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In his primetime televised address, President Bush announced plans to reduce US troops by roughly 30,000 by next summer, if certain conditions were met.

Wow!

The troop reduction that President Bush is touting is just returning the current troop level to just above pre-surge levels (the Congressional Budget Office report that stipulated that the troop “surge” of 21,000 troops to Iraq would probably be closer to 35,000 to 48,000 troops, once support troops are factored in).

“The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home,” he said in his speech. I’m curious as to what being successful now means.

I say that I’m curious because the Denver Research Group’s Global Power Barometer report, published in the Washington Post on Saturday, warns that US influence is now in “steep decline” owing to a number of key factors including:

• the war in Iraq, where the US will remain “bogged down” for years to come, rendering it unable to respond effectively to other world events;

• the loss of moral high ground that the US had held for decades, as a result of the Abu Ghraib scandal and Bush administration policies that appear to advocate torture;
• the consensus among world leaders that the US lacks a coherent foreign policy strategy;
• the inability of the US to effectively use the extraordinary power it possesses; and
• the Bush administration’s unfocused counter terrorism strategy which has dealt ineffectively with organizations such as al Qaeda, and allowed them to “hold their own or start to win”.

Causing me to wonder why despite the widely held view that the war in Iraq is not going well, and is likely to continue to erode American prestige without being offset by commensurate benefits, President Bush remains indomitably upbeat about the prospect of “success” in Iraq.

Maybe it’s because as a soldier who has briefed the viability of a continued conflict during “dads war” I can’t see where this will end up being a “good thing” as Martha says. Maybe it’s because there are lots of information stating that I am not alone:

• A poll conducted by CBS News found low levels of optimism regarding the troop surge, with only 29 percent of Americans responding that they thought the surge was having a positive impact in Iraq.
• The war in Iraq continues to be the major factor in President Bush’s abysmal domestic approval ratings. Only 29 percent of Americans approve of his performance, while 65 percent disapprove.

Given the level of opposition to the war among American voters, the President’s decision to give a prime time televised address left some top Republican strategists scratching their heads – especially in light of the stoically optimistic representations made by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker earlier in the week.

It almost makes you wonder if he wants the GOP to loose, because there is nothing odder than watching an unpopular President going onto prime time television, interrupting Americans’ TV viewing to remind them of the single reason they don’t like him anymore.

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