Right Wing Nut House

Rather than sitting back and allowing the Iraq Study Group to dictate an endgame for the Iraq War, George Bush has decided to go all in and make one final effort to turn the security situation around and get the political process moving so that our troops will be able to start coming home and America can claim some kind of victory in Iraq:

An offensive on several fronts is in the works that includes more troops, political progress on Iraqi reconciliation, a regional summit, and increased funds for training:

Point one of the strategy calls for an increase rather than a decrease in overall US force levels inside Iraq, possibly by as many as 20,000 soldiers. This figure is far fewer than that called for by the Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain. But by raising troop levels, Mr Bush will draw a line in the sand and defy Democratic pressure for a swift drawdown.

Point two of the plan stresses the importance of regional cooperation to the successful rehabilitation of Iraq. This could involve the convening of an international conference of neighbouring countries or more direct diplomatic, financial and economic involvement of US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Point three focuses on reviving the national reconciliation process between Shia, Sunni and other ethnic and religious parties. According to the sources, creating a credible political framework will be portrayed as crucial in persuading Iraqis and neighbouring countries alike that Iraq can become a fully functional state.

Lastly, the sources said the study group recommendations will include a call for increased resources to be allocated by Congress to support additional troop deployments and fund the training and equipment of expanded Iraqi army and police forces. It will also stress the need to counter corruption, improve local government and curtail the power of religious courts

In effect, Bush has co-opted the ISG and forced them to concentrate on “a strategy for victory” rather than “phased withdrawals” and timetables.”

As recently as a month ago, the Baker Commission was all set to declare the war lost and begin bringing the troops home:

A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, “Stability First” and “Redeploy and Contain,” both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.

Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, “Stability First,” argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.

Bush has altered the Commission’s deliberations and changed its dynamic by engaging the bureaucracy in a long delayed (too long?) review of Iraq policy from which these recommendations have sprung. Baker’s group had little choice but to incorporate them into their report or risk being shunted to the sidelines in the policy debate.

Given the amount of flack I’ve taken from both the left and right recently whenever I write about Iraq, I am hesitant to lay it all on the line here. At times, I’ve truly felt battered and bruised by friend and foe alike. It’s one of the reasons I’ve altered my comments policy (see below). However, if y’all promise to be gentle, I will sum up for you exactly how I feel about this plan:

Too little. Too late.

The fact is 20,000 American troops is less than half of what people who know a helluva lot more about the subject than I do have been begging for. And any plan for “National Reconciliation” may be good on the macro level. But the violence in Iraq has now degenerated into micro conflicts:

General Maples said that the violence continued to increase in “scope, complexity and lethality” and that it was “creating an atmosphere of fear and hardening sectarianism, which is empowering militias and vigilante groups.”

. . . Reinforcing this view, General Hayden said the C.I.A. station in Baghdad assessed that Iraq was deteriorating to a chaotic state, with the political center disintegrating and rival factions increasingly warring with each other. “Their view of the battlefield is that it is descending into smaller and smaller groups fighting over smaller and smaller issues over smaller and smaller pieces of territory,” he said.

National polity has been shattered. It is doubtful whether even the 50,000 troops recommended by many observers - including Senator McCain - could restore any semblance of peace and security in the 4-6 months that General Abizaid says we have before the situation becomes irreversible. Unless we are willing to stay for 5-10 years with this level of commitment and expenditure of blood and treasure, I can’t see how the faith of the Iraqi people in government, in law and order, in civil society can be re-established.

I doubt whether there would be very much support in America for that kind of commitment. Especially since there is absolutely no guarantee that Iraq won’t devolve into a jungle anyway.

There is still good that can be done that has a small chance of improving the situation. Going after the militias with those additional troops would at least solve one of those macro problems that are bedeviling the Iraqi government. And the idea of a regional summit is intriguing. Not direct talks with Iran and Syria but rather engaging them in the context of regional security with other nations might be just the ticket. Because once we leave, the real bloodbath begins. And unless the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States as well as Syria (although the ruling class in Syria are Alawis, the country is 90% Sunni) want to see their co-religionists in Iraq led to the slaughter, their best course may be to assist in securing a modicum of peace prior to our departure.

The idea that we can accelerate the training and deployment of the Iraqi army is all well and good except that to date, the Iraqis have been close to useless. When we moved additional troops into Baghdad to help with security back in August, Prime Minister al-Maliki promised us 3,000 Iraqi troops to assist us in holding neighborhoods where our sweeps ferreted out terrorists and death squads. To date, less than 1,000 have shown up. The reason: wholesale rebellion by entire units of Iraqi troops who refuse to serve in Baghdad.

I will let that fact speak for itself regarding the accelerated training of Iraqi troops.

I am going to support this last roll of the dice by Bush even though I don’t think it will work. I am glad he is trying it. But if this is the best we can do at this late date, I fear that we will have to be satisfied with achieving the noble goal of kicking Saddam Hussein and his murderous henchmen out of power while falling short in our efforts to stabilize Iraq and bring some form of democracy to that bloody, tragic country.

Far short of victory, I’m afraid. And despite the catcalls and bric-a-brats thrown by the left, a noble undertaking, botched from the start, incompetently prosecuted, and in the end, a failure.

UPDATE

Allah’s thoughts bear reading in their entirety but here’s some first class analysis:

The Guardian’s source expects that if things don’t look better within six months of the new deployments, the pressure on Bush — including from Republicans worried about the party’s prospects in ‘08 — will be so intense that he’ll have no choice but to withdraw. To which I say, what prospects in ‘08? If he doubles down and craps out, we’re done. He’s betting everything here; whether it’s because he believes that fervently in the cause or simply because he can’t bear to lose face is almost beside the point.

And of course, he’s not the only one who’ll be making a last big push. If I were in charge of AQ and feeling “reinvigorated,” I’d target those 20,000 new troops with everything I have. I’d even reassign resources I was saving for attacks on the west if it’d help. Nothing would strengthen the anti-war crowd’s hand like a mass slaughter of people who wouldn’t have been there had Bush listened to the Democrats. One spectacular attack, especially if it involved WMD, would purchase years of American isolationism.

Yup.

Ed Morrissey is even more dubious of the plan than I am:

Forgetting about the “democracy crap” means that all of that long-range strategy has just disappeared. Instead, the US presumably would put a strongman or military junta in place in Baghdad, probably secular, as a way of achieving stability. The new junta would likely attract the Ba’athist elements that have operated the majority of the insurgencies in Iraq, helping to end one form of terrorism in the country — but putting the terrorists back in charge again. The Iraqi people, who turned out in force for three elections and who want democracy to work, would essentially be sold back into some form of authoritarian executive by the US.

Pardon me, but I hardly see how this strengthens us in the Middle East. If we send 20,000 troops to Baghdad in order to stand up a strongman, why would anyone in the region support democracy? Why would anyone trust us if we promised to back their activism for freedom and liberty?

Are we back to “He may be a sonufabitch but he’s our sonufabitch?” I sincerely hope not. As Ed points out, such a policy would not help the small group of democrats in the Middle East who are attempting to reform their governments. In fact, it cuts the legs from underneath them just when they need us the most.

UPDATE II

Buttressing my analysis above regarding the loss of national polity is this piece in WaPo that everyone should read:

Since midsummer, Shiite militias, Sunni insurgent groups, ad-hoc Sunni self-defense groups and tribes have accelerated campaigns of sectarian cleansing that are forcing countless thousands of Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad to seek safety among their own kind.

Whole towns north and south of Baghdad are locked in the same sectarian struggle, among them the central Shiite city of Balad, still under siege by gunmen from surrounding Sunni towns after a bloody spate of sectarian massacres last month.

Even outside the epicenter of sectarian strife in the central region of the country, Shiite factions battle each other in the south, Sunni tribes and factions clash in the west. Across Iraq, the criminal gangs that emerged with the collapse of law and order rule patches of turf as mini-warlords.

Read the whole sad, tragic, thing.