Kicking The Can
It’s interesting that the Bush administration keeps creeping, slowly, closer and closer to the progressive position that we need strategic redeployment out of Iraq. Both the announcement of a “time horizon” last month, and now the news that the administration thinks we should withdraw troops from Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan, seem to reflect the White House coming around to the kind of ideas that the Center for American Progress has been pushing for years. Unfortunately, the tendency in the Iraq debate has been for the right to come around to ideas progressives have been pushing, but only to do so far too late to make a decisive difference.
Back in 2003 and 2004, progressives were urging the administration to pull back from its schemes for radical reconstruction of Iraq and instead to try to strike a pragmatic deal with Sunni Arab nationalists. By the time the administration got around to doing so in 2007 — with “compromise with your enemies” now relabeled as “victory” — Iraq’s political fragmentation was so far gone that it’s hard to see what we can even achieve their. Now Bush is prepared to re-balance priorities, but only achingly slowly. The key thing about the pace of today’s announced 8,000 troop drawdown is that not only are the numbers small but the timing is much-delayed. He’s not saying we’re going to rebalance our commitments now, he’s saying we’ll do it early next year. It seems a little political, you get to announce drawdowns now before the election, but not, in practice, make any strategic decisions.
So Bush will get what he’s long wanted — an opportunity to push the Iraq War onto the desk of the next President. That person will inherit a situation where levels of violent are dramatically lower than they were in 2006, but still high enough that you wouldn’t call Iraq a really calm and peaceful place. Meanwhile, despite the sharp reduction in the fighting, the political conflicts that people were fighting about are all still in place. And various armed factions continue to operate independently of the state. And the peace is being kept by an American force that’s unsustainably large, at the same time that a stretched US military is facing a very serious challenge in Afghanistan. There are choices to be made, and there’s going to be a reckoning with the past two years’ worth of treading water in Iraq, but Bush will avoid making them and get to try to make the case to the history books that it was his successors’ decisions rather than his own policies that led to the problems.
37 Responses to “Kicking The Can”
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September 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
And after Afghanistan it will be Pakistan, if it is not already. Where do you draw the line? When the draft becomes necessary?
September 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I don’t suppose you grasp the distinction of withdrawing on success when the troops are no longer needed versus withdrawing in defeat with your tail tucked between your legs, as The Word Made Flesh has been advocating.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
What does this have to do with the disappearance of Sullivan?
September 9th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
no, I agree with matt. The war will be pushed to the next president, and we’ll just have to deal with it.
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/
September 9th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
What exactly, will we have “won” in Iraq? We’ll have removed Iran’s chief enemy in the region, and replaced it with an ally.
Good times.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Jake, so would it have been better to withdraw in defeat, as Obama advocated? Or just to cut off our troops’ funding, as he voted to do. Why is turning failure into success such a bitter pill for you people? Do you have your hearts set on an American humiliation?
September 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Is that like the distinction between sending in reinforcements and a surge?
September 9th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Withdraw “in defeat”? LMAO!
This is such a fucking simplistic view on this war, it’s a joke. It’s either win or lose, attack or surrender? Please.
As for American humiliation, we checked that box when we elected Bush in 2004. What you didn’t see the headlines in the UK asking how millions of people could be SO STUPID?
September 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I just realized how we could win the war in Iraq!
The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Sec. Gates could just walk up to still-President Bush and say: “Congratulations, Mr. President! We have won the war in Iraq! All terrorists are either dead or captured, the people worship you as their Great Liberator, and every Muslim has converted to Christianity!” Then they’d withdraw the troops, conduct negotiations, etc., all without Bush being the wiser. How would Bush know otherwise? He’ll just read the newspapers (or watch Fox, or whatever the hell he does) and think it’s the lying media who hates him because his cock’s so big.
Win!
Of course, Cheney, Hadley, et. al. would have to be kept in a box for the interim (they’d tell W. that they were out hunting or something), and I don’t know how good Sec. Gates’ poker face is, but the plan seems otherwise flawless.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
e o’neal…your claim of obama voting to cut funding is total bunk. according to the non-partisan politfact.com: “…Obama was fighting at the time for a requirement that President Bush begin to bring the troops home from Iraq. The bill in question did not include such a requirement, and that is why Obama voted against it. Obama said at the time that he wanted to fund the troops, he just didn’t want to fund the particular military strategy that the bill would enable. “We must fund our troops,” Obama said at the time. “But we owe them something more. We owe them a clear, prudent plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else’s civil war.” Clearly Obama wanted to provide funding for the troops — just not the president’s military strategy. If, by voting against funding for a strategy he opposed, Obama voted to “cut off funding for the troops,” then so did almost every Republican in the Senate…” except of course mccain who didn’t bother to vote.
if your opinions are based on incorrect facts then what good is your opinion?
September 9th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
“…what we could even achieve there.”
September 9th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Yeah, I can really imagine how kindly the Republicans would have reacted to a “new strategy” or a “surge” by a Democratic President to begin paying off the insurgents who had been leading attacks and ethnic cleansing to yes, keep finishing your ethnic cleansing but please stop attacking our troops.
I really, really have a life size picture of Republicans under a Democratic President standing up and saying that paying off insurgents = Victory, and how it’s different than tucking one’s tail between one’s legs.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
hey norm, Obama voted against the bill to fund the troops. That’s public record. Whatever he said to justify his vote against funding the troops is spin.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
e oneal…ok then so did lieberman…mccains actual choice for vp. your understanding of the legislative process rivals your understanding of the invasion and occupation of iraq. explain to me if you will how providing iran with an additional ally in the region qualifies as a success? explain to me if you will how killing 4000 troops and maiming tens of thousands in order to make isreal less safe qualifies as a success? explain to me if you will how borrowing three trillion dollars in order to allow al queda to reconstitute itself in afghanistan and pakistan qualifies as a success?
September 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
hey norm, thanks for the questions. I’d answer them if their premises weren’t so idiotic.
Remember: Capital letters and Spell Checker are your friends!
September 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
e oneal…right. the premises are exactly accurate. but nice punt…just like bush punting what he couldn’t handle to the next occupant of his desk. good job validating m.y.’s original post.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
hey norm, Obama voted against the bill to fund the troops.
As did Joltin’ John McCain.
O’Neal seems to be channeling Jesse “King of the Voting Table” Helms.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Er, no.
September 9th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Hey O’Neal, sometimes you quit when you’re behind; like when you were wrong in the first place. The question that I don’t expect to be answered anytime soon about the administration is whether Iraq was always an exercise in unabashed imperialism, or just stupidity running rampant.
There is never honor in being stupid.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Shrike, well it can’t be imperialism since we’re leaving as soon as the Iraqis can govern, sustain and defend themselves. Nor have we stolen a drop of their oil as the loonies insisted was our intention.
As to stupidity running rampant, that seems to be the human condition.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Shrike, well it can’t be imperialism since we’re leaving
+700 American garrisons worldwide.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:07 am
J.D., we have treaty obligations all over the world, not an empire. It would be an empire if we were RULING all the countries where we have bases or some sort of military presence at the host country’s invitation.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
We use those forces to bolster our hegemony and have done so ever since the days of The Monroe Doctrine. “Empire” is simply another in a series of loves “that dare not speak its name” for conservatives.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
We play an essential role in the world. If U.S. power were to disappear, regional wars would break out in the Middle East and East Asia, and around the periphery of Russia. The high seas would become lawless and dangerous, the vital Straits of Hormus an Iranian toll booth.
You don’t realize it, but it’s good to have a “hegemon”, especially when it’s not a predator. Hegemons result in peace; balances of power in wars. Ever hear of Pax Romana or Pax Brittanica? Do you know what happened when those empires faltered?
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