Editorial: Failure cannot be shifted

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

On the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, President Bush accused congressional Democrats of crafting a war-funding bill that "directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders."

Funny, isn't that what Bush did four years ago at the start of his war?

We remember the military commanders at the time recommending a much larger invasion force, offering good advice about securing Iraq's borders and having a plan for winning the peace.

Bush, however, closed ranks around his inner circle of civilian advisers. The result is what we have today in Iraq - possibly the worst failure of American civilian leadership during war in U.S. history.

Voters did all they could to rectify this failure in November's midterm elections, sending congressional Republicans packing and turning over control of Congress to the Democrats.

Now the Democrats are doing what the voters wanted of them, pressuring the president through legislation to begin winding down in Iraq and resuming the nation's vigilance against worldwide terror networks.

The president, however, sees the Democrats' action only as an opportunity to shift blame to them for the leadership blunders committed by his administration.

In his speech Tuesday, Bush savaged the Democrats' plan, which is to force the Iraqi government - primarily through gradual U.S. troop withdrawals - to cast off its bunker mentality, assume responsibility and begin making the changes necessary to strengthen its democracy and bring about stability.

The alternative under Bush's direction, of course, is more slaughter and chaos in Iraq until a future president decides on the only feasible course - weaning Iraq of America's presence much as the Democrats are proposing now.

Bush is trying his best to blind the American public to this inevitability. He is blaming the Democrats for a plan he says will ultimately allow al-Qaida to use Iraq as its base.

In our view, al-Qaida might have been defeated by now if Bush had remained focused on the war in Afghanistan, where the terrorist group responsible for 9/11 had found a haven. The presence of al-Qaida in Iraq is due solely to Bush, whose order to invade failed to include securing the country's borders.

There is plenty of blame for the killing fields that now define Iraq, but it must fall on the failed leadership of the Bush administration, and not on the Democrats, who are offering a realistic plan for change.