August 18, 2005

EDITORIAL

Vigils and vacations in Texas

As Iraq tumbles even further into chaos, the president has gone on vacation. If he’s concerned about the armor American troops still need, for the 20 Marines from Ohio who were killed earlier this month, for the steady decline in support for his war in Iraq, he’s not showing it. Instead, he’s gone fishing, acting as if everything is fine in Iraq, as if the U.S. will pull through, if you have enough faith.

At least if the president is going to take five weeks to vacation, he could meet with Cindy Sheehan, the angry California mother whose 24-year-old son was killed in Iraq last year. Ms. Sheehan is camped near Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, hoping to tell the president that he should bring the troops home now. She says she’s not leaving until she gets to talk to President Bush. She has come to represent the growing frustration that Americans are feeling about the Bush administration’s handling of the war. Recent polls show a majority of Americans think the war was a mistake.

The president refuses to meet with Ms. Sheehan, just as he refuses to admit that the war is spiraling in the wrong direction. He won’t level with the American people about the state of the war, continuing to act as if the American military in Iraq has the upper hand. Earlier this month, he repeated this well-worn proclamation: “We will stay the course; we will complete the job in Iraq.”

This is a president who always says that things are going well, who won’t admit he’s wrong, who won’t show an ounce of flexibility. Remember the presidential debates with John Kerry last fall, when Mr. Bush couldn’t name one mistake he’s made as president? He must have forgotten the WMD claim.

Now he won’t change his vacation plans and take a break from clearing brush on his ranch to meet the grieving Ms. Sheehan, to listen to an alternative view of the war, hear directly from a mother whose life, like that of so many other parents, has been turned upside down by the war. Instead, while he acknowledged that “it’s important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say,” he said, “I think it’s also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.”

Meeting with Ms. Sheehan could be a huge PR victory for the White House. The president could get a few photos taken with her, then tell her and the rest of the country in straightforward, and unscripted, terms where we stand in Iraq and how we’re going to win.

There’s the rub. To be straight with the public, the president would have to deviate from his empty rhetoric about honoring the families of more than 1,840 dead American troops by “completing the mission” and about the “noble cause” for which Americans have died. He would also have to begin asking the nation to make sacrifices during the war, to forego, for instance, tax cuts or to pay even higher gas prices. He would have to show Americans in clear terms that his administration actually has a plan to bring stability to Iraq without letting the country fall into civil war.

Until the president changes his approach, Cindy Sheehan’s vigil will continue to gain traction with Americans who believe that the president is out of touch with what’s happening on the ground in Iraq. And he won’t have to vacation, in the dusty Texas heat, alone.

—Robert Mihalek