The Army’s budgetary squeeze raises questions about whether the United States can ‘stay the course’ in Iraq—even if Washington wants to.

Michael Hirsh writes in Newsweek:

Perhaps the most truthful moment about Iraq came recently when a U.S. official said nothing at all. This occurred when Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker was asked at a Capitol Hill luncheon in mid-July whether the United States was “winning” in Iraq. Several agonizing seconds passed before a grimacing Schoomaker finally replied: “I don’t think we’re losing.” One of the most eloquent pauses in recent memory, it gave voice to the U.S. military's most deep-seated fears not only about Iraq, but about America’s entire strategic position in the Mideast.

The general’s honesty has not made Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld happy, military officials tell NEWSWEEK. The temperamental Rumsfeld erupted at Schoomaker after the general revealed the Army’s lack of readiness in painful detail to the House Armed Services Committee. "I remain concerned about the serious demands we face," Schoomaker said in asking Congress for $17 billion in an emergency appropriation. The ranking Democrat member of that committee, Rep. Ike Skelton, cited Schoomaker’s blunt honesty in a letter he wrote to President Bush last week. “When I asked General Schoomaker in recent testimony if he was comfortable with the readiness level for the non-deployed units located within the continental United States, he simply answered no,” said Skelton. Equipment like tanks and Humvees are badly worn down after three years in the sand and heat, and the Army is cannibalizing units still based in the United States. It is also asking soldiers to prepare for third overseas deployments in a row, which many fear could trigger an exodus of professionals.

The Army’s budgetary squeeze raises questions about whether the United States can “stay the course” in Iraq even if it wants to. While the world has focused on Lebanon, Iraq has been sliding downhill fast. U.S. officials battling the counterinsurgency who were positive six months ago are now far more skeptical that the center can hold.

The evidence of those fears emerged last week when President Bush announced that 3,700 U.S. troops--the 172nd Stryker Brigade--would be shifted to Baghdad from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The move reflects genuine concern in Washington about the stability of the weak government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki--even whether the secure Green Zone that houses the new Iraqi government and U.S. officials can hold, according to a Pentagon official who would speak to the media only if he were not quoted by name. “It’s now the yellow zone, not the Green Zone,” says Andrew Krepinevich, the Washington-based defense expert whose “oil spot” plan for securing Baghdad has now been adopted by the Pentagon. Some experts point to the valedictory act of the late Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi--the bombing of the Shiite Al-Askari mosque in Samarra in February--as the turning point that sent Iraq into out-of-control sectarian violence.

One U.S. Army officer who is working on police and military training in Iraq, when asked about the prospect of a collapse of the Maliki government, responded in an email: “There's a Maliki government? Since when?” He went on: “Ultimately, I think the deterioration of the Baghdad security situation gives the lie to the U.S. effort. We've stood up X Iraqi army battalions and Y Iraqi police stations, and yet, Baghdad (and much of the contested provinces like Diyala and Anbar) continues to get worse.”

Officials worry that behind the Army’s lack of readiness lies a titanic mismatch between the Bush administration’s dream of resurrecting American prestige in the region through the use of hard power and the scant resources they have devoted to it. Bush's entire approach to solving the terror problem after 9/11 was based on the perceived need to reassert American power in the Arab world, after what was seen as decades of flabbiness dating back to the killing of Marines in Lebanon in the early ’80s and the hurried U.S. withdrawal that resulted. As Ron Suskind writes in his new book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” quoting sources who attended National Security Council briefings in 2002, the main reason for the Iraq war was “'to make an example”' of Saddam Hussein. Bush sought to ''create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States.''

This squares with what others heard as well. When NEWSWEEK asked a member of Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board in late 2001 why the administration should take on Saddam, who was unconnected to 9/11, he responded: “How do you send the message of strength as Ronald Reagan sent it, that we don't allow these things--you inflict damage. We didn't do anything after the [attack on the] USS Cole. There's a feeling we've got to do something that counts--and bombing some caves is not something that counts.” Behind this lay the view that Arabs respond to force. Some Bush officials also liked to quote Osama bin Laden himself when he said, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like a strong horse."

For Bush and Rumsfeld, the key to a successful anti-terror policy lay in being seen as the “strong horse.” As Rumsfeld said at his confirmation hearings in 2001: “We don’t want to fight wars. We want to prevent them. We want to be so powerful and so forward looking that it is clear to others that they ought not to be damaging their neighbors when it affects our interests, and they ought not to be doing things that are imposing threats and dangers to us.”

Now Rumsfeld and Bush, by pre-emptively launching a war, have undercut that lesson. Until recent events, the American and Israeli armies were generally judged the most advanced in the world. In the Arab world they were seen as all but invulnerable. Today the failures of those armies against Islamist guerrillas in Iraq and Lebanon have conveyed the very opposite of the message Bush wanted to send. If the current situation continues, with America bogged down in Iraq and Israel mired in its fight against Hizbullah, then the presumption of U.S-Israeli military invincibility--which has kept Arab extremists in place for decades--will be exposed as a myth. That could embolden Islamist radicals for a long time to come. Unless he is prepared to spend a lot more on his military, defense analysts say, the president who so badly wanted to project strength will be remembered mainly for projecting weakness.