Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the land where delusions rule and reality is outcast, yes this is Bush's World. Nothing makes sense here and anything the President says goes, even if it truly nuts. The President delivered his speech from the other side (in the White House) to tell us all how great Iraq is going and how we will kick ass. Too bad for him, most of the audience lives in the real world. Fred Kaplan explains down below.
From Slate Magazine:
It is true that Bush is ordering the withdrawal of 5,700 of those troops—one Army brigade and a Marine expeditionary unit—before Christmas, a few months earlier than they need to go home. This is clearly in response to a request by Sen. John Warner, the ranking Republican on the armed services committee. The Republicans need political cover on the war; they need to show they're bringing some troops home soon; they hope that doing so will defuse the war as an election issue. Bush hopes this will be enough to keep them on his side—and limit the support for Democrats' proposals of speedier withdrawals.
But by acceding to this political compromise—and by selling the larger withdrawal as a decision instead of as an inescapable fact of life—Bush undermined his case that the fight for Iraq is the central fight for civilization. If this claim is true, why pull any troops out earlier than necessary?
His showcase example of success was the recent alliance between U.S. troops and Sunni insurgents to join forces against jihadist terrorists in Anbar province (an alliance, by the way, that was formed before the surge). Yet even so, the president said in tonight's speech, "In Anbar, the enemy remains active and deadly." Again, under the president's own assumptions, what's the substantive case for letting any troops leave?
The speech was rife with evasion and fantasy from the outset.
And then of course there was a specific course of action for which the surge was to implement, and not surprisingly the President conveniently forgets:
The rationale for the surge was to improve security in Baghdad and thus give Iraq's national political leaders the "breathing room" to reconcile their differences, pass key legislation, and form a unified government. The recent debates over conflicting charts and statistics—some showing a decline in civilian deaths and sectarian attacks, others showing an increase—are beside the point. The point is whether life in Baghdad has improved enough to allow for political progress on a national level. As Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker conceded several times in congressional hearings this week, no such progress has been made.
President Bush tonight tried to suggest otherwise. He correctly outlined the premise of the surge strategy: "For Iraqis to bridge sectarian divides, they need to feel safe in their homes and neighborhoods. For lasting reconciliation to take root, Iraqis must feel confident that they do not need sectarian gangs for security. The goal of the surge is to provide that security and help Iraqi forces to maintain it."
But then he said: "As I will explain tonight, our success in meeting these objectives now allows us to begin bringing some of our troops home." (Italics added.) Does he really think, whatever the advances toward these goals, that we have reached "success in meeting these objectives"?
As he himself admitted, those goals haven't yet been achieved in Anbar, much less in Baghdad, much less in national Iraqi politics. He could not evade today's news—that Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, leader of the Sunni tribes' revolt against al-Qaida in Anbar province, has been assassinated.
Yeah, things are just peachy in Iraq. Someone needs to take that crackpipe away from George, is Laura still around?
|