Archives for 2007

Reality is breaking out all over:

President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

“We could not clear and hold,” Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, acknowledged in a recent interview, in a frank admission of how American strategy had crumbled. “Iraqi forces were not able to hold neighborhoods, and the effort to build did not show up. The sectarian violence continued to mount, so we did not make the progress on security we had hoped. We did not bring the moderate Sunnis off the fence, as we had hoped. The Shia lost patience, and began to see the militias as their protectors.”

I guess the one positive aspect of this is that it appears that the President and his minions are now being forced to deal with reality. The depressing aspects are legion, however. First and foremost, this was predicted to happen by many, and their voices were pushed aside (by yours truly, included). Second, it was obvious this was happening several years ago, and rather than embrace the facts, this administration and her supporters chose to pretend that all was well, and that it was just the media and the damned lefties who wanted Bush to fail, and were exagerating the situation (cue the painted schools stories and letters from soldiers featured at the Free Republic stating we are winning). Third, much of the existing problems were made worse by a series of missteps, including Abu Gharaib and the recent rushed execution of Hussein.

I don’t know if ackowledging the sad facts earlier would have helped the situation- I am of the opinion now that there is little that can be done than to sit back and watch as events unfold. However, recognizing the problems earlier might have, at the very least, stopped us from continuing to make the situation worse. It also would have been nice if we could have had a domestic discussion about what to do in Iraq that consited of more than catcalls about the liberals wanting the terrorists to win.

As to where we go now, I have no clue. It seems like things are getting worse by the day, despite the fact that we have turned yet ‘another corner’ with the execution of Hussein. I am hard pressed to come up with anything other than a gradual withdrawal from the region. I simply do not know what can be done.

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