A Pilgrim’s Digression

Last night, President Bush took full credit for the lack of progress in Iraq, nearly four years after he decided to invade.  And among other turnabouts, he essentially set a deadline of November 2007 for the Iraqi government to get a grip on the violence in its country.  To address the errors of the past, the President is sending 20,000 more troops to the country to secure Baghdad.  Additionally, the Generals who have reviewed the plan to end the violence say that it addresses the chief military complaint: that there were too many restrictions placed on American troops.

Too little too late?  Probably, yet I support the effort.  I think it’s the last chance to stop Iraq from imploding.  I remain a pessimist and believe the implosion is more likely to happen than not,  but we can’t just let it happen without trying one more thing.  And as yet, no one else has proposed anything better.  A military solution seems like the only option.

As a liberal, I cannot stand on the sidelines saying “I told you so” while the Iraqi people suffer.  I dislike George W. Bush and believe he has been wrong all along, but that is really beside the point.  The Iraqis are suffering, and it is our fault.  The death toll wrought by George Bush’s war is pretty staggering, when you factor in the number of civilian casualties, and the dead from among Iraq’s military and police.

I’ve always thought it disingenuous and callous to count the toll of the war only in the number of dead Americans.  Of course there are going to be fewer American casualties.  In World of Warcraft, a player who absorbs damage so that other friendly players might live is called a tank, or meat shield.  The Iraqis are the American meat shield.

The Iraqis take the brunt of the terrorism, while the armchair Hawks sit back and say, “This war ain’t so bad compared to World War II.”

A war rarely goes as planned.  Adaptability is the key to victory.  And it seems to me that rather late in the game, the President has finally realized that he hasn’t been flexible enough, especially on the issue of troop numbers.  This is surprising to me, someone who came of age in the nineties as a young Republican.  Back in the nineties, I remember Rush Limbaugh, Grand Potentate of Armchair Warriors, pontificating on his principles for winning wars: “Use overwhelming force,” Limbaugh said; and above all, “Don’t start a war without an exit strategy.”  You can look those up; they are in his books.

Whatever happened to Republicans (they would say that 9/11 “changed everything”), they abandoned their principles and, to the detriment of the Iraqis, decided to wage exactly the kind of war Bill Clinton waged in the nineties in Bosnia, without Clinton’s success.  The Iraq war has been limited from the start–limited number of troops, limited ability to control territory (Americans cannot step foot inside a mosque), limited ability to prosecute a war, in short.

And Republicans expected victory?

One of the reasons I am pessimistic that any new-found strategy for victory can truly bring victory is that the Iraq War is one that depends not on American military success, but on Iraqi military and political success.  As in Vietnam, we are fighting a war to prop up a weak and corrupt regime.  Infiltrated by Sadr-ists and terrorists, the government, military, and police are by all accounts ineffectual and, in some cases, actively working against American goals.

Has there ever been a case where America has won a war via a proxy government and army?  Korea?  Stalemate.  Vietnam?  Defeat.  Iraq?

Furthermore, in deciding what to do about Iraq, President Bush himself still seems naively clinging to assumptions that have not stood the reality test.  As ABC’s “The Note” points out, the President commented last night that “Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace.”  To contradict this belief, the Note quotes David Brooks, a one-time supporter of the administration, “The enemy in Iraq is not some discrete group of killers. It’s the maelstrom of violence and hatred that infects every institution, including the government and the military. Instead of facing up to this core reality, the Bush administration has papered it over with salesmanship and spin.”

Like most people in America, conservative and liberal alike, the bloom is off the rose for David Brooks.  I listen to Brooks and Rich Lowry on the PBS Newshour podcast, and what I hear are conservatives who have lost faith in George Bush as a President and in his ability to solve the problem of Iraq.

On the radio program I listen to in the morning, the Grandy and Andy show on WMAL here in Washington, in a little over two years I have heard the hosts go from cocky self-assuredness and adoration of President Bush to a sort of resigned bitterness about the state of affairs in Iraq.  The third host, often the squeaky wheel in political discussions, Bryan Nehman, makes no bones about his disgust with the President.

The President’s speech may have inspired Andy Parks to a rare outburst of enthusiasm for Mr. Bush, but Nehman was there to deflate him.  Parks claimed this morning that the President had said (or implied) that the gloves were coming off.  Americans were going to be free to engage in brutal tactics to suppress the insurgency.

“Where did he say that?”  Nehman asked.

Parks was forced to admit that he had interpreted the President’s remarks to mean that the gloves were coming off.

Nehman replied, “This has been George Bush’s war from the start.  He has waged it the way he wanted to, and that hasn’t been the case [that the gloves were off].  What makes you think he’s going to change tactics now?”

Ultimately, the President’s speech and his policy may be a blank page on which Andy Parks and all of us can read what we want to see and believe. We want hope, we will find it there.  At least until reality once again intrudes upon our revery of American victory.