Wisconsin professor: War is now a debacle

The Bush administration has bungled Iraq, but quitting isn't an option, a former supporter argues.

Sharon Schmickle, Star Tribune
Last update: December 3, 2005 at 6:50 PM

Count Charles Corcoran among the Americans who thought in 2003 that Saddam Hussein needed to be stopped.

"He had flaunted U.N. rules, and he was thumbing his nose at the international community," Corcoran said. "He had given every reason to believe that he had weapons of mass destruction."

Corcoran's support for the Iraq war began to crack, though, as U.S. forces failed to secure hospitals and other strategic sites after toppling Saddam. He was appalled at reports that Americans had abused prisoners in Iraq. And he worried about the war's costs coming on top of a mounting federal deficit.

Now, Corcoran's support is shattered. And, because of the war, he regrets having voted for President Bush in 2000.

Corcoran, 48, of Stillwater, is a professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. He voted for Bush's father, too, but says Republicans can't take his vote for granted.

Corcoran said his disillusionment isn't so much with the particulars of the war strategy that Bush reiterated last week. It's with the administration's execution of the war.

"The whole thing has turned into a huge debacle," Corcoran said.

Like Bush, Corcoran doesn't favor an immediate pullout: "There is a risk that the low-grade civil war we are seeing now would become all out civil war if we pulled out."

But he applauded Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., for calling for bringing the troops home and thus forcing a debate on the war's objectives.

"It reframed the debate," Corcoran said. "We need to be looking at the end game."

With trust in Bush sliding, he said, clear benchmarks need to be set so that Americans can judge progress for themselves.

Corcoran doesn't agree with the administration's sharpest critics that Bush lied to the nation about the reasons for getting into the war.

"Being a politician, Bush perhaps put a spin on the intelligence and tried to play it up, but that's what politicians do," he said.

Corcoran doesn't believe, though, that Bush can achieve his goal of using Iraq to plant democracy in the Middle East: "I don't think it can work to impose our way of doing things on a part of the world where the notion is foreign."

Given the Arab tradition of tribal identity, he said, the effort "is destined to fall on its face."

Despite the failings, Bush survived to win reelection because the war is a "low-grade headache" for most Americans, not a major sacrifice, Corcoran said. But the nation's patience with that headache clearly is wearing thin.

"If the election were today, I think we would see a different outcome," Corcoran said.


Sharon Schmickle • 612-673-4432