Iraq Failures Built-in By War Planners

Iraq Failures Built-in By War Planners
What do we do now?
2006: Time to kick Republicans Who Support and Accept the Current Course in Iraq Out of Office

I have a healthy amount of respect for Andrew Sullivan, but I think that he may be putting too much stock in an alleged letter from al Qaeda that could very well be a fake, using it to reconfirm his opinion about our need to be at war in Iraq.


Iraq was the wrong war, the wrong time - with the wrong strategy. Billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, Bush's carefully choreographed "stick-to-it-ism" on well-rehearsed display yesterday was just another scene from his fairy-play about how he (with God in his ear) The Old Soft Shoehas been destined to reform the world in the great Far Right Christian capitalist's image while unilaterally tilting at the Holy-War-windmills of an evil would-be Caliphate.

Bush may never get this one right. He has not attempted to change his actions to get it right, and he may wind up taking us all down with his stubborn course in the Middle East. About that potentially fake letter from al Qaeda, some see it as just another possible tool for the stagehands of the Bush administration's propaganda-drama (ie: Pull it out when you need a boost):

BBC world affairs correspondent Nick Childs says, whether this is all genuine, whether Zarqawi ever received the letter, and what impact it might have are not clear. What is clear is that the level of insurgent violence is putting enormous political pressure on the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition at the moment. So the fact that this is brought to light now may not be coincidental, our correspondent says.
-BBC News

Meanwhile, we have President Bush putting our military on a deadly, inept course - practicing suicidal statecraft (in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who avers it's not too late:)

A real course correction is still possible, and it could start soon with a modest and common-sense initiative by the president to engage the Democratic congressional leadership in a serious effort to shape a bipartisan foreign policy for an increasingly divided and troubled nation.

Andrew Sullivan says you go to war with the President you have. I have to agree to disagree with Andrew on this one. This President has a vote of total non-confidence from my camp. His propensity for lying, sensationalizing, fear mongering, and exaggerating in order to achieve his administration's political goals has been sadly proven. He flatly refuses to admit glaring errors or to change the course that has needlessly taken almost 2000 American lives and countless Iraqi civilian lives - and promises many more years of laying more lives to waste. If any success is achieved, it will come in spite of the decisions of the civilian leaders who planned so inadequately for our military and caused a "meltdown" of National Guard troops nearing the end of their required service because their loyalty was so badly abused.

This weekend, we will be asked to believe there has been a new victory of independence achieved in Iraq, while in reality we are more than likely sealing the deal to give the "puppet-ization" of the new Iraq a "democratic" face.

- The constitutional process culminating in Saturday's referendum is not a sign of Iraqi sovereignty and democracy taking hold, but rather a consolidation of U.S. influence and control. Whether Iraq's draft constitution is approved or rejected, the decision is likely to make the current situation worse.
-[Phyllis Bennis, Democracy Rising]

- The approval of the current Iraqi constitution could thwart both the intentions of the American occupation and the actions of Islamic holy war. When the constitution is approved and the elections take place according to the deadlines established or after, Iraq will be for all intents and purposes a democracy. This will provide legitimacy for the leaders to exercise full sovereignty over the territory of Iraq, which implies the decision to have no foreign military bases and to nationalize all natural resources. Granted, of course, that the leaders are not elected as puppets to the United States. If they become marionettes, then Iraq will persist is being a disastrous precedent to the "Greater Middle East" project propounded by the Bush administration.
-[Stuart Reigeluth, reviewing a book by Stanford University professor and democracy expert Larry Diamond]

When American citizens cry out "Get it right or get out of Iraq," they are telling you that they no longer hold out any hope that the Bush administration will shift the brutally failing strategy in Iraq and the greater Middle East. Who wants to see thousands more dead, a smattering of public support for such a disaster, no material cultural intervention to support Arab liberals who share the administration's view of radical Islamists, and no promise for meaningful international engagement in the cause?

Bush continues to lead his own narrow version of "America" - which includes only those who agree with him - and that number grows smaller by the day.

I can't help but wonder - how many people out there are sorry that they voted for Bush last November? How can the public put pressure on the Bush administration to change course in its neurotic and doomed-to-fail Middle East policy? Polls don't seem to faze them. Heavy Republican losses in the 2006 elections may be the only way to have any effect. If they can look their constituents in the eye and say they still support the Bush administration's course in Iraq, they deserve to be removed from office.