CHANGING COURSE IN IRAQ OR JUST CHANGING RHETORIC?
On Tuesday, the voters told President Bush that they wanted him to come up with an exit strategy in Iraq. Yesterday, Mr. Bush accepted the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Announcing his decision, the president sounded cranky, and his insistence that Mr. Rumsfeld had done a great job was ridiculous. But everyone would like this to be the beginning of a new era, and it seems best to simply applaud the decision. Whether Mr. Bush understands what a failure Mr. Rumsfeld has been is far less important than whether he is really prepared to rethink the Iraq strategy now.
What was far more worrisome was Mr. Bush's repeated insistence that neither he nor the American people would countenance withdrawal without "victory." If the president still imagines that the American occupation will end in some kind of foreign policy triumph for the United States, neither the election nor Mr. Rumsfeld's abrupt ouster have had any real impact at all. We're still waiting for a sign that Mr. Bush has grasped the steady unraveling of his Iraq strategy as anything beyond a political problem.
--"Rumsfeld's Departure," editorial, New York Times, November 9, 2006.
This needs to be our last election about Iraq.
The Iraq war has turned into a sucking chest wound for our country--infecting its unity at home and its standing abroad. No one can predict what Iraq will look like 10 years from now. I wish it well. But in the near term, it is clear, nothing that we'll feel particularly proud of, nothing that we'll feel justifies the vast expenditure of lives and treasure, is going to come out of Iraq.
Our only two options left today in Iraq are "tolerable" and "awful." "Good" is no longer on the menu…It's time to make a final push for the tolerable, and if that fails, quit Iraq and insulate ourselves and our allies from the awful. This can't go on.
--"Tolerable or Awful: The Roads Left in Iraq," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 6, 2006.
On Iraq, the Democratic leadership needs to push the administration to move immediately on whatever recommendations come from the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The decision to hold the commission's report until after the election was political idiocy--every day we wait risks the lives of our soldiers and our Iraqi allies.
"An Army of One Less," New York Times op-ed by Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.
Let's make one thing perfectly clear: The much-vaunted, bi-partisan Iraq Study Group was not Bush's idea. It was forced on him by Congress. Remember the famous 9-11 commission, that has now become, by and large, the law of the land? Bush not only did not ask for that commission, but he actively resisted it for more than two years, until a vocal and pitiful chorus of 9-11 widows shamed him--and Congress--into it. To this day, he has not implemented all of the commission's suggestions. The Democrats promise to rectify that when they take over Congress in January.
So now there's an Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisan commission set up by Republican Senator John Warner of the Armed Services Committee of Congress, and by a phalanx of senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle who have been horrified at what our commander-in-chief and his puppetmasters, Cheney/Rumsfeld, hath wrought.
Make no mistake about it. His spin-masters can claim that he was planning to oust Rumsfeld a month ago or more, but I don't believe it. I think the reason he waited to announce his decision until after the election is because he was clearly hoping he would not have to make that announcement. His brain, Karl Rove, had assured him that he had an inside straight in the poker game of politics and that all the polls and pundits were dead wrong and they were going to hold onto power with the death-grip they have come to know and love.
Clearly, when Bush threw together his day-after concessionary press conference, he was shell-shocked and none too happy about having to be there.
So okay. He dumps Rumsfeld. Brings on another one of Daddy's Boys to fix yet another fine mess he's gotten himself into.
From everything I've read so far, Robert Gates appears to be a far more moderate, reasonable voice than Rumsfeld ever thought about being in his worst nightmares. He is well-schooled in the nuance of diplomacy, political pragmatism, and common sense, having served far more reasonable presidents in his long and distinguished career.
So, on the surface--and all the media pundits are getting quite excited--it would appear that a major course correction is in the offing. Gates has actually been a PART of the Iraq Study Group, and only recently returned from a trip to Baghdad where, colleagues say (anonymously of course) that he expressed fundamental disbelief that Rumsfeld let things get as bad as he did.
This all looks good--on the surface. It looks like the Iraq Study Group is going to make these profound proposals for changing course in Iraq, and the new secretary of defense will be far more inclined to pass them than his arrogant, obstructionist predecessor.
There was even a HUGE signal missed by everyone else--including Brian Williams, anchor of NBC news. He featured the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, giving a statement, on-camera, that the word "victory" could actually be redefined.
NBC treated this like an everyday thing. Pace said a thing. Here it is.
What they completely overlooked is that, as long as he was handcuffed to Donald Rumsfeld, Peter Pace couldn't say a damn thing that was not scripted by his boss in one of thousands upon thousands of "snowflake" memos he sent down daily to his minions.
In fact, Peter Pace, a combat veteran Marine, rarely ever said anything at all.
So the fact that he made this statement is already seismic. But even more stunning is WHAT he said: that the word "victory" could be redefined.
Specifically, Pace stated that "victory" could basically entail Iraqi troops bringing the level of violence in Iraq down to what I believe he called a "manageable" level.
First of all, the administration started mumbling around that we would no longer pursue democracy as a goal, but would instead embrace stability.
But when Baghdad exploded even after we infused it with thousands of more troops and it didn't look as if Iraq would EVER stabilize, then, with a losing election in the offing, suddenly, we were no longer going to use the phrase "stay the course." In fact, Bush--with even more unmitigated gall than usual--said that he had ALWAYS sought new tactics and adjusted to conditions as reported by his military people on the ground.
Of course, the real truth is that Rumsfeld always over-ruled everything his military commanders said (beginning in the planning stages for the war, back in '02, and getting worse that very first week of the invasion when he refused to listen to commanders warning about an insurgency) and never let them speak for themselves anyway.
Peter Pace, for example, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is mandated by the Constitution to have direct access to the president, but has been denied that privilege under Rumsfeld's watch. So, Bush's even making that statement alone is staggering in its raw disconnect between slogan and strategy.
But NOW, suddenly, we're not just no longer saying "stay the course." NOW, suddenly, we are saying that "victory" actually means, Iraqis killing Iraqis at a less horrendous rate than they currently are. Like, maybe just a few hundred dead a month rather than a few thousand. Something like that.
Going back to the Iraq Study Group. The thing is, they can make all the proposals they want and the new defense secretary can echo those proposals.
It does not mean that Bush will follow them. In fact, he may just REDEFINE them. In that case, nothing at all will change except rhetoric.
One more thing. One of the proposals likely to be put forth by the Iraq Study Group has not been much discussed by the media, but it has been leaked, and it will be on the table:
Sending MORE troops to Iraq, not bringing them home.
The theory being that if we send in enough cannon fodder, we'll ride this buckin' bronco. This has been vigorously supported by Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee for president in 2008.
Time and time again, I have seen McCain say we need many thousands more troops on the ground in Iraq, that we have always needed more, and time and time again, I have seen whatever media interviewer is present at the time, simply let him make that statement.
I have never, however, seen a single one ask McCain where the hell he intends to get these extra troops.
As it is, the American armed forces are exhausted, stretched out to transparent levels, their equipment beat-up and destroyed, and they are unable to meet their recruitment goals without letting in high school drop-outs, people with criminal records, and people over 40 years old.
So, without a national draft, where are these thousands of warm bodies going to come from?
How many troops, who have already served their country with pride and honor and gone back two and three times to Iraq and Afghanistan, gotten out of the military, and gone on to live their lives, will be yanked back in and sent back to war?
When they talk about "activating the reserves," WHO DO YOU THINK THOSE RESERVISTS ARE?
The same people. Back again. How much longer can this go on?
No one, it seems, is asking these questions.
My only hope is, ironically, the thing that started this godforsaken war in the first place:
Politics.
This administration has already been foist on its own canard. After all, they started this bogus war so they could get elected to office by waving the flag of patriotism and attacking anyone who objected as being, rather than political opponents, downright traitors, even enemies.
They then used the war to get re-elected, scaring a traumatized nation into thinking that you never switch horses mid-stream or unseat a commander-in-chief in times of war.
For this election, they rather frantically attempted to use the war--yet again--to hold onto power, staging yet more nauseating photo-ops to coincide with September 11.
But finally, at long last, the American people seemed to be rousing from the fog of post-traumatic stress that descended upon them in 2001, blinking their eyes, squinting, and saying, What the hell happened?
And--glory of glories--the war Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld started for political gain cost them every bit of political clout they had.
Like that old story about the scorpion riding a frog over a stream, thanking the frog for the ride when they get to shore, and then stinging it to death because, even though the frog saved its life, it was still a scorpion.
So now, we're stuck in this horror, and Republicans, blood-spattered and bruised from their own losing war to hang on to Congress, are realizing that if we don't get out of Iraq by 2008, it's going to cost them the White House as well.
POLITICS GOT US IN AND POLITICS, BY GOD, WILL GET US OUT.
But in the meantime, I would be very, very cautious before I endowed the Iraq Study Group, the new secretary of defense, and the newly-chastened president with the mantle of peace.
At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush's character. To put it bluntly, he's an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood--and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself "pleased with the progress we're making" in Iraq.
In other words, he's the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.
The results have been predictably disastrous.
--"Limiting the Damage," Paul Krugman, New York Times, November 6, 2006
As a Marine mom, I am just as terrified for my son today as I was on November 6, 2006.
I'm cautiously optimistic that the American people will only tolerate so much--especially if anybody starts throwing out that bomb-word, DRAFT.
But on the other hand, I've been seeing a lot of televised interviews with troops in Iraq, where they seem to all say the very same thing, that if we pull out without victory, or accomplishing the mission, or whatever the catch-phrase for the day is, then all their buddies will have died in vain.
These stories are always very touching, and eerily similar.
Yes, this is a belief shared by many troops, but at the same time, there are many, many more who are beginning to think that their buddies are dying for nothing, that their deaths have been a waste. Only, I don't see them on-camera.
Of course, the ones who feel that way don't dare go on-camera, because they get in trouble for questioning their commander-in-chief publicly. But they express themselves very vocally on blogs, in letters and phone calls and e-mails home, and on websites that protect their identity.
Still, it does not get reported on the evening news.
This argument--that we don't want the dead to have died in vain, well, the thing is, this was the same argument used to drag out a war that ultimately cost America more than 58,000 of its brightest and best 30 years ago.
Right now, we're losing troops to the tune of about one hundred every month, not counting Afghanistan.
Untold thousands have left arms, legs, bits of brain, sanity, and soul in the filthy desert streets of Iraq.
When is enough, ENOUGH?
Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. They opened a fine new museum at Quantico, commemorating their courageous and honorable history, starting the year our nation was born, more than 200 years ago.
The president showed up and gave a posthumous Medal of Honor to a boy who would have been 25 years old today, had he not hurled his body on top of a grenade to save his Marine buddies in 2004.
Bush got choked up, as he always does at these flag-waving, troop-honoring, media-friendly events.
But as he walked away from the podium under glorious dress-blue skies, I have to wonder if…even unconsciously…he might have paused to wipe the blood off his hands.
What was far more worrisome was Mr. Bush's repeated insistence that neither he nor the American people would countenance withdrawal without "victory." If the president still imagines that the American occupation will end in some kind of foreign policy triumph for the United States, neither the election nor Mr. Rumsfeld's abrupt ouster have had any real impact at all. We're still waiting for a sign that Mr. Bush has grasped the steady unraveling of his Iraq strategy as anything beyond a political problem.
--"Rumsfeld's Departure," editorial, New York Times, November 9, 2006.
This needs to be our last election about Iraq.
The Iraq war has turned into a sucking chest wound for our country--infecting its unity at home and its standing abroad. No one can predict what Iraq will look like 10 years from now. I wish it well. But in the near term, it is clear, nothing that we'll feel particularly proud of, nothing that we'll feel justifies the vast expenditure of lives and treasure, is going to come out of Iraq.
Our only two options left today in Iraq are "tolerable" and "awful." "Good" is no longer on the menu…It's time to make a final push for the tolerable, and if that fails, quit Iraq and insulate ourselves and our allies from the awful. This can't go on.
--"Tolerable or Awful: The Roads Left in Iraq," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 6, 2006.
On Iraq, the Democratic leadership needs to push the administration to move immediately on whatever recommendations come from the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The decision to hold the commission's report until after the election was political idiocy--every day we wait risks the lives of our soldiers and our Iraqi allies.
"An Army of One Less," New York Times op-ed by Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.
Let's make one thing perfectly clear: The much-vaunted, bi-partisan Iraq Study Group was not Bush's idea. It was forced on him by Congress. Remember the famous 9-11 commission, that has now become, by and large, the law of the land? Bush not only did not ask for that commission, but he actively resisted it for more than two years, until a vocal and pitiful chorus of 9-11 widows shamed him--and Congress--into it. To this day, he has not implemented all of the commission's suggestions. The Democrats promise to rectify that when they take over Congress in January.
So now there's an Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisan commission set up by Republican Senator John Warner of the Armed Services Committee of Congress, and by a phalanx of senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle who have been horrified at what our commander-in-chief and his puppetmasters, Cheney/Rumsfeld, hath wrought.
Make no mistake about it. His spin-masters can claim that he was planning to oust Rumsfeld a month ago or more, but I don't believe it. I think the reason he waited to announce his decision until after the election is because he was clearly hoping he would not have to make that announcement. His brain, Karl Rove, had assured him that he had an inside straight in the poker game of politics and that all the polls and pundits were dead wrong and they were going to hold onto power with the death-grip they have come to know and love.
Clearly, when Bush threw together his day-after concessionary press conference, he was shell-shocked and none too happy about having to be there.
So okay. He dumps Rumsfeld. Brings on another one of Daddy's Boys to fix yet another fine mess he's gotten himself into.
From everything I've read so far, Robert Gates appears to be a far more moderate, reasonable voice than Rumsfeld ever thought about being in his worst nightmares. He is well-schooled in the nuance of diplomacy, political pragmatism, and common sense, having served far more reasonable presidents in his long and distinguished career.
So, on the surface--and all the media pundits are getting quite excited--it would appear that a major course correction is in the offing. Gates has actually been a PART of the Iraq Study Group, and only recently returned from a trip to Baghdad where, colleagues say (anonymously of course) that he expressed fundamental disbelief that Rumsfeld let things get as bad as he did.
This all looks good--on the surface. It looks like the Iraq Study Group is going to make these profound proposals for changing course in Iraq, and the new secretary of defense will be far more inclined to pass them than his arrogant, obstructionist predecessor.
There was even a HUGE signal missed by everyone else--including Brian Williams, anchor of NBC news. He featured the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, giving a statement, on-camera, that the word "victory" could actually be redefined.
NBC treated this like an everyday thing. Pace said a thing. Here it is.
What they completely overlooked is that, as long as he was handcuffed to Donald Rumsfeld, Peter Pace couldn't say a damn thing that was not scripted by his boss in one of thousands upon thousands of "snowflake" memos he sent down daily to his minions.
In fact, Peter Pace, a combat veteran Marine, rarely ever said anything at all.
So the fact that he made this statement is already seismic. But even more stunning is WHAT he said: that the word "victory" could be redefined.
Specifically, Pace stated that "victory" could basically entail Iraqi troops bringing the level of violence in Iraq down to what I believe he called a "manageable" level.
First of all, the administration started mumbling around that we would no longer pursue democracy as a goal, but would instead embrace stability.
But when Baghdad exploded even after we infused it with thousands of more troops and it didn't look as if Iraq would EVER stabilize, then, with a losing election in the offing, suddenly, we were no longer going to use the phrase "stay the course." In fact, Bush--with even more unmitigated gall than usual--said that he had ALWAYS sought new tactics and adjusted to conditions as reported by his military people on the ground.
Of course, the real truth is that Rumsfeld always over-ruled everything his military commanders said (beginning in the planning stages for the war, back in '02, and getting worse that very first week of the invasion when he refused to listen to commanders warning about an insurgency) and never let them speak for themselves anyway.
Peter Pace, for example, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is mandated by the Constitution to have direct access to the president, but has been denied that privilege under Rumsfeld's watch. So, Bush's even making that statement alone is staggering in its raw disconnect between slogan and strategy.
But NOW, suddenly, we're not just no longer saying "stay the course." NOW, suddenly, we are saying that "victory" actually means, Iraqis killing Iraqis at a less horrendous rate than they currently are. Like, maybe just a few hundred dead a month rather than a few thousand. Something like that.
Going back to the Iraq Study Group. The thing is, they can make all the proposals they want and the new defense secretary can echo those proposals.
It does not mean that Bush will follow them. In fact, he may just REDEFINE them. In that case, nothing at all will change except rhetoric.
One more thing. One of the proposals likely to be put forth by the Iraq Study Group has not been much discussed by the media, but it has been leaked, and it will be on the table:
Sending MORE troops to Iraq, not bringing them home.
The theory being that if we send in enough cannon fodder, we'll ride this buckin' bronco. This has been vigorously supported by Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee for president in 2008.
Time and time again, I have seen McCain say we need many thousands more troops on the ground in Iraq, that we have always needed more, and time and time again, I have seen whatever media interviewer is present at the time, simply let him make that statement.
I have never, however, seen a single one ask McCain where the hell he intends to get these extra troops.
As it is, the American armed forces are exhausted, stretched out to transparent levels, their equipment beat-up and destroyed, and they are unable to meet their recruitment goals without letting in high school drop-outs, people with criminal records, and people over 40 years old.
So, without a national draft, where are these thousands of warm bodies going to come from?
How many troops, who have already served their country with pride and honor and gone back two and three times to Iraq and Afghanistan, gotten out of the military, and gone on to live their lives, will be yanked back in and sent back to war?
When they talk about "activating the reserves," WHO DO YOU THINK THOSE RESERVISTS ARE?
The same people. Back again. How much longer can this go on?
No one, it seems, is asking these questions.
My only hope is, ironically, the thing that started this godforsaken war in the first place:
Politics.
This administration has already been foist on its own canard. After all, they started this bogus war so they could get elected to office by waving the flag of patriotism and attacking anyone who objected as being, rather than political opponents, downright traitors, even enemies.
They then used the war to get re-elected, scaring a traumatized nation into thinking that you never switch horses mid-stream or unseat a commander-in-chief in times of war.
For this election, they rather frantically attempted to use the war--yet again--to hold onto power, staging yet more nauseating photo-ops to coincide with September 11.
But finally, at long last, the American people seemed to be rousing from the fog of post-traumatic stress that descended upon them in 2001, blinking their eyes, squinting, and saying, What the hell happened?
And--glory of glories--the war Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld started for political gain cost them every bit of political clout they had.
Like that old story about the scorpion riding a frog over a stream, thanking the frog for the ride when they get to shore, and then stinging it to death because, even though the frog saved its life, it was still a scorpion.
So now, we're stuck in this horror, and Republicans, blood-spattered and bruised from their own losing war to hang on to Congress, are realizing that if we don't get out of Iraq by 2008, it's going to cost them the White House as well.
POLITICS GOT US IN AND POLITICS, BY GOD, WILL GET US OUT.
But in the meantime, I would be very, very cautious before I endowed the Iraq Study Group, the new secretary of defense, and the newly-chastened president with the mantle of peace.
At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush's character. To put it bluntly, he's an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood--and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself "pleased with the progress we're making" in Iraq.
In other words, he's the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.
The results have been predictably disastrous.
--"Limiting the Damage," Paul Krugman, New York Times, November 6, 2006
As a Marine mom, I am just as terrified for my son today as I was on November 6, 2006.
I'm cautiously optimistic that the American people will only tolerate so much--especially if anybody starts throwing out that bomb-word, DRAFT.
But on the other hand, I've been seeing a lot of televised interviews with troops in Iraq, where they seem to all say the very same thing, that if we pull out without victory, or accomplishing the mission, or whatever the catch-phrase for the day is, then all their buddies will have died in vain.
These stories are always very touching, and eerily similar.
Yes, this is a belief shared by many troops, but at the same time, there are many, many more who are beginning to think that their buddies are dying for nothing, that their deaths have been a waste. Only, I don't see them on-camera.
Of course, the ones who feel that way don't dare go on-camera, because they get in trouble for questioning their commander-in-chief publicly. But they express themselves very vocally on blogs, in letters and phone calls and e-mails home, and on websites that protect their identity.
Still, it does not get reported on the evening news.
This argument--that we don't want the dead to have died in vain, well, the thing is, this was the same argument used to drag out a war that ultimately cost America more than 58,000 of its brightest and best 30 years ago.
Right now, we're losing troops to the tune of about one hundred every month, not counting Afghanistan.
Untold thousands have left arms, legs, bits of brain, sanity, and soul in the filthy desert streets of Iraq.
When is enough, ENOUGH?
Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. They opened a fine new museum at Quantico, commemorating their courageous and honorable history, starting the year our nation was born, more than 200 years ago.
The president showed up and gave a posthumous Medal of Honor to a boy who would have been 25 years old today, had he not hurled his body on top of a grenade to save his Marine buddies in 2004.
Bush got choked up, as he always does at these flag-waving, troop-honoring, media-friendly events.
But as he walked away from the podium under glorious dress-blue skies, I have to wonder if…even unconsciously…he might have paused to wipe the blood off his hands.
posted by Deanie Mills at 5:52 PM
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