| The war boosters across the country and on the Internet are in ecstasy, crowing about recent military successes in regions of Iraq and Baghdad. (Some are even declaring the war over, like Ed Morrisey, who writes "game, set, and match.") A $15-million pro-surge advertising campaign funded by conservative DC insider astroturf group, "Freedom's Watch," will begin bombarding the country with radio, television, and Web ads featuring your typical sleazy propaganda trying to link 9/11 and terrorism to Iraq. Again.
Even more absurd is Bush's line of attack on the surge, comparing Iraq to Vietnam (C&L video), and implying that we should have never left Vietnam. Basically, he claimed leaving Vietnam caused more death and destruction in Southeast Asia than staying would have. Never mind that would have meant perpetual war. |
| (Just the other day I agreed with Victor Davis Hanson that the study of military history was sorely needed, and Bush's speech shows why. Anyone intimately with Vietnam immediately recognizes Bush's claims to be outright "misinterpretations" of actual events. Rick Perlstein sets the record straight on Vietnam and Cambodia in detail, but in short Bush's claims are simply not true: Vietnamese death rates were much higher during the war than after, and likely would have been equally high in the case of a South Vietnamese victory. The Khmer Rouge was enabled by U.S. bombing of Cambodia and stopped by Communist Vietnam. In fact, based on statements from Gerald Ford, who downplayed the genocide there, it's not likely the U.S. would have intervened had we stayed in Vietnam. That is, it's likely the genocide would have been worse had we remained. Steve Benen has more of the experts' reaction to Bush's claims.)
Democrats and "wavering" Republicans are feeling the heat from this pro-war media bombardment leading up to the September report from General Petraeus - or from the White House, which is writing Petraeus' report for him. The danger now is that this propaganda bombardment may actually cause Congress to continue to support the status quo after the September report, and the conflict will drag on, unabated.
But despite blogger Ed Morrisey's shiny optimism, things do not look so rosy in Iraq.
While the U.S. military indeed has made gains in which it's concentrating - not a surprise for our armed forces, which kick tail wherever they're deployed - these military successes may actually work against our political interests in the region:
But the real success...is coming from something totally different, and that is coming from America cutting deals with its former enemies, principally the Ba'athist insurgents, the Sunni insurgents. It's by cutting a deal with the Ba'ath Party on the terms that the Ba'ath Party offered America four years ago and had to wait for America to be battered into submission to accept that the tide has turned against al Qaeda.
It's by unleashing the Ba'ath that the al Qaeda bombs are coming down, that the al Qaeda attacks are starting to slow down, not directly from the surge and not from the presence of U.S. troops.
What the U.S. troops are doing is giving a set of numbers, a series of data, a number of lowered attack figures that may give the military the political cover it needs in Washington. But at the end of the day, by cutting these deals the seeds are being sown for a much broader, more entrenched civil war that America will leave behind.
Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's fragile coalition is continuing to disintegrate. There have been calls for al-Maliki's ouster, even from a prominent presidential candidate. And no spirit of compromise seems likely to follow the current PM's political demise. The army is basically controlled by a Shia sect and other regional militia groups. Tribalism and factionalism reign supreme.
Meanwhile violence in Iraq increases.
Unfortunately it looks like Congressional Democrats are preparing to cave. Senator Levin's statement hints that he, and some other Senators, are going to agree that the surge is working, and looks ready to agree to further delay troop withdrawal.
The irony is that Democrats are likely going to cave in part because of their sinking approval ratings, which are lower than even the president's; but it's the Democrats' repeated capitulations to Bush and the GOP that have done the damage.
Glenn Greenwald:
Since Democrats took over Congress in January, there have been three major attributes characterizing their conduct: (1) a failure to stop or restrict the war in Iraq; (2) a general failure/unwillingness to stop Bush on much of anything else of significance (FISA, a failure to reverse any of the excesses of the GOP Congress, such as the Military Commissions Act, lack of limits on his ability to attack Iran, etc.); and (3) numerous investigations, sometimes flashy but thus far inconsequential. There is no rational way to argue that the numerous investigations...are responsible for Congressional unpopularity given how overwhelmingly Americans want Congressional investigations of the administration.
The whole thing reeks of politics. Based on the political situation in Iraq, there seems to be no realistic basis for belief that Iraq's present woes have a military solution, at least one that involves unilateral U.S. presence. Why, then, are we still there?
For Republicans, I think, it's because their base still fervently supports the war. And for Democrats - is it because they're afraid of looking "weak"? Or that they see the war as a political advantage in a presidential election year? Or maybe they think a Democratic president and Congress are more ably suited to effect a solution in Iraq?
Whatever the case, expect more needless war. |
