Right after the hearings, the Bush Administration will report on the performance of the Iraqi authorities, which are trying to bring life in the country back to normal. After studying this document, the Congress will decide whether they should insist on a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq or not. Those who are going to take part in the election race in the United States in the near future will adjust their campaign accordingly.
But we do not have to wait for the report to predict their conduct. It is also easy to guess what this report will be about.
There have been many disputes about the post-Saddam Iraq. There are four major approaches to collecting and analyzing information - impartial, Mid-Eastern, American official and American political ones.
The first one is typical for the intelligence, analytical centers and the media which are trying to reflect the reality and predict future developments, or build their strategy regardless of the current state of affairs. In simpler terms, these people's careers depend little on events in Iraq or on the terms in which they are described. This approach has its own advantages. It is invariably critical of U.S. and U.K. policies in the Middle East but this criticism is duly reserved.
The regional political forces are involved in the Iraqi events directly and react to them spontaneously, all the more so because this or that turn may become a life-and-death issue for most of them. Iraq's neighbors are worried about the survival of the ruling regimes. This affects the ability of the commentators directly involved in local events to portray them without bias. Their commentaries are moderately to strongly anti-American. Even the closest American allies, including the Iraqi leaders, cannot afford to be positive about the U.S. strategy, although they are not critical of their own performance.
Washington's official view of the events in Iraq lacks the bravura typical of the aggressive approach of former Defense Secretary Donald Ramsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney. The main task of the current administration is to minimize the damage to its own image, retain freedom of action and prevent the defeat from turning into a total rout. This explains numerous resignations of members of the presidential team and a change in the tone of official reports on Iraq. The gist of these reports, both past and future, is as follows:
- Saddam Hussein's downfall is a blessing for America and the whole region. There was no alternative to it.
- Iraq has been consistently following the road of democratization. America has made a historic contribution to this choice.
- External and internal foes are preventing the spread of democracy in Iraq. Syria and Iran are the main enemies. They will be suppressed.
- There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were not found simply because they were taken out of the country - most probably, to Syria and Iran.
- Iraq is an example of successful construction of democracy in the Middle East and the rest of the world. There is no alternative to democracy. Spreading democracy is an American mission.
- While getting ready for troop withdrawal, America is consistently transferring control over Iraq to its government. After the troop pullout, America will leave military consultants in Iraq. It is not possible to determine their number for the time being.
- In the early postwar period some representatives of the United States and the Iraqi administration committed mistakes. These mistakes have been corrected and those who made them have been sacked.
- There should be no financial restrictions or deadlines for the army. Those who insist on them will have to be responsible for the defeat if the U.S. fails to avoid it.
Departmental affiliation and personal likes and dislikes invariably affect the tone and recommendations of reports accessible to the public. They are engendering disputes among current administration officials: Which agency is right, the Pentagon or the State Department? Who is to blame for the continued acts of terror in Iraq, the CIA or the Iraqi officials? Can 200,000 servicemen control the situation in Iraq or is it necessary to send half a million there?
The approach of the opponents of the U.S. administration is shared by the Democrats and part of the Republican elite - those who do not want the voters to associate the losses and setbacks of the Iraqi campaign with the entire Republican Party rather than with one of its presidents and his team. These people are sharply critical of their opponents and are using any of their shortcomings to score points in the election race.
Some of them are making populist statements which are no less dubious than those for which they are lashing out at President Bush. But all of them - Barrack Obama, John McCayne, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton - are primarily Americans and once in power they will act in the American way - they will be confident and tough in pursuing what they believe is their mission; they will rely only on themselves, discard objectionable international legal restrictions and use allies exclusively in their own interests; they will ignore the hesitant, weaken the potential rivals, attack and destroy the enemies - real or imaginable.
As for Iraq... It exists only on the map. In reality, it has long been gone as a country. There is a territory where the war is being waged against everyone. It is a land of mega-terrorism, corruption, destroyed infrastructure, declining oil production, millions of refugees, forced conversion of Arab provinces to Islam, the de facto independent Kurdistan, ethnic cleansing, and a government that does not control anything. There are no comforting prospects. But few people are concerned about the real situation in Iraq, at least judging by official U.S. reports.
Yevgeny Satanovsky is the President of the Institute of the Middle East.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
