Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The Fog Over Davey

(Watch Trailer: The Fog Of War)

The only person in America in a worse fog than our embattled "Fog of War President" is none other than the Times' hack o' the heap o' op ed columnists, David Brooks.

Davey's brilliant conclusion of the week? Blame the Democrats for whatever happens in Iraq in the next 6 months.

Davey faults those dastardly Dems for failing to come up with any serious bandwagon alternative to the Bush "Surge" Plan that would have Dems and Republicans reveling in bipartisan ecstasy.

Me thinks, dear Dave, that the burden is on the Preznit to prove the efficacy of his plan, in view of the fact that it has been almost unanimously discounted by every expert around, except, of course, by those of the Neo-Con persuasion.

You want realistic plans, Davey-boy? Read my blog for starters. Ask Kennedy about his plan, or Murtha about his plan, or Joe Biden about his plan. Please, allow me to point you in the direction of Dennis Kucinich, who I believe is still of the Liberal Democrat persuasion and who has been talking about his excellent plan for months. Many of these plans involve a big idea with which neo-con war mongers are unfamiliar: it's called "diplomacy."

According to Our Mr. Brooks, because of The Derelict Dems "we are stuck with the Bush proposal as the only serious plan on offer." Uh, Dave, did you forget about the Iraq Study Group? Remember, it was bipartisan? Remember how many politicians of both parties thought it contained a lot of good ideas? Did you notice how the President ignored all of them, and instead, embraced a hastily devised plan by one of his buddies, Fred Kagan, at The American Enterprise Institute -- better known as Neo-Con Central?

According to you, Dave, "Administration officials have come up with as good a military strategy as is now possible." In that case, Dave, if you don't like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, you have no one to blame but yourself.

The Fog Over Iraq
By David Brooks
The New York Times
If the Democrats don’t like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, they have themselves partly to blame. There were millions of disaffected Republicans and independents ready to coalesce around some alternative way forward, but the Democrats never came up with anything remotely serious.

The liberals who favor quick exit never grappled with the consequences of that policy, which the Baker-Hamilton commission terrifyingly described. The centrists who believe in gradual withdrawal never explained why that wouldn’t be like pulling a tooth slowly. Joe Biden, who has the most intellectually serious framework for dealing with Iraq, was busy yesterday, at the crucial decision-making moment, conducting preliminary fact-finding hearings, complete with forays into Iraqi history.

The Democrats have been fecund with criticisms of the war, but when it comes to alternative proposals, a common approach is social Darwinism on stilts: We failed them, now they’re on their own.

So we are stuck with the Bush proposal as the only serious plan on offer. The question is, what exactly did President Bush propose last night? The policy rollout has been befogged by so much spin and misdirection it’s nearly impossible to figure out what the president is proposing.

Nonetheless, here’s my reconstruction of how this policy evolved:

On Nov. 30, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented Bush with a new security plan for Baghdad. It called for U.S. troops to move out of Baghdad to the periphery, where they would chase down Sunni terrorists. Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish troops, meanwhile, would flood into the city to establish order, at least as they define it.

Maliki essentially wanted Americans protecting his flank but out of his hair. He didn’t want U.S. soldiers embedded with his own. He didn’t want American generals hovering over his shoulder. His government didn’t want any restraints on Shiite might.

Over the next weeks, Bush rejected the plan and opted for the opposite approach. Instead of handing counterinsurgency over to the Iraqis/Shiites, he decided to throw roughly 20,000 U.S. troops — everything he had available — into Baghdad. He and his advisers negotiated new rules of engagement to make it easier to go after Shiites as well as Sunnis. He selected two aggressive counterinsurgency commanders, David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, to lead the effort. Odierno recently told John Burns of The Times that American forces would remain in cleared areas of Baghdad “24/7,” suggesting a heavy U.S. presence.

Then came the job of selling the plan. The administration could not go before the world and say that the president had decided to overrule the sovereign nation of Iraq. Officials could not tell wavering Republicans that the president was proposing a heavy, U.S.-led approach.

Thus, administration officials are saying that they have adopted the Maliki plan, just with a few minor tweaks. In briefings and in the president’s speech, officials claimed that this was an Iraqi-designed plan, that Iraqi troops would take on all the primary roles in clearing and holding neighborhoods, that Iraqis in mixed neighborhoods would scarcely see any additional Americans.

All of this is designed to soothe the wounded pride of the Maliki government, and to make the U.S. offensive seem less arduous at home. It’s the opposite of the truth.

Yesterday, administration officials were praising Maliki lavishly. He wants the same things we want, they claimed. He has resolved to lead a nonsectarian government. He is reworking his governing coalitions and marginalizing the extremists. “We’ve seen the nascent rise of a moderate political bloc,” one senior administration official said yesterday.

But the selling of the plan illustrates that this is not the whole story. The Iraqi government wants a unified non-sectarian solution in high-minded statements and in some distant, ideal world. But in the short term, and in the deepest reptilian folds of their brains, the Shiites are maneuvering amid the sectarian bloodbath all around.

This is not a function of the character of Maliki or this or that official. It’s a function of the core dynamic now afflicting Iraqi society.

Administration officials have come up with as good a military strategy as is now possible. They’ve made intelligent moves to use reconstruction money to deepen contacts with a decentralized array of Iraqi leaders and factions. But on the political level, they have papered over the unpleasant reality with salesmanship and spin.

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