December 13, 2006
Procrastination affects us all
Wasn’t it just a few month ago that Our Fine President revealed his super hero alter-ego “The Decider” to make sure everyone knew just what it is he does with his non-vacation days? Well, it seems that he’s lost his lucky decider flipping coin or someone drained the mystery fluid from his Magic 8-Ball because he keep putting off a decision on what he’s going to do about that pesky Iraq conundrum.
The Iraq Study Group released their report last week calling for a change in our approach to securing the region and a time excavation of our military from Iraq. The White House gave this bi-partisan assessment a chilly reception because it does not talk so much about winning the war as it does ending our involvement. See Our Fine President doesn’t like to lose and he is the one who gets to call the shots while wearing the capital “D” on his chest.
Instead of accepting these outside recommendations, the White House went back to their familiar circle of advice from the college of coaches at the Pentagon, in the Defense Department and on the ground in Iraq. Not one but two Secretaries of Defense have been involved in this latest round of deliberations.
After all, the people are restless about this war. Progress and liberty seem to be spinning their wheels in the desert sands. Some change in the way things are being run is being demanded and the White House is almost trying to pay a little attention to all this. They’re adjusting, abandoning our tried and true “course” in their rhetoric. But Our Fine President seems to have a real hard time letting go of the “stay” part.
The way he puts it, the only way we can lose is if we quit. What we need to do to win is less clear, as I believe I’d heard that we’d accomplished our mission a few years ago. I’d really like for someone to explain to me just where the new finish line is located. Does it comes after we polish Iraq up into that shiny beacon of freedom and democracy in the darkness of the Middle East? Is it just beyond that place where we bring the warring ethic factions in Iraq to the Thanksgiving table with each other? Or maybe we’re just hanging out there still waiting to be greeted as liberators.
Whatever it is, lots of people are dying in the meantime.
The ISG put forth some unpleasant new plans, asked for reliable analysis of the situation and time frames for accomplishing goals. In their mind the situation is beyond fitting into simple categories labeled win and lose. Their recommendations are made with the goal of bringing American soldiers out of harm’s way in the most efficient manner.
Our Fine President seems to have other goals. He and his people are of the mind that any ending that is not a decisive American victory will embolden the terrorists and lessen America’s stature on the world stage. It’s a little ironic because the manner in which they’ve conducted this war has already done the job of energizing the anti-western terror industry and tarnished America’s reputation among many longtime allies.
So he can’t really say “stay the course” anymore, but that seems to be what we’re still doing. I don’t know what our soldiers do with their days over there but the term patrol is used a lot and they continue to injured and killed at a steady if not increasing pace. Our military is being forced into police work and that doesn’t seem like a good plan to me. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known a police force that finished their job completely. Protecting and serving is never really done.
Now The Decider is busy listening. He first promised his new vision in a big pre-Christmas speech, but that’s been called off. It’s going to take at least until next year for him to formulate this new plan. He can’t really be expected to work through the whole Christmas season now can he?
We’ve been told the speech will happen in January, but with this administration’s record at predicting when or how things will happen I’m not counting on it. Soldier will continue to be in harms way while Our Fine President continues to reject “ideas that would lead to defeat” as he put it. Instead he continues to talk with his military advisors about “how to secure this country and about how to win a war that we now find ourselves in.”
That last part caught me a bit off guard when I read it. It’s a bit of a bold way to talk about a war he scammed the country into. We might have found ourselves at war with al-Qaida, but Our Fine President did everything he could to push our soldiers into Iraq, and it is there that we’re having problems.
A bi-partisan committee put together a plan to deal with that problem, but we’ll have to wait a while longer before hearing an alternative strategy from the White House. The best thing Our Fine President could say about the ISG’s plan was, “I thought it was interesting that Republicans and Democrats could work in concert to help achieve an objective.” That is certainly something unfamiliar to him.
It took the ISG months to study the situation and issue their report. Our Fine President has had nigh on four years to watch the situation closely. Let’s hope he can put his plan together a bit faster than the competition.