Look what the Pentagon will NOT propose:
The senior Pentagon official said that increasing the number of American combat troops for an indefinite period “is not on the table.” Nor is there active discussion of a rapid troop drawdown advocated by some Democrats, the official said, an approach the official called “turning off the lights and going home.”
This is serious and committed policy making? IT is not. it is a cynical joke. Look at the insult to our intelligence the Pentagon is providing:
Though a temporary increase of about 20,000 American troops is under consideration, the plan envisions the additional troops staying only until security conditions improve. After that, troop levels could come down, as better-trained and equipped Iraqi units took on a larger security role.
Until security conditions improve? Then we can turn off the lights and go home? And when they deteriorate again as they have EVERYTIME the whack a mole strategy has been employed? Oh by the way, have we NOT been training Iraqi troops for the past 3 and a half years?
But the lack of seriousness is complete. The inability to even address what stands in the way. The impossibility of a US crafted political solution:
The Best and the Brightest:
"You can't beat brains," John F. Kennedy liked to say. When picking his national security team, the dashing young president chose a crop of the finest minds around: a proudly tough-minded crew of self-avowed "hard-nosed realists" and World War II veterans whom David Halberstam immortalized as The Best and the Brightest.
. . . This was "heady stuff," Halberstam writes, and it came to grief. The term "best and brightest" has become an insult, not an accolade, thanks largely to Halberstam's magnificent, scabrous epic about the policymaking blunders that swept the United States into Vietnam. This classic work is part of the Vietnam canon, but it is not really about Vietnam; it is very much a Washington book, focused on the surety of the hawks stateside rather than the misery and warfare in Indochina.
In the 3/06 issue of Foreign Affairs, Stephen Biddle, a Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote some remarkable things:
According to the antiwar movement, the struggle is already over, because, as it did in Vietnam, Washington has lost hearts and minds in Iraq, and so the United States should withdraw.
But if the debate in Washington is Vietnam redux, the war in Iraq is not. The current struggle is not a Maoist "people's war" of national liberation; it is a communal civil war with very different dynamics. Although it is being fought at low intensity for now, it could easily escalate if Americans and Iraqis make the wrong choices.
First problem - as a card carrying member of the "anti-war Left," I take exception to Biddle's statement that we view the struggle in Iraq as "communal people's war." This is simply ridiculous. The "anti-war Left" has always understood the problem of Iraq was sectarian in nature. For example, in January 2005, this "anti-war Leftist" wrote:
Is the Iraq Election a success? The early reporting is that there is good turnout among the Shia and Kurds. Does this qualify as success?
. . . This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures. Why? Because Elections are to choose governments, not to celebrate the day. Are the people elected capable of governing Iraq at this time? Without 150,000 U.S. soldiers? Or even with them? My focus has been on the realities of governing a land in chaos, in the midst of civil war, with 150,000 U.S. soldiers the only force with the ability to provide security. And this is 2 years after the invasion.
"People's war"? No, sectarian. Civil war. The "anti-war Left" knew about this problem from the beginning. Did the "Best and the Brightest?"
The second problem - "if Americans and Iraqis make the wrong choices" - if, Mr. Biddle?
Biddle writes:
Rapid democratization, meanwhile, could be positively harmful in Iraq. In a Maoist people's war, empowering the population via the ballot box undermines the insurgents' case that the regime is illegitimate and facilitates nonviolent resolution of the inequalities that fuel the conflict. In a communal civil war, however, rapid democratization can further polarize already antagonistic sectarian groups. In an immature polity with little history of compromise, demonizing traditional enemies is an easy -- and dangerous -- way to mobilize support from frightened voters. And as the political scientists Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder have shown, although mature democracies rarely go to war with other democracies, emerging democracies are unusually bellicose. Political reform is critical to resolving communal wars, but only if it comes at the right time, after some sort of stable communal compromise has begun to take root.
No kidding, Mr. Biddle. But um, you do know the horse is out of the barn already don't you? That Bremer "turned over" authority to Allawi in the summer of 2004? That elections were held in January 2005? That an Iraqi Constitution was rammed through the "Iraq assembly" in the Fall of 2005? That elections were held "ratifying" that Constitution?
About the Iraq constitution, I wrote:
The BEST result would have been a Sunni rejection of the Constitution that would have taken Iraq back to the drawing board. That result would have demonstrated to the Sunni that they indeed DO have a stake in the political process and some power to exert in that process.
THIS result demonstrates the exact opposite. Indeed, I expect that that the passage of the Constitution will make the "basic security problem in Iraq" worse -- what can Sunnis who argue for participation in the political process and abandonment of the insurgency have to offer in the way of evidence that Sunnis will have any power in that political process? Nothing. On the other hand, had the Sunni been able to reject the Constitution, they would have had a powerful argument for political participation and abandonment of the insurgency.
The result of the constitutional vote was the worst possible outcome - overwhelming Sunni rejection of the Constitution to no political effect. The divide can only worsen now.
For Biddle to write what he wrote in March 2006, is rather absurd. His point would have been worthy in 2004 and 2005. But in 2006? Puhleeaze.
And this new Pentgon proposal would never have been worthy. Now it is a sick joke.
