310 e lusive v ictories
the start, Democrats soon turned against the war. To Bush’s political
good fortune, overall public disenchantment came gradually and,
unlike Vietnam, did not spread widely before he faced reelection. It also
helped Bush in 2004 that leading Democratic politicians, including the
eventual presidential nominee Senator John Kerry, had endorsed the
initial October 2002 resolution authorizing military action. On Iraq,
Kerry failed to off er a coherent alternative policy, one factor that con-
tributed to his narrow defeat.
Bush’s reelection bought some time to redeem the situation in Iraq,
but second-term missteps contributed to deepening public disaff ection.
Whatever momentum the president gained from his electoral victory
soon dissipated in a failed attempt to dismantle Social Security, the
most popular social program, and in the administration’s bungled
response to Hurricane Katrina in August–September 2005. Th e latter
also fueled a damaging new narrative about the administration—that it
was incompetent at handling major challenges. Iraq came to be
viewed through this lens, a story line fed by restive news media whose
reports increasingly resembled the ones fi led from Vietnam. When the
administration complained that the media ignored progress in Iraq in
areas such as reconstruction and focused instead only on the ongoing
violence, journalists retorted that terror bombing attacks that killed
dozens would be the lead story in any country. As for the president
himself, his refusal to step in and assert fi rm direction after Hurricane
Katrina struck New Orleans appeared to confi rm his detachment from
the reality on the ground in Iraq.
Under mounting criticism for their handling of the war, Bush and
his senior offi cials reminded the domestic audience that Iraq fi t into a
larger struggle against terrorism. A retreat from Iraq, the president
warned, would hand victory to Islamic extremists, especially al-Qaeda,
and embolden them to follow with attacks on the homeland. To Bush,
9/11 always remained a fresh scar that highlighted the stakes in Iraq, and
he expected his fellow Americans to react the same way. Further, if the
United States quit the war, America’s allies in the Middle East would
lose confi dence in the value of American pledges, and their will to resist
Islamic fundamentalism would collapse. Opponents of the war and
advocates of American withdrawal were accused of being naive about
the extremist menace and encouraging enemy morale. These