Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Deceptive Talk About Iraq
Bush based the 2003 invasion and follow-up occupation on the false promise of ease -- a flop of epic proportions for which not a single individual in authority has been held responsible -- the administration has had to scramble for more than two years to keep pace with a growing insurgency as a well as the gargantuan task of reconstruction for which America was not financially prepared.
Tours of duty were extended. The reserves were raided. The National Guard was raided. Military commitments in the rest of the world, including the fight against terrorism and the effort to establish stability in Afghanistan, were compromised. The American people were deceived about the true cost of this war. But all this juggling and deception hasn't been enough. The fact remains: The military cannot rotate troops out of Iraq as their tours end and rotate others in without drastic change and a policy switch that includes telling people the truth.
Hence the cover story, which had a truly weird twist, when Cheney's ridiculous comment predictably failed to fly. From Baghdad, the top US ground forces commander, General George Casey, suddenly suggested that a withdrawal of at least 30,000 troops beginning next spring was possible if Iraq's chaotic politics continued to progress and if more Iraqi units were trained to undertake security operations.
This formulation angered many of Bush's conservative supporters, which produced fresh instructions to poor Casey to switch to a stay-the-course pessimism. The result was a story in The Washington Post last week quoting a senior military official in Baghdad as saying no way Iraq's ''leaders" would be ready to lead some operations against the insurgency until next summer, if not later. This anonymous official was the same General Casey.
Don't blame him. Bush emerged from the seclusion of his protester-plagued ranch last week to pretend that he was resolving all the confusion he himself caused by declaring his opposition to any ''immediate" troop withdrawals. That is a straw man. There are no proposals even in our meek Congress for withdrawals or timetables that would begin before next summer.
And there's the rub. The military's own planning envisages lowering the troop level to around 100,000 next year, even though its own assessment is that the insurgency is likely to remain murderous, the Iraqis are likely to remain unprepared, and the need is for more troops. If anything, the threat to the remaining forces will be greater as time passes.
If Bush had the sense to meet with Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan outside his ranch before her protest metastasized into a media circus, he might have discovered that his secret plans are closer to her position than the views of his most fervent, alleged supporters.
Behind all the hype, the truth that remains is that the United States lacks the forces to ''win," but retains enough to avoid losing and thus prolong the madness indefinitely. If that reminds people of another war situation long ago in Southeast Asia, this is one point of comparison that is dead on.
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