Reinforcing Failure

12 January 2007



Bush’s “New Way Forward” Presses Deeper into Quagmire

On Wednesday, President Bush addressed the world from the White House library offering his “New Way Forward” for Iraq-Nam. It boils down to 21,500 extra US troops in the country, another $1 billion in reconstruction spending, and a “pretty please, Prime Minister Maliki, make your countrymen behave.” It won’t bring stability to Iraq-Nam because it can’t. It is stupid and wasteful to try. Stupidity and wastefulness, though, are fundamental to the administration’s approach to foreign policy.

On the face of it, the armed effort to make Iraq a secular, united democracy failed when the Iraqis voted in December 2005. Most of the parties that advocated a secular, united democratic Iraq got crushed. The Kurdish nationalists swept their part of the nation. The Shi’ites backed two largely religious parties divided largely over who was going to be the top cleric. The Sunni defensively elected representatives from the Iraqi Accord Front, which opposes de-Ba’athification (so is it a front for the old regime?). The Iraqis who voted in the last election simply don’t want what Mr. Bush is demanding for their country. Therefore, it is no surprise that they have not stood up to protect the Green Zone government that has been cobbled together to pretend the nation is united. Victory, as Mr. Bush defines it then, is not possible because the people who live in Iraq-Nam don’t have the same end point in mind that he does.

Mr. Bush played the fear card again when he suggested that America can’t afford to “lose Iraq,” that somehow, Moqtada al-Sadr would begin kidnapping children in Gillette, Wyoming and Al-Qaeda in Iraq would start planting bombs in Branson, Missouri if the US didn’t throw more forces into the country. “If we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them in the US.” There is, of course, no proof of this whatsoever. That said, perhaps fighting them in the US is a better idea; there are parts of Brooklyn, St. Louis and Detroit that would eat them alive – and if the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings take a few casualties, that’s good, too. If the US withdraws, the president suggested that Iraqis will slaughter Iraqis in huge numbers. That is already happening, and the order of magnitude is not like to increase simply because the US isn’t standing in the middle of it. The fact (a word Mr. Bush doesn’t like) is the US military cannot make Iraqis play nice together. Since victory is not possible, and since the threat to America is heavily exaggerated in any case, the continuation of the war is a misuse of resources.

Worse still, were his victory possible, Mr. Bush’s approach is backwards. He’s sending more (but not enough) troops to pacify Baghdad, spend more money on jobs for Iraqis (although $1 billion more after $30-60 billion has already been spent seems trifling), and then, the Green Zone government has until November to take over security for the nation. He has a great big “to do” list for Prime Minister al-Maliki, but there is no incentive for the Green Zoners to implement them. There is no “or else,” because the only “or else” in America’s arsenal is withdrawal, which Mr. Bush refuses to do. At very least, more troops and more money should be conditional on progress from the Iraqi government, but they are not.

Mr. Bush laid out a challenge to those who disagree, as this journal does, with his plan. “All involved have a responsibility to explain how the path they propose would be more likely to succeed,” he said. Challenge accepted. Victory as defined by the president is not possible. Therefore, withdrawing US troops from Iraq-Nam is preferable because it preserves America’s military capacity and allows a rebuilding of equipment inventories. It removes American political concerns that complicate finding an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem. It eliminates a source of hostility to American values and policies. It ends the waste of US taxpayers’ dollars. It permits America to refocus its efforts on addressing problems in the world that it can solve. Above all, it ends the pointless killing and wounding of American troops fighting for a government that is under attack from its own people. It is unpatriotic to send American warriors into battle if victory is not possible under any strategy.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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