Iraq: Onward Through the Fog
Okay, so President Bush has vetoed the war spending-withdrawal bill. The Democrats, lacking veto-proof majorities, are on the defensive. The president has pretty much cajoled Congress into going along with his latest executive dispensations — giving Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki six more months to find his mojo and General Petraeus six more months to turn things around. At which time the president will come up with another round of dispensations to justify more time to turn things around. Bloody ridiculous, isn’t it?
But what could happen in the meantime to upset the president’s extremely shaky applecart?
* A significant loss of American lives – either in a single incident, say in the oft-mortared Green Zone, or a series of incidents — that clearly put the lie to the fiction that the surge is working.
* Al-Maliki, who is so vile and ineffectual that he actually makes Bush look good on some days, does something so outrageous that it clearly puts the lie to the fiction that Iraqis can reconcile and march arm in arm into the future.
* A full-scale Republican revolt because of some or all the above and/or other developments that spell sure electoral doom for the beleaguered party in 2008.
* A successful Democratic-led legislative initiative because of some or all of the above and/or other developments that finally forces the president’s hand.
One factor that will not upset the applecart is the continued slaughter of Iraqi civilians.
This is because of two interrelated reasons: The president and most Americans couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Iraqis per se, who always have been a vague abstraction at best, although the slaughter does continually reinforce the view that chaos reigns four years after the president declared “Mission Accomplished.” In any event, the slaughter will continue whether U.S. troops stay or leave – and probably will get worse no matter when they leave.
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2 Responses to “Iraq: Onward Through the Fog”
The funny thing is that the funding bill Congress passed had no teeth. The timetable was entirely symbolic, and even that was too much for Bush.
Most Americans support a quick withdrawal, with the United Nations taking the lead in peacekeeping and the rebuilding process. That should be enough to quiet the crowd that claims that once we leave the country will be an unsupervised wasteland of terrorist activity and ethnic cleansing (although certainly some of that will happen, as it’s already happening now).
By not embracing this approach, Bush shows that he has an utter disregard for democracy at home, and at the same time shows that this war is not about security or Iraqi freedom. It’s about unquestioned control over oil and strategic military bases in the Middle East.
There is no rhyme or reason to Bush ‘s Iraq policy, which is why they can find no interested candidates willing to jeopardize their career (even for the prospect of being awarded a Medal of Freedom at some future date,lol) to accept their position of War Czar. One of the candidates said as much, turning it down because there are still 3-4 separate agendas which could not easily gel together in Bush’s cabinet. Supporting Maliki who is working towards ridding Iraq of any Sunni opposition rather than power-sharing is the least democratic thing I can think of.
His decisions seem more political than tactical; he skewers Pelosi’s talks with the Syrian government after he approves her trip, then without any fanfare sends Condi Rice to talk to them 2 weeks later. I guess we DO talk to states that sponsor terrorism, after all. Bush sold the surge by committing to pressuring the Iraqi government to meet certain benchmarks, then blows up when Congress demands that they actually meet them, and goes back to his schtick about “letting the commanders on the ground determine the policy”.
For someone whose reputation rides on his steadfastness and willingness to ignore popular opinion if it means doing the right thing, he is remarkably flexible when it comes to making political points that will appeal to popular opinion within his base. He is still about the base.