'Stay course' leaves Iraq stuck in fiasco

Last Thursday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once again warned Congress that criticism of U.S. policy plays into the hands of terrorists.

"They want us pointing fingers at each other, rather than pointing fingers at them," Rumsfeld said.

Apparently, then, it would be unpatriotic to note that something has gone seriously wrong if U.S. forces are trying to retake Iraq's capital city three and a half years after Baghdad fell the first time.

And it would play into our enemies' hands to admit being dismayed by the sight of tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites marching through Baghdad Friday chanting "Death to Israel, death to America."

And certainly, by Rumsfeld's rules, it would be downright treasonous to suggest that those U.S. officials responsible for creating this unmitigated disaster should have been removed from office long ago.

However, if Rumsfeld doesn't like fingers pointed at him, not just now but in the history books as well, he should stop complaining and propose a plan that might extract us from this mess. No such plan emerged in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which boiled down to "terrorists bad, Americans good," and "stay the course."

"Stay the course" is not a plan. Not a good one, anyway. I haven't seen the movie for a long time, but it seems to me that "stay the course" is pretty much what Thelma said to Louise before they drove off the side of the cliff.

This country deserves a better ending than that. The 2,500 American men and women who have already died in Iraq deserve a better ending than that. The 130,000 still fighting deserve a better ending than that.

I'm sick and tired of naive, wildly optimistic claims of progress. I'm out of patience with suggestions that the media just aren't reporting the good things going on in Iraq, that to question the wisdom of this administration is to attack our troops. There are serious things at stake here, and it's time for the nonsense to end.

Last month, more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed, mainly by each other in an increasingly nasty civil war that we have proved helpless to stop. The tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and police that we've trained have had no discernible impact either, and instead of starting to bring American troops home, we are committing still more troops to the battle.

All of that suggests the need for a fundamental, thorough rethinking of our basic goals and strategies in Iraq. What is realistic at this point, and what is not? What are the consequences and costs of each approach? We don't have any good options left, but let's at least take an honest look for the option that's least bad.

(While we're at it, we need to undertake the same kind of fundamental reassessment of our whole approach to what President Bush calls the Global War on Terror and that others seek to upgrade to World War III.

Because that ain't working so well either.)

Through that analysis, we may come to the conclusion that keeping our troops in Iraq is still the right thing to do. But that can be true only if we can come up with reasonable goals that their continued presence might accomplish.

However, in the absence of such goals, we seem to be keeping our troops in Iraq solely for the sake of keeping them there, and that's not reason enough to ask good people to die.

The problem, of course, is that seeking such a reassessment is an exercise in futility with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Dick Cheney as vice president and George W. Bush as president, positions that two of those men are scheduled to hold for two and a half more years.

Conceivably, their obstinacy could change depending on the outcome of the fall elections, which look increasingly dire for Republicans. If it does not — and if trends in Iraq and public opinion both continue their present downward trajectory — the stage may be set next year for a political battle that would dwarf the contentious Clinton impeachment effort.

Given his aggressive, at times even reckless approach to governance, Bush has almost certainly violated laws and the Constitution in ways that would technically justify impeachment. If you add an unfriendly Congress and a citizenry angry and frustrated by a mindless reiteration of "stay the course," the ingredients would be in place for something historic.

It shouldn't have to come to that. But it may.

• Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Mondays and Thursdays.