January 13, 2007
The new plan looks kinda familiar
It came as no real surprise that Our Fine President’s “new way forward” for Iraq is a double misnomer. Not only is it not in any respect new, but it really isn’t much of a way forward either.
There was plenty of the expected hyperbole and action movie cliches thrown into the mix with rampant oversimplifications and runaway optimism, but the basic premise of this new plan is to continue staying the course with our military doing police work and playing referee in a civil war. Sure Our Fine President promised a slight increase in US troops, but that only brings us back to where our numbers were a few years back and the basic clear and hold premise has been tried numerous times before.
The plan incorporates almost none of the advice the Iraq Study Group imparted upon the White House a few months back. That was right around the time Our Fine President decided it was time to change course in Iraq. Oh yeah, that notion of changing course came right after the election when the Democrats retook both houses of Congress.
So, after two months of deliberations the plan that is announced comes as no surprise, brings little change and according to some reports was actually proposed way back in November.
Salon War Room blogger Tim Grieve has done a nice job of documenting all the places Our Fine President’s new rhetoric directly contradicts his previous statements about this war and it’s strategies. He’s also done a nice job documenting all the opposition that has met this new plan in Congress.
It was no surprise that the Democrats would object and look for ways to force the President’s hand in another direction, but even the Republicans have started acting like they have backbones themselves and not just extremely long poles shoved up their… well I digress. Both sides of the Congressional aisle had their fun giving executive branchers the business this week, but it’s not likely to accomplish much as the power of war does rest with the executive and it’s tough to reign it in once unleashed.
Congress will look for ways to force a timetable or benchmarks or some other symbolic schedule for things to happen, but the simplistic, black and white worldview held by our current batch of leaders will continue to guide things, and they don’t much like looking back, admitting failure or realizing that the mess they’ve made can’t be solved the same way it was started.
Unfortunately, to them you are either with us or against us. Iraq is unstable because we made it that way, but Syria and Iran are helping to fuel that instability. The Iraq Study group recommended bringing them to the table to discuss stabilizing Iraq because they rightly saw that no one benefits from a lawless neighbor. Right now Iran and Syria want Iraq to be crazy and dangerous because it is bad for America. If we were to leave it would be bad for both of those countries as an opposition to their regimes could easily grow in a lawless, violent Iraq.
However, instead of going to the table with them on Iraq issues while leaving our other disputes off the table, we’re told by our Secretary of State that negotiations wouldn’t work because they’d bring up those issues that we say are off the table. Funny, but isn’t this the administration that predicts just about everything wrong? How do we know how negotiations might work if we haven’t tried them just yet?
But it all comes back to that with us or against us attitude. Instead of looking for areas of common interest, our forces are busy raiding an Iranian consulate in Iraq and government officials are asking big business to drop the high priced law firms that do pro bono representation for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay.
The whole idea of our system of law and government is based on the notion of equal protection under the law. As the feds keep losing court fights to hold their prisoners outside the realm of law, they now turn to business in an attempt to cut off funding for their opposition. It’s amazing how resourceful they can get in covering their backs and seeking to justify all the injustices they commit, and how inflexible they can be when it comes to an actual war where hundreds of thousands of people are being killed and injured.