When the president addressed the nation last night, in just the second sentence, he told the country that he would “outline” a “new strategy.” That, in and of itself, was misleading — the “strategy” hasn’t changed at all.
Putting the particulars aside for a moment, last night was, almost literally, more of the same. As Dan Froomkin put it, this whole new endeavor is about tactics, not strategy.
A relatively minor increase in troops, a promise of greater cooperation from the Iraqi prime minister, a small infusion of reconstruction money — not only have we heard all this before, but it doesn’t amount to much.
Bush’s overall strategy seems likely to remain wholly unchanged: To keep U.S. troops in Iraq as long as it takes for the Iraqi government to start functioning effectively. That means using American bodies and firepower, pretty much indefinitely, to prop up a country racked by civil war and chafing under occupation. That means the American death count ticks on, with no end in sight.
Bush is not wavering on that fundamental strategy, despite all the indications that it’s not working and despite the dramatic loss of public support.
Watching the speech, I kept thinking, “This is it? This is the ‘new way forward’?” Despite the Bush gang delaying the announcement of this policy for weeks, every “new” idea was repetitious of what we’ve heard before. Sure, the president abandoned the naive optimism that dominated his previous speeches — “happy talk” has been replaced with “somber talk” — but rhetorical tone is meaningless when the policy is fundamentally the same.
USA Today was surprisingly straightforward about this, saying, “[E]xcept for the troop increase, none of the ideas is new. All are familiar parts of the administration’s strategy in Iraq and Bush’s prior speeches defending it.”
I was a little surprised at the extent to which the new policy was dependent on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who apparently has made “pledges” to Bush.
“I’ve made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this.”
Maliki, Maliki, the name sounds familiar. Oh right, he’s the one the Bush administration has no confidence in, and the man described by the White House as “either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.” He’s the key to keeping Bush’s new policy together.
For that matter, for all the talk of “following through” on promises, “benchmarks,” and of a commitment that won’t be “open-ended,” there’s still no word on what, exactly, happens if/when this policy fails. There are still no consequences or penalties for failure.
Even the troop escalation element of the plan is a non-starter.
First, the “surge” turns out to be even paltrier than press leaks have suggested. Its dimensions are as reported — about 20,000 additional U.S. troops sent to Iraq, more than three-quarters of them to Baghdad, the rest of Anbar province — but, it turns out, they are to be mobilized gradually, a brigade or two at a time, over the next few months.
The Army’s recently published field manual on counterinsurgency — co-authored by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, soon to be the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq — emphasizes that these sorts of campaigns need early successes to inspire confidence in the local populace, who will be watching carefully and taking sides accordingly. The manual also notes that successes, in general, require a massive superiority in manpower. To escalate, er, surge gradually (which may be all that’s physically possible), works against our prospects from the get-go.
Second, the president said that Iraqi security forces will take the lead in this operation, while the Americans will play a supporting role, mainly as embedded advisers within Iraqi units. In fact, he suggested at one point that Iraqi troops will outnumber American troops by 3-to-1. (The United States will embed a “brigade with every Iraqi Army division,” Bush said; a division is roughly equal to three brigades.) In principle, this is a good idea — it’s the Iraqis’ country, after all — but is it plausible? Where are these 60,000 additional Iraqi troops coming from? Are they any good? Do they represent a national army, or are they — as suggested by several real-life operations lately — merely militias disguised in national uniform?
Last night’s speech wasn’t so much a disappointment as it was a waste of time. Networks might as well have re-broadcast old speeches, edited out previous Bush claims that we’re already winning the war, and presented the comments as new, because there was no substantive difference.
