{"id":8217,"date":"2006-08-16T11:09:55","date_gmt":"2006-08-16T15:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8217.html"},"modified":"2006-08-16T11:09:55","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T15:09:55","slug":"so-long-as-hes-president-were-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/so-long-as-hes-president-were-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"‘So long as he’s president, we’re in Iraq’"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of an apparent drive to highlight the president’s new-found interest in competing ideas, the White House hosted<\/a> a 90-minute meeting yesterday with Bush, his war cabinet, and several outside experts yesterday to discuss the war in Iraq in considerable detail. It reportedly included a wide range of ideas — but I’m still not sure what the point was.<\/p>\n

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday. […]<\/p>\n

“I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally — that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget,” said one person who attended the meeting. “The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush, in particular, was reportedly confused about why tens of thousands of Shiites would take to the streets in support of Hezbollah and why “Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq.” (The president appears to still be stuck on the greeted-as-liberators talking point of 2003.)<\/p>\n

As for the participants, the NYT noted that even fierce critics of the war in Iraq “give credit to the White House for beginning to listen to alternate viewpoints. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army commander who has been very critical of the war, said, “They’re listening to new ideas and they’re listening to the reality.”<\/p>\n

Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations. The president deserves credit for being in the same room as a policy expert who’s willing to share “reality” with Bush?<\/p>\n

And yet, for all this apparent introspection, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: the president isn’t willing to change course.
\n
\nThe New York Times reported<\/a>, “Bush showed no signs of veering from the administration’s policies.” The LA Times added comments from Reuel Marc Gerecht, a Mideast analyst at American Enterprise Institute, who said Bush made it clear<\/a> that “as long as he’s president, we’re in Iraq.”<\/p>\n

The experts said in interviews that Bush signaled that he intended to make no policy changes in Iraq, despite warnings from military leaders and election-year arguments from Democrats that the war is a drain on resources and a distraction from the administration’s campaign against terrorism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The administration can host all of the discussions and internal reviews it wants, but the one constant is the same policy that hasn’t worked. I don’t doubt that Bush sat through the 90-minute meeting yesterday, and probably played close attention, but I can’t help but question the point.<\/p>\n

These meetings-of-the-minds appear to be put together for our benefit, not Bush’s. He’s already convinced that “freedom is on the march” and we need to “stay the course.” I suppose it’s indicative of some<\/i> progress that he’ll let a few diverse thoughts into his bubble, but wouldn’t we all be better off if the president were willing to take these competing ideas seriously?<\/p>\n

What’s the point of a broad, unrestrictive discussion when “The Decider” made up his mind before the conversation even takes place?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of an apparent drive to highlight the president’s new-found interest in competing ideas, the White House hosted a 90-minute meeting yesterday with Bush, his war cabinet, and several outside experts yesterday to discuss the war in Iraq in considerable detail. It reportedly included a wide range of ideas — but I’m still not […]<\/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-8217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217","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=8217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}