Iraq to Cost Bush Re-Election, Barring Dramatic Changes

One year ago, a University of Alabama expert in military and political affairs predicted that war in Iraq in 2003 would equal defeat for President George W. Bush in the 2004 election. Now, some 11 months prior to that election, Dr. Donald Snow predicts the post-war situation in Iraq will gradually deteriorate in coming months and only dramatic developments will save the president from defeat.

“I still predict he’s toast unless two things happen,” Snow says. “One, the economy has to improve so dramatically that we forget about the war and, two, the Democrats are going to have to hand the election to him.

“Another way he is guaranteed a second term would be a big spectacular terrorist attack in this country,” said Snow, a professor of political science who has held visiting professorships at the U.S Air Command and Staff College, U.S. Naval War College, U.S. Army War College, and the U.S. Air War College.

Snow says he doesn’t expect any of those three things to happen.

“This administration is going to rise or fall based on the situation in Iraq next fall. They are going to gamble they can drive down the number of the force during the summer as the campaign heats up, and that they’ll be able to claim ‘mission accomplished.’ The gamble in all of this is whether the situation deteriorates before or deteriorates after the election.”

Snow predicts it’s a gamble the presidential administration will lose.

“I see a slow, but gradual, process of increasing violence,” Snow predicted for the months ahead. “As I understand it, recruitment by the opposition is up over there, and every time we blow up a neighborhood opposition recruitment swells.”

If Bush were to be re-elected, Snow says similar military action elsewhere would arise, but not within the next 12 months. “Regime change 2 is coming, and regime change 2 is Syria,” he said.

In December 2002, when it was still unclear whether the United States would launch a military operation in Iraq, Snow was quoted as saying that if a war was launched, it would cost Bush the re-election. “Even if the war itself goes well, the post-war will not, and that’s what’s going to do him in. Post-War Iraq is going to be an extraordinarily messy place that we are going to have to occupy for a long time,” he said one year ago.