WASHINGTON — Three years ago, as they ordered more than 150,000 U.S. troops to race toward Baghdad, Bush administration officials confidently predicted that Iraq would quickly evolve into a prosperous, oil-fueled democracy. When those goals proved optimistic, they lowered their sights, focusing on a military campaign to defeat Sunni-led insurgents and elections to jump-start a new political order.
As the conflict enters its fourth year today, the Bush administration faces a new challenge: the prospect of civil war. And, in response, officials again appear to be redefining success downward.
FOR THE RECORD
Iraq war anniversary: A March 19 article in Section A misspelled the first name of a former professor at the U.S. Army War College who is now at the private Council on Foreign Relations. He is Stephen Biddle, not Steven.
If Iraq can avoid all-out civil war, they say, if Baghdad's new security forces can hold together, if Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds all participate in a new unity government, that may be enough progress to allow the administration to begin reducing the number of U.S. troops in the country by the second half of this year.
In increasingly sober public statements -- and in slightly more candid assessments from officials who insisted that they not be identified -- the administration is working to lower expectations.
"It may seem difficult at times to understand how we can say that progress is being made," President Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address, acknowledging that much of the recent news from Iraq has been bad. "But
"We may fail," said a senior official directly involved in Iraq policy. "But I think we're going to succeed. I think we're going to nudge this ball down the road
The more sober tone is not entirely new; officials, from Bush on down, have tacitly acknowledged for more than a year that trying to stabilize Iraq is proving more difficult than they expected when they launched the war in 2003.
But independent foreign policy analysts say they see signs of a more fundamental shift in the administration's position -- a creeping redefinition of U.S. goals in Iraq that increasingly allows for the possibility that the nation may remain unstable for years to come.
"It isn't going to be perfect," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last month. "It isn't going to be pretty. It isn't going to look like the United States of America. It's going to be an Iraqi solution politically, and Iraqi solution economically and an Iraqi solution from a security standpoint."
