"Kicking Ass”

The title is Bush’s nuanced description of how successful we are in Iraq, uttered last week just a few days before the long awaited Petraeus report. In its latest shift in tactics the administration is now centered on Anbar, where our new approach is to arm the Sunni tribes and let them fight off Al Qaeda, and then move this method throughout the country.

Is no one in this group capable of thought beyond the next few days? Apparently we have given up on the idea of a central government made up of Iraqis all working in accord in a peaceful Baghdad and in the rest of the country. Instead Bush, fixated on an Al Qaeda that wasn’t even there when we started, is misreading the turn of events in Anbar.

So the tribes are now building their fiefdoms as we supply them with arms for the glorious goal of getting rid of the foreign terrorists. But then what? Once they have driven out Al Qaeda, the Sunnis, who think they should be in control of the entire country, will turn on the Shia and on us and guess what the Shia reaction will be.

The only long-range thought Bush is capable of is justifying his original disastrous decision by never admitting error and by prolonging our presence until January 19, 2009, so that he can then claim that it is the new administration that failed in Iraq. If 800 or so Americans have to die, if thousands have to be wounded, if countless Iraqis have to be thrown out of their homes or leave the country or be killed due to collateral damage, it is the price we have to pay for Bush’s lack of thought (stupidity?) and cynical political self-justification.