Casey up to bat

January 2, 2007

The New York Times’ front-page 3,000-word account of the Bush administration’s unraveling policy in Iraq is easily today’s must-read, for more reasons than one.

The article, on its face, is fairly devastating. At every key moment in the conflict, the Bush gang has been a couple of steps behind where they should have been. It includes too many familiar phrases, such as administration officials being “taken by surprise” and failing “to take warnings seriously.”

That said, Josh Marshall is right to scratch just below the surface of the article, and explain that the article subtly identifies a scapegoat for the White House’s problems. It’s about playing the blame game, and Gen. George Casey is losing.

According to the White House, the person to blame for Iraq is Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the top American commander in the country. And Casey’s so bad that President Bush is probably going to can him before his current tour concludes this summer. Probably as soon as next month.

In so many words, Casey’s policy (which, reading between the lines, it’s pretty clear Casey thought was Bush’s desired policy) was maintain current troop levels and ‘standing down as the Iraqis stand up’. You may have thought that was the Bush policy. But apparently not. “Over the past 12 months,” the Times now tells us, “as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy.”

In fact, the Casey policy left the White House so wrong footed that they were “constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.”

This isn’t entirely new; just two months ago, then-House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said “generals on the ground” were to blame for conditions in Iraq, not Rumsfeld, and certainly not the president.

Still, this New York Times article is a more blatant example of throwing Casey under the bus.

From the article:

General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

Ah yes, the subtle smear the White House favors most. Either you’re for an ambiguous, impossible-to-define “victory” or you’re against it.

But if “Casey’s plan” fell out of favor, and there was too much “fixation” on withdrawal, why not overhaul the policy sooner? According to the Times, the White House couldn’t — because there were “political calculations” to worry about.

Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic.

It’s good to know the Bush gang never lost sight of its priorities. Better to worry about a political catastrophe than an actual catastrophe, right?

Folks, does ‘passing the buck’ work as a defense or excuse in any part of your life? Then why is it a valid strategy for BushCo? Why do we allow this administration to continue to lie to us and avoid their responsibility? Remember most everybody in the administration has never worn a uniform, so why are they not listening to those who do wear a uniform?

  • This Bush gang violates all the rules I learned in school about being a trustworthy person. They would have been no one’s friends and probably would have gotten beaten up quite often. Dweezles.

  • For years I’ve said I wanted to work for Bush because no matter how incompetent I was I would never be fired. And now Rummie and soon Casey. Shakes my faith in Bush’s gut feelings.

  • Interesting that Boner let the cat out of the bag early. So it’s to be the Generals’ (or troops’ ?) fault that Iraq is a failure?

    Gag – me – with – a – spoon!

    The Bushites are the reason I believe there HAS TO BE A HELL! Where else can they be punished as they deserve?

    Ah, Boy George II’s not very subtle effort to tar another with the blame for his failed policies.

  • Interesting point, Tom, in light of the increasing comparison of this President with Truman. Passing the buck is GW’s modus operandi. It goes with getting someone else to do the work (and thinking).

  • Oh, so now it’s CASEY’s plan? I thought all along that it was really BUSH’s plan, probably because he kept saying so. This is the guy who stresses that he listens to his “Commanders on the ground”? Maybe if Casey seems to favour withdrawal, it’s because he’s aware he can’t win. History abounds with examples of rear-echelon leaders who kept stubbornly throwing their tired forces against a well-entrenched enemy, when anybody with a shred of pity would give up and try to minimize the losses: the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava is a good one. But we usually point to those as BAD examples. There is nothing gallant about throwing more troops into the pit of diminishing returns.

    And Bush looks bewildered when a bunch of retired Generals speak out against him for his foolhardy policies, like he can’t believe their treachery. You could catch this guy coming out of a bank with a gun in one hand and a sack of money in the other, and he’d blame his upbringing or society for making him a criminal. He’s so thick he’s soundproof.

  • “Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.” – NYT

    Ah, so BG2 is going with the “wait until Saddam is dead then sneak out of Iraq” policy, and will blame Casey for losing Iraq.

    “Mr. Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. ‘It’s a word the American people understand’, he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. ‘And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.’” – NYT

    As opposed to the American people understanding that his polices are a failure and need to be changed?

    Sorry Casey, but it seems you get the blame for giving your clothless emperor exactly what he wanted instead of what he needed.

  • I see. I get it. Casey is really The Decider. And the BushBaby is the General’s (meat) puppet. Not Cheney’s.
    Right.
    Next we’ll learn that Casey is really “Curveball.”

    If I wanted to get all pop-psych on BushBaby I’d say his tendency to shit on military types and play dress up in XtraBulGee flight suits stems from some sort of inferiority complex. But I won’t.

  • Great choice for the generals:
    They screw the ones that speak honestly (Shinseki);
    They screw the Yes-Men (Casey).

    How would you like to be in a military with generals that are Yes-Men?

    This is Vietnam on Meth, the same destructive crap, but we will be out before 55,000 soldiers are lost. I feel worse for any of the 3000+ killed & 20,000 wounded than I do for Gen. Casey.

  • It’s times like these when I am glad that most of the country doesn’t keep up with politics. In America’s eyes, Bush is to blame no matter what the old and worn out spin machine produces.

    And this took a month to formulate, they must be working those Congressional hours, like 10 a week. Guess they had to figure out who to ‘throw under the bus’. I figured Rummy was the obvious choice. I am just really curious as to who is going to get the bus treatment when the escalation (insanity) fails.

  • For weeks Bush & Co. have been conducting this “special review” of Iraq (regardless of the question as to why they weren’t reviewing it years earlier).

    And now we start to see the results of this “review.” As always, it’s not about policy, it’s about PR and spin. They”ve been looking for a scapegoat all this time — and a way to make Bush look good.

  • What Bush will say to Casey is what Otter said to Flounder in Animal House, “Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up – you trusted us!”

    The long knives are out. But if I were Bush, I’d keep on eye on all those military honor guards around him. They won’t appreciate being the scapegoats for his failures.

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    Tell your friends.

  • As we all continue to see, the Bushies and the Wingnuts are NEVER wrong, politics are paramount and as have many noted in an earlier CB article (Ready or Not…) the excuses are being defined now. Lil’ Georgie wraps himself martydom delusionally assured that he will be vindicated by history. We’re seeing the Vietnam Blame Game all over again. Failure will always be the fault of everyone except the ideologs who got us into this mess. The Dems will become distracted and their agenda will be restricted by the distraction of trying to resolve this quagmire. The far right will yammer about liberal “weakness” and use Vietnam and now, Iraq, as “examples” just in time to get us into yet another war.
    —Unless we really, really, really hold them accountable for all time, they will play this game again. We need to write the history first.

  • So they’ve been “uneasy” for some time, but they kept telling us that we were absolutely winning. And that’s Casey’s fault?

    Uh huh.

    -jay- is right in #14.

    There’s one “reality” that needs to collide with Bush’s optimism… a subpoena.

  • The other day, I ran across a link (was it here?) to a 2004 Naomi Klein article on Harper’s, titled, “Baghdad Year Zero:
    Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia.” If the goal was to establish a kind of perverted neo-con “democracy,” and the author makes a rather compelling case, then Bush’s stubbornness makes sense — the grand experiment cannot be allowed to fail. A lot of the bullshit we’ve heard for getting into the war and since would also make sense.

    It anyone knows of other, more recent articles along the lines of Klein’s, I’d be interested in reading them.

  • I think the Charge of the Light Brigade was different than this because it was some kind of error (unless that’s rewriting history, too). What I heard is they got ordered to make this charge, and it was obviously militarily stupid but they did it anyway because they were so loyal that they unquestioningly followed orders. The thing was it was actually an incorrect order, and that’s why Byron’s poem is so tragic/sublime, and the soldiers depicted so valiant. I guess it’s a matter of relying on people to see what you don’t: the soldiers make the charge because they count on the commander knowing the bigger scheme of things so that what looks like a bad charge isn’t- it’s unfair to call those soldiers stupid in the fog of war- c’est la guerre.

  • I don’t remember who it was here who said this a few weeks ago, but it is soooooo true and so applicable to this situation:

    Bush is like living next door to a drunk who drives his car into your house one night at 4 a.m., crawls out and blames you for building your house where you did, and the next day sues you for damage to his car.

    Like all worthless drunks, it’s always somebody else’s fault.

    “Trumanesque” means being able to say “the buck stops here” and meaning it.

  • “At every key moment in the conflict, the Bush gang has been a couple of steps behind where they should have been.”

    I believe this paraphrases the Bushite policy mission statement.

  • From Greg Sargent at TPM:

    On October 20, 2006, Cheney gave an interview to NPR’s Juan Williams

    QUESTION: Do you think you’re getting good advice, good estimates from the generals who tell you that they have enough men on the ground and women on the ground to get the job done?

    THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think we get honest advice from them. I think George Casey gives it to us straight in terms of what he thinks he needs…we’ll give him whatever resources he thinks he needs. And my experience with George Casey is he’s a first class officer, and he tells us what he wants….

    THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I — I spent some time as Secretary of Defense myself, Juan. The men that we’ve got serving at the upper levels of the U.S. military today I think are some absolutely outstanding individuals. George Casey, John Abizaid sort of have the lead responsibilities in Iraq and for that region — are outstanding officers. They know the region very well. Abizaid even speaks the language. They are, I think, very good advisors to the President, and they’re the guys on the ground who have to, in fact, execute on the policy.

    On September 15, 2006, Bush said:

    Can the President trust his commanders on the ground to tell him what is necessary? That’s really one of the questions.

    In other words, if you say, I’m going to rely upon their judgment, the next question is, how good is their judgment; or is my judgment good enough to figure out whether or not they know what they’re doing? And I’m going to tell you I’ve got great confidence in General John Abizaid and General George Casey. These are extraordinary men who understand the difficulties of the task, and understand there is a delicate relationship between self-sufficiency on the Iraqis’ part, and U.S. presence.

    On June 26, 2006, Bush said:

    But in terms of our troop presence there, that decision will be made by General Casey, as well as the sovereign government of Iraq, based upon conditions on the ground. And one of the things that General Casey assured me of is that, whatever recommendation he makes, it will be aimed toward achieving victory. And that’s what we want. And victory means a free government that is able to sustain itself, defend itself; it’s a government that will be an ally in the war on terror. It’s a government that will be able to fight off al Qaeda and its desires to have a safe haven.

    And so I did visit with General Casey, and I came away once again with my trust in that man.

  • Reading the piece, it seems that Casey’s great sin was that he wasn’t clapping hard enough for the Tinkerbell of “victory” that Bush so desperately needs to believe in.

    But the “victory” ship sailed in April 2003, long about when that colossal schmuck Bremer disbanded the army and decided that anyone who’d ever joined the Ba’ath Party could not participate in the “new Iraq.” Perhaps that’s a reflection of the core partisanship of these asswipes; you know they have no dearer wish than to make a similar decree re: Democrats.

    I finished the Thomas Ricks book, “Fiasco,” yesterday. Reading that–it’s excellent, by the way, and probably the most disturbing work of contemporary history I’ve ever read–I’m almost amazed there hasn’t been a coup. What these chickenhawk bastards did to the armed forces was almost as unconscionable–not to mention just astoundingly stupid–as what they did to the people of Iraq.

    I hope Casey fires back, exposing the total fecklessness of the WPE’s “war policy.”

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