for decades.