President Bush’s strategy for Iraq, 2006: Stay the course.
President Bush’s strategy for Iraq, 2007: Stay the course. Only with more troops.
I’d like to say something snarky, or insightful, or something, but the truth is that I got nothing. There’s really nothing left to be said. The President has proven time and time again that he will do whatever the hell he wants, regardless of what anyone else — including the majority of the American public — thinks about it. I suspect that what he most wants is just to ride out the next year-and-a-half until somebody else can take over the Oval Office (and the blame for however the Iraq War ends) and he can get back to the ranch and all that important brush clearin’ that needs to be done.
For the record, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the very beginning. I thought it was a fool’s errand that was never adequately justified by the president’s ever-shifting rationales, that was motivated by a personal vendetta and a belief in a ridiculously utopian vision of recreating the Middle East to our liking (you’d think someone would’ve asked why, if the Domino Theory failed to work out for communism, would it work so well for democracy?), and that was a dangerous and unnecessary distraction from pursuing our real target, Osama bin Laden.
Not that any of that matters now, of course. We’re there, and it’s a real damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t pickle of a situation. If we stay, it’s more of the same, and we look like impotent fools while our soldiers get knocked off a few at a time. If we pull out, it’s chaos and genocide and we look like monsters for allowing it to happen. Either way, we’re screwed.
I don’t pretend to have a clue of how to fix things in Iraq. Maybe I’m just one of those pessimistic libruls, but I don’t think the situation is fixable, let alone winnable. Maybe it was once — I doubt it, personally — but we squandered the opportunity if it was there. And I think the president maybe, just maybe, has finally gotten that through his thick skull. And he doesn’t have the faintest idea of what to do about it, either. So he just does more of the same and hopes, against all common sense, that this time it will work. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
In defense of President Bush, and you know how much I hate to say that, I think he may be right about not governing by public opinion polls. If he did, in fact, talk to all of those people about military strategy and whatnot and, here’s the big one, understood it, he has a far better idea of what should be happening than us little ol’ armchair generals.
Personally, I believe this is just more of the same. A little bit like throwing Orc after Orc against the walls of Helm’s Deep in an effort to break the back of the insurgency. We lost this same type of Guerilla war in Vietnam and I think we may lose it here.
The only real way for this to be fixed is if all the Iraqis want it fixed. And they are the ones who need to do it. I find something so sadly oxymoronic about having freedom and democracy inflicted upon you. It just seems wrong somehow.
Steve, I agree that no president should govern according to polls, and looking back at my entry I see that I should’ve worded things differently to avoid that suggestion. What I meant is that Bush’s “surge” plan — what they used to call “escalation” back in ‘Nam days, but of course we’re not supposed to draw that parallel, are we? — has been rumored for a couple of weeks and rejected by pretty much everybody: the generals on the ground, much of Congress (including a number of Republicans), even (according to one item I saw and now cannot find) a significant percentage of the actual troops. Not to mention all us average citizens. But do any of these opinions impact on Fearless Leader’s decision-making? Not that I can see…
As pessimistic as it sounds, I think we’ve already lost this war. If our goal was to turn Iraq into a functioning, western-style democracy with a non-theocratic government that would be friendly to us and hostile to the mullahs in Iran, we probably lost before we ever set the first boot in that country, because all the odds of making it work were against us. Especially given the lack of post-Saddam planning on our part. The powers-that-be painted themselves into a corner and have left themselves with very, very few options, and everything I’ve read on the subject suggests that this surge is going to be too little, too late.
In my not-so-humble opinion, we are going to leave Iraq with our tail between our legs. That seems inevitable to me now. The only question is how many people will die before we actually do it.
What you’re saying here is what’s being repeated over & over again in the press. I agree with most of it, but there are pieces missing and pieces that are misleading.
First, no one (including President Bush, amazingly) is pointing out that his recommendations are entirely contained within the Iraq Study Group Report. The report says we should clearly tell Iraq that we’re not there unconditionally, and establish responsibilities that they need to live up to if we’re going to stay. It also says that the biggest problem in Iraq is that we clear a town/region of insurgents/terrorists and then move on, only to have the bad guys come back in when we leave. They recommend additional troops for the sole purpose of holding what we’ve secured, so we can build some momentum. If this were high school, Bush would get accused of copying the answers right out of the book. But in this case, no one’s even giving him credit for taking advice.
Second, to your point about his apparent obliviousness (is that a word?) to the fact that no one agrees with him: just a few months ago, there were several politicians (most of them Democrats), recommending additional troops in Iraq. Those folks have either changed their positions, or are remaining quiet now. Putting aside whether I think it’s a good idea (I’m still not sure, honestly), I think the Democrats knew going in that they were going to have to stand up to Bush on whatever his first “big idea” was after they took power, so the country would know that Congress is no longer a pushover. This was so obvious, in fact, that I’m wondering if Bush even wants the “surge,” or at least if he wants 21,000 troops. Knowing the Congress was going to come after him, maybe he went in with a high negotiating position, hoping to end with something in the middle. Dangerous game to be playing with the lives of our men & women, but none of it would surprise me.
Finally, I don’t understand this notion that we’ve “already lost.” Remember, we earned our independence in 1776. We didn’t have a constitution until 1789 (13 years). After that, the country lasted 73 years, and then fell into civil war. Iraq has had a rough two years, and we’re declaring it a failure? As Yogi likes to say, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”‘
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This is not to say we should stay, increase troops, etc.. But what does it mean to say there’s no possible path to success from where we are now? The sectarian violence will continue forever? Or perhaps that Iraq may succeed, but it won’t be due to us? There’s an entire psychology class in this question: If we pull out now, and Iraq is a stable democracy in 13 years, did we win or lose the war? I bet the answer would be different then than it would be now…
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Brian, I’ve been trying to compose a response to your comment all weekend, something that would address all of your points with some intelligence and eloquence, but I find my thoughts on Iraq and the Bush presidency are so tangled up with feelings of frustration and anger and despair that I’m not even making a lot of sense to myself.
As I said, I don’t think we should be there at all. I think picking this particular fight was a colossal mistake. (For the record, I do not feel that way about Afghanistan; I supported our actions there.) Obviously, however, that argument is long past and we need to do something now. I don’t know what that could be, though. I recognize that complete withdrawal would be a disaster in about a hundred different ways. But increasing troop levels at this point sounds like a bad idea to me as well. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the surge will work. But my gut tells me it won’t.
Here’s the thing: I don’t believe it much matters what we do over there. Stay or don’t stay, I just can’t conceive of this conflict ending on a positive note. Maybe that says more about my personal psychology than what’s actually going on, but everything I read, see, and hear about the Iraq War leads me to believe we have painted ourselves into a corner. And that’s where the frustration and anger come from. It’s not an anti-Bush thing, although I’ll admit I’ve never liked the man or how he operates, and I do hang this whole disastrous mess around his neck. But the thing that really gripes is just the a sense that we didn’t have to end up here in this hard spot, and that there’s no way out of it now we’re here.
Wow. First of all, I hope you didn’t really spend the weekend trying to compose a response to my comment. There have got to be better things to do over a weekend. 😉
As to the rest of it, I totally understand the feeling of “why are we there in the first place?” As with the ISG Report above, I feel that there are good reasons to be there, but that no one in the Bush Administration seems willing to talk about them, because they might go against the pre-approved talking points that Rove & Co. have focus-group tested. Alternatively, I’m just wrong about why I think we’re there, and there’s nothing more to talk about.
At the end of the day, we obviously have no way of knowing what will work and what won’t. I also think it’s fair to say that if we stayed long enough, we could eventually get the results we want. The big question is when is it no longer worth having (months? years? decades?)
My biggest fear lately, to be honest, is not that we’re losing/already lost, but that a large portion of the citizens don’t want things to turn around, because if they do, then Bush would “get away with it,” and the Republicans would have a stronger platform in 2008. I fear that politics has become just another Reality TV show, where the people are on one team & Bush is on another, and the goal of every move is to get Bush voted off the island…
Well, I didn’t exactly spend all weekend working on a reply… but the subject did cross my mind several times! 😉
I think you’re probably right about folks playing the political game, i.e., not wanting the other party, whichever that may be, to succeed, even if it’s the best thing for the country and/or the world, just because you don’t went “them” to win. I’m not entirely free of those feelings myself. Part of me dreads the idea that The Shrub might pull a rabbit out of his hat at this late point, partly because I really, really dislike him, but mostly (and more rationally, I hope) because I don’t want his pre-emptive strike doctrine to be vindicated in any way. I think it’s bad policy that may get us into a much bigger mess than Iraq if those who espouse it are enboldened by victory. Besides, I really don’t want to have to put up with the “I told you so’s” and liberal-bashing that would surely follow a definitive victory in Iraq.
That said, however, I am not so blindly partisan that I don’t recognize the geo-political importance of our situation over there, or the humanitarian issues. I’d be willing to give Bush his gold star in the history books to have this all amount to something good, for us and the Iraqis both. But I just don’t have any faith that it will.
As you suggest, we probably could get it right if we were willing to devote the time and manpower to make it happen. I don’t believe we (meaning the public, or even, for that matter, the people in the White House who started the war and who blanch at the slightest mention of the word “draft”) are so willing. And so the question, as you suggested, is how much longer before the costs outweigh either the potential gains or the consequences of withdrawal? I think we’re very, very close to that point, myself.