Will Bush's Tragedy Trap His Successor in Iraq?
The essence of Greek tragedy is that protagonists move inexorably to a climax the audience can anticipate before the characters discover their fate. As the curtain rises for Washington's battle over Iraq, Congressional leaders must reject the role President Bush has scripted for them in his Iraq tragedy. Otherwise, in January 2009, a newly-elected president will find himself or herself waist deep in a quagmire that will dominate their one term presidency.
No one should have any doubt about President Bush's overriding operational objective. It is to hand over this war to his successor. In his own words: "I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney [his dog] are the only ones supporting me." To this end he will do and say whatever is necessary. But at this point, the president's words hardly matter. Most Americans have concluded, correctly, that on Iraq, President Bush is simply no longer to be believed.
The most credible advocate of the war will be General Petraeus. The best that the American military--and indeed American society-- has to offer, Petraeus is competent, thoughtful, even heroic. "Can-do" at his core, Petraeus will accentuate the positive in whatever is happening, highlight measurable progress and warn against reversing this by premature or precipitous withdrawal.
At the Defense Department, Secretary Gates has signaled his highest priority: to find common ground for bipartisan support of a sustainable strategy. That will require some compromise with Democrats. The terms of a partial withdrawal will be shaped by realities of US Army and Marine manning charts. These necessitate withdrawal of the first brigade (about 4,000 men) no later than April 2008, followed by additional brigades at the rate of about one per month thereafter until reaching a sustainable plateau.
The driver of what will at the end of this act certainly be a change in announced strategy and date for beginning withdrawal is twenty-one Republican Senators standing for reelection in November 2008. With three out of four Americans saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, that Bush is mishandling Iraq, and that things are going badly in Iraq, these Senators cannot campaign on a strategy of support for a sinking ship. Before Congress recessed, Senators Warner and Lugar signaled the necessity for the president to shift tracks. The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has identified September 15 as the "key time for the vast majority of my members and it certainly is for me."
And what about the Democrats? So far, President Bush has given them an easy pass. They have been able to simply oppose a failed strategy and wrap Republican colleagues and would-be presidential nominees around that mast.
What should the audience anticipate that the actors seem not yet to have grasped? Heated rhetoric from all parties will in the end be followed by a compromise that includes a change of mission and a date for beginning to drawdown. The new mission will transition from "clear and hold" to countering al Qaeda, training Iraqi forces, and protecting Americans still in Iraq. Petraeus will advocate sustaining the surge through next summer; Democrats will urge beginning withdrawal now. My bet is that the compromise will bring home the first brigade by Christmas 2007 and promise withdrawal of an additional combat brigade approximately every month thereafter. Operationally, however, this promise will "depend on conditions," thus leaving the president enough wiggle room for his purpose.
On the ground in Iraq, as American combat groups leave, security will erode. Thus as Americans move out of neighborhoods in Baghdad or areas in Anbar province, the most likely result is a reversion to the conditions prior to their arrival, which, as the NIE of January 2007 stated, will "deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter part of 2006."
Following this script, the new president who takes office in January 2009 will inherit 75,000 Americans in Iraq under conditions in which security is worse, sectarian divides deeper, and Iraq's government even more dysfunctional than today. If leaders in Congress judge this outcome unacceptable, they must rise up and reject the lines President Bush has given them.
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Given the exhaustive analysis of the rising drumbeat of mis- and dis-information and falsified intelligence - WMD to mushroom clouds - that built support for Bush's invasion of Iraq, who cannot see the same MO taking place now. The President's increasingly frequent "turning point" pronouncements , despite horrific death and destruction week in week out, telegraphs his unwavering intention of keeping our forces fighting and dying in Iraq until he leaves office.
Somehow convinced he will escape history's condemnation for a 'lost war', regardless of who pays what price, by dumping Iraq on the next president Bush opens the way for a classic Republican strategy.
Waving "the bloody Shirt", the Republicans held the White House from 1868 to 1912, with one interruption - Cleveland's two terms. Waving the red 'hammer & sickle' flag - fellow-travelling commie-symp pinko Dem liberals - served the same purpose, through the 1920's and after 1852, though not nearly as effective in keeping Democrats out of the White House.
What can we expect after Labor Day next year, and following years if a Democrat wins, and she or he pulls the US out of Iraq? The Weimar accusation - the "stab in the back".
The gens of this Republican campaign strategy have already proved very effective in stalemating the Dem majority in Congress, sice Jan.'07, as in: the Dems don't 'support our troops' if they _____[fill in the blank]. A tenured seat in the US Congress, after all, is a ticket to 'easy street'.
Nevertheless, the legislative power to force our troops out of Iraq still rests with the Dem majority in the House - the Costitutionally derived "power of the purse". But the clock is running down very fast.
Failing this initiative, come '08 and after, the Republicans, like Medea, will do their worst; they'll make the "swift-boat" campaign look like a walk-in-the-park.
Indeed, yes, ...UNLESS the American Citizen voters wise up and ignore all the political gibberish and assert their demands in a comprehensive list of requirements to be delivered by the elected candidate; the American voters must shut off the media hype and take the lead, demand each aspiring candidate simply and clearly lay out a comprehensive strategy composed of tactical plans and programs/projects to create the US society as American voters want it, within 2-3 years. Then, let American voters decide on the credibility and effectiveness potentials of each candidates offered proposal.
Just like putting a 'job' 'out to bid'.
American voters can either be lazy or get off their laurels and figure out for themselves what needs to be done to create the society they want to live in.
"In a Democracy, the Citizens get the government they deserve."
American voters need to stop complaing and start asserting demands, and then vote accordingl
What a surprise! The Democrats walking wide eyed into a trap set by the GOP that a well informed third grader would avoid.
I support your observations. I don't think this Democratic Party will listen. They are in it up to their ears. As long as the money keeps rolling in, they are willing to do anything, even support torture and crimes against humanity.
It's up to us.
The grand imperative and number one priority for the Democrats is the impeachment of Bush and Cheney and the disenfranchisement of the Bush administration. Impeachment precedes any other action the Dems can take to end the Iraqi occupation, deal with our economic issues and restore our dignity and leadership position in the world community. Dealing with any of these matters is moot and a fools errand as long as Bush remains as president. He has deigned to himself imperial powers and has no regard for the will of the people. The grounds for impeachment lie in that fact alone. There are many other treasonous acts that would easily qualify as articles of impeachment. If a direct impeachment is too much for the feckless Dems to handle, then a de facto impeachment could suffice. A de facto impeachment would entail making the Bush administration irrelevant by a Democratic congress using its legislative majorities to thwart the Bush administration and the congressional Republican handmaidens in all acts contrary to the mandates of the people that elected the Dems to Congress. They must stop the bleeding of the nation being perpetrated by Bush and the Republicans. The argument that pursuing impeachment would distract the country from more "important" issues rings hollow in light of the fact that any Democratic initiatives will only be frustrated by Bush and the Republicans anyway. In the same manner, Democrats that seek to find a compromise with Bush and the Republicans over the next moves in Iraq are only setting up the next president to pay the price one way or another for the Bush debacle. Let's not fall into that trap. Let's get on with the redemption of our country and impeach these SOB's.
Will Cheney's war on Iran trap his successor??
Unless there is a major turnaround in 'blue dog' democratic sentiment in the next month, the war in Iraq is going to the next president - this seems more like fact to me than speculation.
So the real worry is to keep it confined to just two fronts, Afghanistan and Iraq. (I suppose once we occupy Iran, it could all become one front, geographically. Maybe that's why Lute's office was created.)
What a dumb question. It is INEVITABLE that the USA will be stuck in Iraq UNLESS congress authorizes funding ONLY TO LEAVE.
Peace to you today.
I don't disagree with Allison's point about Bush passing on the war to his successor, but I am somewhat at a loss over the concept that the Democrats are allowing themselves to be bit players on Bush's stage. It is not as if there have not been numerous proposals to begin a withdrawal from Iraq. Unfortunately the Democrats were given control of the Senate and House by only small majorities, and don't have the votes to over-ride Bush's vetoes. Further, it is Congressional Republicans who refuse to listen to the majority of their constituents and join in a bi-partisan effort to stop the madmen of the White House.
It is not my intent to be an apologist for the Democrats, I simply wonder how it is that the Republicans are allowed to be so intractible on Iraq, essentially refusing any compromise for withdrawal proposed in the Senate, when two thirds of the country want out.
I don't agree that the next president will automatically be held responsible for the outcome of this war. It's well established that the war always was and still is Bush's war. By the time he leaves office another 16 months from now, he will own it even more if it continues to drag on. It took Pres. Nixon several years to end the Vietnam (LBJ's) War -- Nixon wasn't blamed for it, he was re-elected to a second term while the war was still going on! History has a way of repating itself.
Many pertinent comments ...But what is the moat idiotic comment from the RepugThugs that it is all for Democracy.
Lazy & incompetent citizens will elect INCOMPETENT LEADERS. It will not chnage until the oridinary citizens wake up & see what is happening to our country...
Write ME in for President.
I will do what no other candidate can or will do: begin an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and the ME (ala Ron Paul's correct demand), fire Petraus and a lot of other Generals and Colonels in the Pentagon, bring criminal charges against ALL that were involved in torture, abuse, and secret detentions/black sites, bring criminal charges against any and all Blackwater Mercs involved in so much as a single killing in Iraq and forever bar the US government from ever using such Mercs ever again for any reason, requiring that all Mercs used by private concerns follow the same laws and rules of war that the US military is supposed to (no exceptions), cut "defense" (yeah, right, offense spending is more accurate) spending to a proper peacetime level, kill the ABM system and fire everyone involved, declassify EVERYTHING (every memo, document, recording, transcript) generated by any and all Presidents prior to my term that did not directly involve military operations security or ACTUAL intelligence means and capabilities and bar classification of anything in the future not so described (and seek legislation VERY strictly delimiting what can, in the future, be classified).
That is during my first week in office. No one else has the ethics or moral and physical courage to do the right thing...
When we think of Vietnam, we think first of Nixon. That's what makes Bush's advisors so crafty and smart: they realize that it's not the iniator of an unpopular war who history blames; instead it's the president under whom the too-long war ends who is labeled the mismanagement scapegoat.
If the Democrats want one of their own to go down in history with Iraq on their shoulders, fine; if they want Iraq to be known as "Bush's war," they don't have much time left to force that to happen.
I just can't believe the Democrats are so dumb as to want Iraq to continue on their watch. And I can't believe a potential Republican president wants to be dragged down by Iraq either.
The next president could deal with 2009 Iraq unrest by mobilizing UN forces to oversee Iraq's displaced population humanitarian disaster and to quell, by political and regional means, the continuing Sunni-Shiite-Kurd ethnic cleansing.
Iraq is such a bumbling and disastrous foreign policy decision that it deserves to enter the history books as the war of choice by Bush-Chene
The evil that men do ....
When Bush is gone, the mess he has made of Iraq will remain for his successor.
When Bush has gone the mess his policies have made of our econnomy will remain.
The successor will be blamed for not finding quick and easy solutions. Americans are a styupid people. Otherwise they would never have been ruled by the likes of Bush. And being stupid they will blame the one at the helm rather than the evil bunch that created the problems.
Reagan got credit for the results of his spending, but not the blame for his debt. Bush has run up an even bigger debt. Eventually the piper must be paid -- even if he is in China!
The transfer of good jobs abroad will be harder to reverse than it was to impliment.
Putting things back together is harder than breakinng them.
So I don't envy the successors of Bush.
I would say the trip to Iraq last week was not to boost moral, but to give Gen. Petreaus his talking points that the Whitehouse has already drawn up for him.
Bush has never had anyone under him, but puppets, if their not, there gone.
EXCELLENT piece! It's about time someone pointed out this FACT.
Apparently the lack of logic, immorality, illegality and outrageous expense of the disastrous Iraq occupation has not appealed to the Democrats in congress (and their bought and paid for advisors).
speaking as an tail wing nut, all i have to contribute is a opinion of utter disillusionment for the very words i was taught to be self-evident. all i hear see and read are the philosophical equivalent of a readymade business suit custom tailored to reach an overall consensus. this is the biggest sham since Eyes Wide Shut came out.
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Posted September 7, 2007 | 04:40 PM (EST)