The Washington Post now makes it part of the political culture and how President George Bush’s speech will be reported tonight: the “surge” policy is more like a “shove” policy since it was apparently shoved down the throats of the military:
When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline his new strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take action they initially resisted and advised against.
Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and for second-guessing his commanders. “It’s important to trust the judgment of the military when they’re making military plans,” he told The Washington Post in an interview last month. “I’m a strict adherer to the command structure.”
But over the past two months, as the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated and U.S. public support for the war has dropped, Bush has pushed back against his top military advisers and the commanders in Iraq: He has fashioned a plan to add up to 20,000 troops to the 132,000 U.S. service members already on the ground. As Bush plans it, the military will soon be “surging” in Iraq two months after an election that many Democrats interpreted as a mandate to begin withdrawing troops.
Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq.
The way modern politics works, this tidbit will likely be ignored, brushed over or (in some cases) provide fodder to go after the specific military leaders who’ve resisted GWB. But it is now a fact that the President who for so long has said let the military do their job as the military is now telling a good portion of the military how to do their job.
Yes, there is civilian control of the military. But the next time a Jack Murtha or any other politician, or a writer, who is reputed to have strong ties with the military elite comes out strongly against Iraq policy and suggests that there is more is to their criticism than mere personal opinion, thinking Americans who are Democrats, Republicans and independents should take note: there is a segment of the military that is troubled over the decisions and implementation of war policy under this administration.
The irony is that in the end the Democrats, who have long been painted as anti-military, may be the ones clamoring for answers and providing aggressive oversight that many in the military have wanted but can’t get. Unless they want to face early retirement.
Read my earlier post here about the political assumptions behind the “surge.”
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan writes:
We may be about to hear a strategy disowned by the military brass, opposed by the party that controls both Houses, insufficient by the metrics of even its supporters, and a result of a compromise that has more to do with securing agreement in Washington than with actually turning the tide in Iraq. That’s my fear anyway. I don’t see the sufficient troop numbers to turn this around. And the economic reconstruction aspects seem to me to be pathetic.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.