It is all too clear at this point that President Bush’s "surge" strategy has little relation to any realistic attempt to achieve "victory" in Iraq. So what is its goal? And who is left in the bunker, and WHY?
Frank Rich in tomorrow’s New York Times (behind TimesSelect firewall):
It’s a very short list led by John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and neo-conservative dead-enders like William Kristol and Frederick Kagan, who congregate at The Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington think tank.
Of course we all remember Frederick Kagan. He wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2005: "Despite what you may have read, the military situation in Iraq today is positive."
More from Frank Rich:
Yet Bush doesn’t even have the courage of his own disastrous convictions: He’s not properly executing the policy these guys sold him. In The Washington Post on Dec. 27, Kagan and Keane wrote that escalation could only succeed "with a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops" -- a figure that has also been cited by McCain. (Kagan put the figure at 50,000 to 80,000 in a Weekly Standard article three weeks earlier. Whatever.) By any of these neocons’ standards, the Bush escalation of some 20,000 is too little, not to mention way too late.
The discrepancy between the policy that Bush nominally endorses and the one he actually ordered up crystallizes the cynicism of this entire war. If you really believe, as the president continues to put it, that Iraq is the central front in "the decisive ideological struggle of our time," then you should be in favor of having many more troops than we’ve ever had in Iraq. As T.X. Hammes, an insurgency expert and a former Marine, told USA Today, that doesn’t now mean a "dribble" (as he ridicules the "surge") but a total of 300,000 armed coalition forces over a minimum of four years.
But that would mean asking Americans for sacrifice, not giving us tax cuts. Bush has never asked for sacrifice and still doesn’t. If his words sound like bargain-basement Churchill, his actions have been cheaper still.
So why are these neocons backing an escalation that even THEY have suggested would be inadequate?
Georgetown professor Rosa Brooks gave us a good hint, writing in the Los Angeles Times last week:
By 1971, Nixon and Kissinger understood that ‘‘winning’’ in Vietnam was no longer in the cards -- so they shifted from trying to win the war to trying to win the next election. As Nixon put it in March 1971: ‘‘We can’t have (the South Vietnamese) knocked over brutally ... ‘’ Kissinger finished the thought ‘‘ ... before the election.’’ So Nixon and Kissinger pushed the South Vietnamese to ``stand on their own,’’ promising we’d support them if necessary. But at the same time, Kissinger assured the North Vietnamese -- through China -- that the U.S. wouldn’t intervene to prevent a North Vietnamese victory -- as long as that victory didn’t come with embarrassing speed.
As historian Jeffrey Kimball has documented, Kissinger’s talking points for his first meeting with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai on the topic of Vietnam included a promise that the U.S. would withdraw all troops and ‘‘leave the political evolution of Vietnam to the Vietnamese.’’ The U.S. would ‘‘let objective realities’’ -- North Vietnamese military superiority -- ‘‘shape the political future.’’ In the margins of his briefing book, Kissinger scrawled a handwritten elaboration for Chou: ``We want a decent interval. You have our assurance.’’
The ‘‘decent interval’’ strategy worked. By declaring that ‘‘peace was at hand,’’ Kissinger took the wind out of antiwar Democrat George McGovern’s sails, and Nixon won re-election. And although Nixon himself later fell to the Watergate scandal, the Republican Party successfully used the ‘‘decent interval’’ to cast the Democratic Party in the role of spoiler.
So it is all about gaining a decent interval, passing failure on to the next occupant of the White House.
And you can’t blame Bush and his neocon supporters for going this route. It could be politically effective.
Bush was playing thathand Saturday when, according to The Associated Press he said:
"To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," Bush said.
Bush said lawmakers "have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success."
So how should the Democrats respond?
again, Rosa Brooks:
The Democrats need to break out of the script the White House has written for them and remind Americans that the war in Iraq is a dangerous distraction from other pressing threats to U.S. security, such as nuclear proliferation and the rise of militant Islam worldwide. They need to emphasize that withdrawal from Iraq isn’t about defeat’’ -- it’s about shifting our troops, our money and our energy to the real challenges that the Bush administration is ignoring or exacerbating.
At this point, the Republicans win by losing in Iraq -- as long as they can blame the loss on the Democrats. And unless they find a way to refuse to play the game, the Democrats will just lose.
That is a tough sell however, given the rhetorical parameters.
THAT is what needs to be expanded in this debate.
It is not a matter of winning or losing, it is a matter of pursuing a RATIONAL policy or continuing with an IRRATIONAL policy.