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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, November 30, 2003

EDITORIAL
Bush deserves credit for bold Baghdad visit

For those inclined to cynicism in regard to the White House's conduct of the war in Iraq, there's a strong temptation to see self-serving motives in the president's barnstorming Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad airport.

In this instance, however, we're inclined to think the super-secret mission was an example of the president simply doing his job, and doing it well.

Indeed, he was following the example of presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon and his father in visiting troops in war zones.

There is simply no denying the salutary effect Bush's visit had on morale among the troops he encountered in Baghdad. They were plainly buoyed by his attention and delighted to see him.

We've questioned many aspects of this war from the start, but where we part company with some other critics is in our unflagging support for our men and women in uniform, no matter where they serve. No doubt the president's trip to Baghdad — like the shipment of thousands of turkeys to Iraq to upgrade field rations for a single day — will prove extraordinarily expensive. But it's money well spent.

We predict that images from this surprise visit will find a place among defining moments of Bush's term in office. There is no question that Bush's political aides have been supremely sensitive to shaping the appearance of those images in his campaign for re-election.

But we think comparison between the Baghdad visit and Bush's ill-advised flight last May to the USS Abraham Lincoln may be inappropriate. That event was stage-managed simply as a backdrop for an announcement by Bush that has proved embarrassingly premature — "mission accomplished."

True, Bush repeated a couple of things in Baghdad that continue to make us uncomfortable, including his overdrawn assertion that if we weren't fighting terrorists in Iraq, we'd be fighting them at home.

One undeniable result of Bush's Thanksgiving Day surprise is that, for better or worse, it ties his political future ever more tightly to the outcome of the war in Iraq.

But the Baghdad visit had a clearly legitimate purpose.