The president's Thanksgiving trip was a welcome tribute to the sacrifices U.S. soldiers are making in Iraq. Spending two hours on the ground is a good start.
Published November 29, 2003
President Bush's daring Thanksgiving visit to Iraq gave a dramatic boost to the morale of 130,000 U.S. troops serving there - and to millions of anxious Americans wishing them well. Half a world away, facing daily dangers and deprivations, our soldiers must sometimes wonder whether their fellow citizens and political leaders are aware of what they are going through. Even such a brief presidential visit can let them know that their country has not forgotten their sacrifice.
Such symbolic shows of support can do only so much, though. The president headed home after barely two hours, but our troops are likely to be in Iraq for years to come. Militarily, they deserve all the protection and firepower their task requires. Recent Pentagon analysis has confirmed that our troops did not always receive the equipment or the tactical guidance they needed in the early days of the war. In a broader sense, they deserve to know that their mission is being crafted in a way that will allow them to achieve their goal of making Iraq freer, safer and more stable. In that regard, U.S. and Iraqi authorities are still struggling to agree on a complex plan for building a democratic society from the wreckage of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.
The president's Thanksgiving trip sent a message to two larger audiences as well. For the Iraqi people, the president's arrival on their soil was intended to erase any suspicions that the United States was preparing to cut its losses and leave Iraq in chaos. Iraqis now have seen two hours more of George W. Bush than they have seen of Hussein since May. They need more such evidence that the Hussein regime is finished for good and a new, more representative government will rise in its place.
For the American people, the Thanksgiving trip was a response to growing criticism of Mr. Bush's public performance as commander in chief. The infamous May 1 event aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, when the president flew in for what turned out to be a premature victory celebration, has been justly lampooned for its heavy-handed political staging. But the more serious criticism of the president has resulted from his handlers' decision to distance him from any public association with our dead and wounded soldiers. The administration has barred media coverage at Dover Air Force Base, where the coffins of U.S. soldiers return from Iraq. The president also has not attended any public ceremonies for our war casualties.
Mr. Bush has shown his support in private, including writing a personal letter to the family of every dead soldier, but our troops and our people need more public expressions of empathy from their president in times of war. As his Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad showed, the president is at his best in casual settings, displaying an easy charm that isn't always evident in his formal speeches. The White House aides who try to control the president's every word and action with an eye to November 2004 should trust their candidate enough to let him be himself more often.
