I argued yesterday that the White House, without admitting it, was trying to unveil a new Iraq policy just as the old one was failing. Officials aren’t willing to come right out and say so, but they’re actually conceding that the surge policy is an abject failure, and quietly introducing an entirely new approach at the 11th hour. Iraq Policy 5.0 is about emphasizing local progress, not national progress.
The NYT’s David Sanger spells out this ridiculous moving of the goalposts today.
With the Democratic-led Congress poised to measure progress in Iraq by focusing on the central government’s failure to perform, President Bush is proposing a new gauge, by focusing on new American alliances with the tribes and local groups that Washington once feared would tear the country apart.
That shift in emphasis was implicit in Mr. Bush’s decision to bypass Baghdad on his eight-hour trip to Iraq, stopping instead in Anbar Province, once the heart of an anti-American Sunni insurgency. By meeting with tribal leaders who just a year ago were considered the enemy, and who now are fighting Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a president who has unveiled four or five strategies for winning over Iraqis — depending on how one counts — may now be on the cusp of yet another.
It is not clear whether the Democrats who control Congress will be in any mood to accept the changing measures.
How on earth could anyone take these “changing measures” seriously? Consider the context here: in January, the Bush administration conceded that none of its previous measures has worked, so it was time for yet another new Iraq policy. Everyone, everywhere said this was the president’s last chance to get Iraq right. He got it wrong — on the 18 agreed upon benchmarks, which the White House came up with in the first place, Iraq has successfully completed three. The “surge” didn’t work.
Now, thanks to some dizzying rhetorical acrobatics, war supporters are left to argue a) the surge is working; b) the surge isn’t working; c) the surge might work if it had more time; d) the benchmarks matter; e) the benchmarks don’t matter; and f) none of this matters because there’s a new bottom-up strategy that will finally produce results. Best of all, war supporters are making all of these arguments at the same time.
Now, I suppose there might be some people who pause and ask, “Well, sure, Bush Iraq Policy I, II, III, IV, and V were all failures, but maybe this new strategy of focusing on local progress and mini-benchmarks might actually work. Maybe we ought to give it some time.”
Kevin Drum explains how terribly wrong this is.
There’s an awful lot to say about this beyond the obvious point that this goalpost moving is a pretty desperate attempt to dig up something — anything — positive to say about political reconciliation in Iraq. For starters, there’s the fact that the Anbar strategy is entirely accidental and we don’t truly control it. There’s the fact that one of the underlying goals of arming the Sunni tribes is a veiled desire to create an armed balance of power between Sunni and Shia that can’t possibly be stable. There’s the fact that we’re encouraging a de facto balkanization of the country. There’s the fact that even if this strategy is a good one, we don’t have anywhere near enough troops to make it work on a widespread basis. And finally, there’s the fact that the Shiite militias simply aren’t going to allow this strategy to spread to Baghdad….
[B]e aware that this is apparently the new talking point: national reconciliation doesn’t matter anymore. Tribal reconciliation is where the action is. We’ll let you know how it’s going six months from now.
Remember, this isn’t a criticism of the Bush administration’s failures; this is the Bush administration’s own response to their failures. They established their own benchmarks, then failed to meet them, then redefined their mission (again). Now, they want Congress to not only endorse this madness, but to write another $200 billion check to pay for it.
I don’t doubt that lawmakers will be dazzled by Gen. Petraeus’ political skills next week, but anyone who falls for this scheme is a fool.