Progress Report Dog & Pony Show, Day 2: Kicking The Can Down the Road to 2009
To everything/There is a season/And a time for every purpose, under heaven/A time to be born, a time to die/A time to plant, a time to reap/A time to kill, a time to heal/A time to laugh, a time to weep. — ECCLESIASTES 3: 1-8
The second and final day of Iraq progress report testimony before by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is as easy to sum up as the first, with one conspicuous addition:
We have no long-term strategy.
We have no end-game plan.
We just need more Friedman Units, pretty please.
As well as:
The president would like you to help him kick the can down the road to 2009.
* * * * *
When the authoritative histories of the Iraq war are published in future years, as opposed to the comparatively quick-and-dirty accounts that have been coming out, they with resonate with these overarching themes:
* Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place and hands down is the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history.
* Had President Bush been as remotely competent in the conduct of the war as he was in co-opting the American public, his own party and his political opponents, many if not most U.S. troops may have been home in a comparatively short time span.
* While coward is a dreadfully-loaded word and its definition varies depending upon how it is applied, the president was a coward, wrapping himself in the flag while never asking for real sacrifice, never leveling with the American people and most notably being downright eager to dump the entire tragic mess into the lap of his successor.
That successor should be apparent when Petraeus and Crocker — or their successors — make their next six-month visit to Capitol Hill, but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that the situation on the ground in Iraq will not have changed substantially because the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki — or his successor — has neither the way nor the will.
Al-Maliki is to blame for the former, Bush for the latter because his determined politics-before-policy strategy of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely (helpfully rounded up to 100 years by the increasingly befuddled man who hopes to succeed him) is all the disincentive the Baghdad government has needed to drag its feet while our sons and daughters continue to put their lives on the line.
As I have written previously, there are three different groups of Americans when it comes to the war:
* The vast majority who just want the war to go away and are literally and figuratively shopping at the mall where, poor dears, they may inconveniently catch a glimpse of a bloody street scene from Baghdad on the TVs in the window of an electronics store.
These are the people that the White House continues to really count on.
* The small but vocal minority for whom the war started with the execution of the Surge strategy. Lacking any historical perspective or awareness that the White House keeps repackaging the same bankrupt policies under new names, the four years between the fall of Saddam Hussein and the Surge are a blur, don’t count, or both — and so what is happening in Iraq is all good.
These are the people that the White House continues to count on to push back against the third group.
* This is the also small but vocal minority whose memories are not so short. We have not forgotten the insurgency, the collapse of the Provisional Coalition Authority, the first battle of Falluja, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the onset of a civil war and the emergence of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a result of a failed occupation.
I have long argued that the U .S. cannot allow George Bush to kick the can down the road to Inauguration Day 2009. The drain on lives, precious resources and the national will is too great.
To no effect.
Yes, some congressfolk asked some penetrating questions of the general and ambassador over the last two days, and there was a sense of frustration. But it was the frustration you feel when you realize that your pocket has again been picked by the same bum, and there was a feeling of play acting about the whole affair, which indeed was a kind of theater of the absurd since everyone knew going into the hearings that Petraeus and Crocker had been scripted to a faretheewell, that the notion that they were telling the president how to proceed and not the other way around was a fiction, and and the only outcome would be the status quo.
Senator Richard Lugar, the wise Indiana Republican, said it best:
“Unless the United States is able to convert progress made thus far into a sustainable political accommodation that supports our long-term national security objectives in Iraq, this progress will have limited meaning. We cannot assume that sustaining some level of progress is enough to achieve success, especially when we know that current American troop levels in Iraq have to be reduced and spoiling forces will be at work in Iraq. We need a strategy that anticipates a political end game and employs every plausible means to achieve it.”
Well, we’ll have to get back to you next year on that, Dick.
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9 Responses to “Progress Report Dog & Pony Show, Day 2: Kicking The Can Down the Road to 2009”
I think this is a fascinating post, as Shaun highlights a key issue in his most provocative section:
“… the president was a coward, wrapping himself in the flag while never asking for real sacrifice, never leveling with the American people and most notably being downright eager to dump the entire tragic mess into the lap of his successor.”
I am not sure about the “coward” slam…but the point here is undeniable.
Bush has fought this war on the “cheap” (well, on the Chinese…who will want repayment at some point). Interestingly, so did LBJ in Vietnam.
Perhaps both presidents felt Americans are not willing to make big sacrifices anymore.
Truman leveled with the public, of course, and was hammered by the polls for being honest. Bush was vaguely dishonest…but was still hammered by the polls.
This has been a surreal war. Oscars and red carpets and gossip blogs stateside…IEDs and head-hackers in theatre.
What was that memorable graffitti on that Marine station wall in Anbar:
“America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war. America is at the mall.”
Further…yes, 4,000 dead is a major sacrifice…but not by American historic standards. The same for the financial costs. Stiglitiz imaginary “opportunity cost” of 3 trillion notwithstanding.
These are not “total war” costs. (Seriously, if the Iraq War cost $3 trillion…then the opportunity costs of WW II would be…what…15 umpteen quadjizzilion dollars?) If the US devoted a fraction of its real power to this war, it would have been finished a long time ago.
Marlowe,
We also have the medical cost drain of approximately 30,000 wounded soldiers. And whether we like to admit it or not, the average soldier is worth a lot more now than they were in previous wars in terms of money and time spent on training.
Leaving aside opportunity costs, the real budget devoted to the Iraq war and veteran support is now estimated at around a trillion dollars. That's nothing to sneeze at.
The “war” was over a long time ago. It's the occupation which has failed miserably.
Republicans have to kick the can to the next administration. How else can they blame everything on the next administration?
Komrad Marlow – I don't recall Vietnam being done on the cheap. At one time over 500,000 US troops were in country. Gulf War 1 used a similar troop level. What did Shinnseki say about troop levels?
“If the US devoted a fraction of its real power to this war, it would have been finished a long time ago.”
And what would that have looked like? Every Iraqi dead who didn't want us there? There would be about 10 people left alive. Americans are willing to make sacrifices when they are needed, but this was not such a time. Iraq was no threat to this nation and we know it, hence you get limited support and people still going to the malls as was so condescendingly mentioned.
To that “you are all sheep and Bush needs you to keep the war going” sentiment I would like to raise a middle finger and keep it there. Newsflash, Bush doesn't need anyone's permission to keep this war going. He's got all the authority and if somehow the Dems manage to cut off funds for the war they are spun as leaving our troops without ammo in the face of enemies. The GOP wins another election cycle and the process continues on forever. Bush doesn't care at all if there were 10 million people screaming for pullout camped outside the White House. We all know he will do as he pleases for as long as he likes. There is one and only one thing that stops this war, the Dems getting into the Oval Office and getting us the hell out of there.
So in the meantime, since we are fighting an enemy that is so much weaker than us we can stay as long as we like in their territory on the other side of the planet, and since my life didn't come to a screeching halt because of Bush's idiocy, and people keep foolishly signing up to serve in the armed forces to go die and be mangled so Bush and Cheney can make their buddies rich, I think I will go to the mall.
Call me when China wants to fight.
Forget opportunity costs and consider actual costs. There's a new Congressional Budget Office estimate projecting that the bill for our Iraq adventure will come to $2 trillion by 2017. And the costs don't end in 2017 even if we manage to extract ourselves from Iraq this year.
Those 30,000 disabled vets will still be drawing both disability and receiving free medical care and prescriptions for decades to come.
“…and people keep foolishly signing up to serve in the armed forces to go die and be mangled so Bush and Cheney can make their buddies rich…”
I think that's a little unfair to the people who sign up for military service. Many (if not most) of those people have no other options- they are from poor areas, probably with a baby on the way, ot newborn, and with no other jobs available to them they have to sign up. Particularly since the signing bonuses are pretty good. I'm not sure any minimum wage job pays signing bonuses…
So they're making a difficult decision but the real fools are those voters who support politicians with beliefs/policies that are against their own best interests (and they don't realize it). The biggest crime is that the Bush administration doesn't work to encourage economic development in hard-hit areas of the country… oh, but then he wouldn't have anyone willing to sign on to his military if there were actually good non-military jobs available for them…
As far as the dog and pony show… no one expected anything more.
Bush doesn't want to win the war (if he did he would have put in real plans, which DO require sacrifice and/or tough decisions- especially about Iran's role in the ME).
The word coward is one I have used to describe Bush before and I think is apt. Bush taunts with, “Bring 'em on” while being the most heavily guarded person the world has ever seen. Just like a school yard bully who kicks sands in other kids' faces but who has his own followers to protect him. He invaded Iraq because he thought it would be easy and he could use all that oil money to payback all his oil business friends- remember all those no-bid contracts that went to his campaign supporters? A lot of other governments were forced into the coalition and I remember the protests from those other governments that they weren't able to share more fully in the rebuilding process.
Bush has no honor whatsoever. He does what he wants, abuses our own constitution which he swore to protect, claims he has the ultimate authority over torture (after saying we don't torture- suddenly he claims we have and we might in the future if he says it's ok), he does not make public appearances (he only speaks to people in carefully vetted audiences) and lies to the media when he wants to.
If Bush were a man of honor and courage, then he wouldn't hide behind his dwindling number of supporters, he wouldn't lie to the country, and he would be able to make a case for any of his causes without the need to lie.
Oh, and let's not forget about all those pre-conditions Bush insists that his enemies agree to BEFORE he will negotiate with them. Certainly pre-conditions are necessary but the types of pre-conditions that Bush wants Iran, N. Korea, etc. to agree to are usually part of the negotiations. Bush is such a coward he won't even allow his government to meet with our enemies to negotiate on issues.
The office of the President of the United States of America commands great respect. Unfortunately Bush is such a small man that he has diminished the office.
Coward is the right word for Bush.