The War and Mixed Messages: A plan for all seasons

The Decider-in-Chief paid another stealth visit to Iraq the first weekend of September. Dressed all in Johnny Cash black, Bush spent six hours there, surrounded by U.S. military, in the immediate neighborhood of a U.S. military base. He liked what he saw from that vantage point: Not a suicide bomber, IED, car bomb or insurgent sniper in sight. It was all good. He could assess the full range of progress on the ground from right there, long miles away from the heat of battle and cash in on a photo-op to boot. He left, one happy fella, on his way to the APEC summit in Australia.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile met him as he arrived in Sydney, politely asking the POTUS how things were going in Iraq.
“We’re kicking ass,” the ever-eloquent Dubya quipped.
Another lofty pronouncement for posterity. We can add this one to the string of all-goes-well wisdoms we’ve been spoon fed since the early days of selling the war:
* Imminent threat!
* It won’t take long and it won’t cost much!
* Shock and awe will do it!
* They’re gonna love us for this!
* Mission Accomplished!
* Well, looting and shooting in the streets just goes to show ya how messy freedom can be!
* What insurgency?
* Oh. That one. Well, it’s in its last throes!
* A surge’ll fix this — just wait until September!
* Well, I’m an October/November kind of guy.
* We need another six months — just wait until March 2008!
Been there, done that. In 1968 Gen. William Westmoreland, tasked with re-marketing an unpopular, bloody quagmire in Vietnam, told us “We’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel!” Shortly after his pronouncement we got slammed with the infamous Tet Offensive and it was all downhill from there. It was a lousy case of the White House using military brass as a shield then — and nothing is different now. General Petraeus, tasked with pulling an Iraq War rabbit out of his hat, gets stuck trying to stall for time before Congress. He’s already told us there is no military solution; it’s a diplomatic win or nothing and soldiers, no matter how brave, effective or patriotic, are not nation builders. Like may Americans and members of Congress, I felt sorry for an honorable man in an impossible situation.
Conventional wisdom: The new Bush strategy for Iraq? Kick this eroded can down the road, stay the course, play for time and run out the clock. Pass off this Iraq fiasco to the next president, let him (or her) deal with the inevitable “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.
Dubya’s absolutely right. Somebody’s ass is getting kicked here. At $2 billion a week, the economic ass-kicking is ours. Yours and mine. In the unthinkable ass-kicking of irreparable loss, it’s our troops on the ground getting the proverbial boot; it’s their blood being spilled for politics. There are more amputees coming home from this war than from any other since the Civil War.
They stand up, we stand down. That was the deal and we’ve been told for four years that we were almost there. To date, however, neither the Iraqi government nor their military can get on their feet. It may take years, they tell us now, before Iraq can defend or govern itself: “Insurgencies generally take nine or ten years to run their course.” The Army says they cannot sustain this burden past March.
What’s changing significantly and permanently on the ground in Iraq? Nothing but the body count.

By Linda Hansen,
columnist