Iraq Strategy

Asserting that there is some military success in Iraq and running with it for all he is worth is the Bush approach to the next year and one-half. His claim of gradual troop reduction is just one more misleading statement that distorts the fact that current troop levels require reduction this coming spring even if the war were to escalate. Tom Friedman in today’s NY Times accuses Bush of abdicating his presidency by hiding behind General Petraeus (who admitted in his Congressional testimony that he had no idea whether our presence in Iraq is making America safer. To be fair to the General, that decision should be made by the President after assessing military advice and measuring the impact on the total interests of the US). He needs to respond to Representative Ike Skelton’s comment during the Petraeus/Crocker testimony:

We must begin by considering the overall security of this nation. It’s our responsibility here in Congress under the Constitution to ensure that the United States military can deter and if needed prevail anywhere our interests are threatened. Iraq is an important piece of the overall equation, but it is only a piece. There are very real trade-offs when you send 160,000 of our men and women in uniform to Iraq. Those troops in Iraq are not available for other missions.

Bush can offer nothing better then stating that the next President will have to resolve the Iraq situation. What we don’t get is a strategic goal that governs our actions. Why are we there and what are we going to accomplish by staying there? There have been lots of goals proffered in the past three plus years, all successively discarded as each one failed to materialize.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Carter, speaking on The Jim Lehrer New Hour prior to Bush’s speech, accurately sums up the Iraq situation:

This is a very sad time for America. We have been involved in a futile war, a war of choice, for four years. There's no end in sight.

The president is not listening to the heartbeat of the country. The country doesn't want this war to continue. I think there's a widening consensus that the war cannot be resolved militarily.

The president is not reaching out at home to the other side, not attempting to shape policy jointly, responding to the overwhelming desire of the American people to end this war. He's not setting in motion a process abroad designed to create some modicum of stability as we disengage.

He's essentially decided to bequeath this war to his successor and to dribble out, essentially, partial withdrawals which at this rate would last five more years, while at the same time stepping up the pressure on Iran, possibly even raising the risk of a larger war.

So this is a tragic and a dangerous time. I hope, at some point, the Republicans would prevail on the president to do what is needed, not to abdicate his responsibility, but to try to fashion a truly responsible, historically relevant policy.

I don't think the president can define that vision all by himself. Sad to say -- as a citizen -- his record in the last four years isn't very good.

I have here a whole folder of quotations from him in which, in effect, unintentionally, he was misleading the American people, talking about turning points, progress and so forth. And where are we four years later?

If he is to provide a vision, he really has to embrace the country and its political leadership, and that means the Republicans and the Democrats.

We have to recognize the fact that the war in Iraq is a colonial war for the people in Iraq. We may not want to face that fact, but it is a colonial war. But we live in the post-colonial age. We cannot tell the Iraqis how they ought to live or what kind of a political system they ought to have. And we have to face that fact.

And in facing it, we have to step forward with a strategic concept, a comprehensive vision of how to deal with the military situation, the political situation, the regional situation, and the humanitarian situation.