Blowback on another military-only strategy
Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 5:11PM ARTICLE: Bush Defies Lawmakers To Solve Iraq: Gates Says Doubts Bolster Enemy, By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, January 27, 2007; Page A01
Bush is being disingenuous here. The biggest threat we face right now are enemies all around us in Iraq who feel completely emboldened by the Bush administration's unwillingness to engage, and general incompetence, in diplomacy across the region.
Bush's surge plus a diplomatic strategy designed to temporize opponents' efforts while drawing in outside allies would have met with Senate approval. The surge strategy with a complete blow-off of the ISG's very wise recommendations on diplomacy is not acceptable.
Trying to pin Senate opposition to the tag of "enemy support" is complete bullshit. Bush and Cheney have proven themselves incompetent diplomats throughout this process and now--go figure--no one trusts them when the re-try-a-military-only strategy that has failed before, coupled with more reconstruction money unlikely--under the conditions of foreign meddling that our incompetent diplomacy both allows and enables--to succeed in any critical-mass sense.
What's coming under fire here is not the Senate's implied "treason" but Bush's demonstrated strategic incompetency and willful disregard of popular will. He "leads" when no one feels it is wise to go. Americans have had enough of war-war-war from Bush-Cheney and want--in Churchill's vernacular--more jaw-jaw-jaw.
Bush's insistence on conducting war solely within the context of war instead of running it with an eye to the "everything else" is what's on trial here--and it's only going to get worse because Bush and Cheney seem both politically and strategically tone deaf: they add enemies at will but never bother to worry about adding friends.
And guess what? Eventually that creates a huge blowback.
If Bush and Cheney want to remain oblivious to that blowback, both at home and abroad, be my guest. They just cannot be so foolish to think their lack of strategic imagination somehow binds the rest of us to silence.
If nothing kills the myth of Karl Rove's "genius," this idiotic name-calling does all by itself.
Reader Comments (4)
I think we've got what we can get.
Diplomacy only works with people who will actually talk with you with some level of good faith, so what do you have in mind? Surely not the ISG Iran/Syria garbage. Neither nation is China nor even close.
That logic self-validates: we spurn every offer and make every threat and whenever we take stock, we saym "My, there's no hope is any talking with them!"
"Best we can get" is fighting this war all by ourselves with basically the entire region and the rest of the world working at cross-purposes. If you're okay with losing the battle, the war, and lotsa soldiers in the process, then you just accept this outcome, but justifying further incompetence by citing the accumulation of previous incompetence isn't a strategic review. It's surrender of the worst sort--the unaware kind.
Bush is achieving the amazing in Iraq: he's doing everything possible to make it look like Vietnam.
I'm in Afghanistan now for the 2nd timeand frankly, froma diplomatice standpoint, I'd think the coalition would be justified in jumping ship if only because of rhetoric like thatis that continually denigrates their contributions.
Or am I badly misunderstanding the point?
If Iran and Syria negotiate with anything less than good faith, what would be the point of a dialogue? What's the outcome to shoot for? I just don't see a point.
The only thing that can happen to make Iraq look like Vietnam is for us to abandon Iraq. That would be a valid historical analog.