Silly me, I never thought the administration would take John McCain’s call for thousands of additional troops in Iraq seriously. And yet, here we are.
As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to “double down” in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff will present their assessment and recommendations to Bush at the Pentagon today. Military officials, including some advising the chiefs, have argued that an intensified effort may be the only way to get the counterinsurgency strategy right and provide a chance for victory. […]
“I think it is worth trying,” a defense official said. “But you can’t have the rhetoric without the resources. This is a double down” — the gambling term for upping a bet.
This strikes me as a spectacularly bad idea. But for the sake of discussion, let’s put aside the fact that this hasn’t worked before, the fact that this will put an unconscionable strain on the U.S. military, the fact that military leaders on the ground don’t believe this will work, the fact that Iraqi violence is likely to worsen due to the unpopularity of U.S. troop presence, and the fact that the Bush gang hasn’t any idea what they’d do if “double down” doesn’t work, and instead look at the politics for a moment.
In this scenario, if Bush actually commits to 20,000 additional U.S. troops, John McCain will almost certainly be terrified. Bush is gambling by embracing the policy, but he’s also gambling with McCain’s presidential plans.
Just a few weeks ago, McCain insisted that “we will not win this war” without additional combat forces in Iraq. It appeared to be part of a calculated strategy whereby McCain could separate himself from Bush’s failed policy by calling for additional troops he didn’t expect the president to send. As Robert Reich explained last month, this is a way for McCain to “effectively cover his ass. It will allow him to say, ‘If the President did what I urged him to do, none of this would have happened.'”
Except now Bush appears poised to do what McCain has urged him to do. If it doesn’t work, McCain will be left in an untenable position going into the 2008 race — he’ll have a strong degree of “ownership” of an incredibly disastrous and unpopular war as voters are making up their minds about who to elect as their next president.
As Digby put it, “McCain is positioning himself to be Lyndon Johnson in this thing without even becoming president.”
Sending in more troops is a crazy idea, but it’s the kind of crazy idea that Bush is looking for. And it is the kind of crazy idea that will make the country turn on John McCain. I seriously doubt he ever thought it anyone would do this — and I doubt he thought through the political ramifications of calling for 20,000.
He’ll be in big trouble if Bush decides to do what he wants. By ’08, this war will be a dead albatross around his neck. But then, McCain has always been too cutesy by half on this — he deserves to be strangled by his own arrogant posturing. Who did he think he was, claiming that he could have “won” this thing if only the country had listened to him. It was always unwinnable and he’s a lying, opportunistic piece of garbage. If Bush sticks the shiv in St. John’s back one last time before he leaves office, it will be poetic justice.
Sadly, however, it requires that 20,000 more Americans troops get stuck in the middle of hell on earth and I cannot hope for it, even as I know that all is lost anyway and all we have left is to put a non-crazy person in the White House in 2008.
Stay tuned.