One Utah

“And there’s no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail.“ — President Bush, October 4, 2001.

While we await the announcement early next week that President Bush will escalate the war against the advice of the Iraq Study Group and the Pentagon, as reported by the BBC (why can’t the American media be the first to tell us what’s up in Washington?), Paul Abrams on The Huffington Post does a fine job of explaining why.

Bush invaded Iraq for domestic political reasons, to enlarge Republican majorities. The invasion, they thought, would cause the American people to rally around them, and provide large, lockstep majorities to shove their radical rightwing programs down the throats of the American people who really reject almost every part of their philosophy by large majorities. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld screwed it all up because their tactical choices were limited by not triggering domestic opposition. This matters now because Bush/Cheney/Rove’s decision on policy changes in Iraq will be driven not by what is good for the United States nor any concern about the morality of asking even more people to die for a mistake, but how best to rescue their legacy and radical rightwing ideology.

And he concludes:

Why we invaded matters now because the decisions he makes going forward will cause the deaths and dismemberment of thousands of more US boys and girls, and many times that number of Iraqis. These decisions will be guided by that same, pernicious principle, although by now they have been reduced to preventing the killing of the rightwing agenda instead of advancing it.

The Baker-Hamilton Report had one essential truth: either the Iraqis get their own act together—in which case, our military is not needed—OR, they do not–in which case, our military cannot help them, so that, in either situation, our military intervention should be ended post haste. Any decision that prolongs the US involvement a day more than logistically necessary to withdraw safely lacks any moral foundation.

The reason Bush is making this show of deliberation is that they (Rove, Cheney et al) cannot figure out what their best political play is now that their entire enterprise has blown up in their faces. They are trying to hang on until January, 2009, so that the next President is “blamed” for the eventual outcome that is not going to be in the national interests of the United States….

… Bush is a failed President. More worrisome, he is a failed person with power. Unchecked, he will spend others’ lives and limbs to escape his failures and insecurities.

He cannot be allowed to do so.

UPDATE: Tonight NBC News and CNN confirmed the BBC story. Bush will indeed escalate the war, with a new three-word slogan: “surge and accelerate.” The plan is to send 20,000 more troops in another attempt to secure Baghdad. Sources in the National Security Council say that political, not military, strategy explains the move.

UPDATE: Last night on NBC News, Jim Miklaszewski reported that the new strategy will be announced next Tuesday, and that an administration official “admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one.”

This entry was posted Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Disaster, George W. Bush, Iraq, This Blog, War. Both comments and pings are currently closed.