{"id":5958,"date":"2005-11-30T14:27:49","date_gmt":"2005-11-30T19:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5958"},"modified":"2005-11-30T14:27:49","modified_gmt":"2005-11-30T19:27:49","slug":"stay-the-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/stay-the-course\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Stay the course’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe my standards have dropped, but I thought today’s Bush speech<\/a> was slightly better than most of his recent “clap louder” speeches, at least with regard to rhetoric. For example, I was pleased to hear — I believe for the first time — Bush describe what he means by “victory” in Iraq.<\/p>\n

“In World War II, victory came when the Empire of Japan surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri. In Iraq, there will not be a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship. Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq’s democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This isn’t exactly firm and concrete, but it’s the beginning of a definition, and for that I was grateful. If only the president presented a strategy on how to get us there.<\/p>\n

Today was a major rollout day for the White House. A new “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq<\/a>” was released to the public, and today’s speech was intended to accompany it. But if you’re looking for an indication that the war policy is back on track, you’re likely to be disappointed. The 45-minute, 5,000-word speech can be summarized in one simple sentence: Bush thinks his Iraq policy is working. You could almost hear him prodding us along — we’re on the right track, really, trust me, it’s true, take my word for it, disregard everything else you’ve heard.<\/p>\n

The WaPo reported<\/a> this morning that the White House was unveiling a “new Iraq strategy” today. But as Ezra noted<\/a>, “[T]he new strategy is that the old strategy is working.”<\/p>\n

In this sense, today’s speech wasn’t so much a new approach as it was new packaging. Bush said in slightly different words what he’s said repeatedly<\/a> for nearly three years — “I know what I’m doing.”
\n
\nMatt Yglesias<\/a> has gone through the “national strategy<\/a>” document and found it largely mirrored the speech, at least as the public relations effort goes.<\/p>\n

[T]he “strategy” seems to consist of exactly what the strategy thus far has been — denial and spin aimed at shoring up domestic political support for a mission whose goals are ill-defined and unrealistic. At the moment, troop levels in Iraq are very high as a result of a pre-election surge, so we may well see tens of thousands of soldiers leave the country next year but still have over 100,000 troops deployed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it’s plain that there’s no actual strategy here. The document calls for “building democratic institutions” and eventually “providing an inspiring example to reformers in the region.” But the administration has no idea how to do that stuff. The government is corrupt, the security services, when not totally ineffective, are highly politicized and rather brutal, and there’s simply no consensus in Iraq about the basic legitimacy of the state. I don’t blame the White House for not devising a ten point plan to resolve those problems — they simply can’t be resolved — but I do blame them, a lot, for their determination to waste more blood and treasure in a situation where they’re hopelessly adrift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately, if you thought Bush was right yesterday, you’re relieved today to hear that the president has no interest in changing course. If you believe the war policy is dangerously off-track, Bush isn’t making you feel any more confident about the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe my standards have dropped, but I thought today’s Bush speech was slightly better than most of his recent “clap louder” speeches, at least with regard to rhetoric. For example, I was pleased to hear — I believe for the first time — Bush describe what he means by “victory” in Iraq. “In World War […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}