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Sunday, January 14, 2007

It isn't just about politics, dammit!
Posted by Jill | 8:04 AM
This article in the Washington Post focuses entirely on the political machinations of Bush's Iraq policy of bumping troop levels back up to where they were last year, which didn't work then either. How about focusing just a wee bit on the fact that his intransigence means that he doesn't give a shit about Congress (not even its members in his own party), and he sure as hell doesn't give a shit about the American people?

The bipartisan opposition to President Bush's troop-increase plan has proved more intense than his advisers hoped and has left them scrambling to find support, but the White House is banking on the assumption that it can execute its "new way forward" in Iraq before Congress can derail it.

The plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq was virtually guaranteed to provoke a furor in Washington, Bush advisers said, but the storm was exacerbated by the slow, leaky way that the White House reached a decision. The policy review stretched two months after the election and the essence of the plan became known long before Bush announced it, making it a political pinata for opponents.

Without Bush making the case for it until last week, resistance hardened, and aides now harbor no hope of winning over Democrats. Instead, they aim mainly to keep Republicans from abandoning him further. Bush invited GOP leaders to Camp David this weekend and will argue his case to the nation on CBS's "60 Minutes" tonight. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley will also hit the airwaves today.

"We recognize that many members of Congress are skeptical," Bush said in his radio address yesterday, adding: "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible."

Many Democrats, in fact, have proposed alternatives centered around pulling out troops, an idea Bush flatly rejects. So hopes for a bipartisan consensus after Democrats captured Congress in the November midterm elections have evaporated, and Bush appears more isolated than ever.

"We are headed towards quite a donnybrook in Congress," said former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, whose plan for withdrawing combat forces by early 2008 was never fully embraced by Bush or Democrats. "We had hoped that there would be more progress towards a more bipartisan approach."

The White House has downscaled its goals and is playing for time. Advisers resign themselves to a nonbinding congressional resolution condemning the troop increase but want to avoid many Republicans voting for it. Former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who lost reelection, called Bush's plan "a step in the right direction" and said Republicans do not want to walk away from Iraq but are "in full political survival mode" now. "It's very hard, particularly if you're on the ballot in two years, to run on the side of the president on anything to do with the war."


Is anyone else offended by this almost single-handed focus on the political ramifications of supporting or opposing this policy? Either it's the right thing to do or it isn't. If it's right, you fund it. If it's wrong, you get the Constitutional crisis underway NOW, before Bush can send any more young Americans to be embedded with an Iraqi army that may very well be infiltrated by the very insurgents they're supposed to be fighting. In 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations reported that in some areas, up to one-fifth of the security forces consist of insurgents. Does anyone honestly believe that this has changed? And how safe do you think these additional troops are going to be when the guy who Bush thought was HIS puppet, but instead is Moqtada al-Sadr's, puts Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar into the top military job in Baghdad against the opposition of the U.S. military brass? Does anyone honestly think this decision was Maliki's alone? And just what do they think is going to happen to American troops who go after al-Sadr if a decision is made to target him for assassination?

Whoever believes that this "surge" of a 15% increase in troop levels -- what Jon Stewart calls "a gratuity" -- is going to somehow manage to turn Iraq into a land of peace and plenty is delusional.

Oh, right. They ARE delusional. But even assuming that the American troop presence can calm the situation down, the ONLY winners here are going to be American oil companies, who are waiting for the country to be secure enough so that their sweetheart deal of getting 75% of the revenues from Iraq's oil fields can come to fruition. The families of the Americans who will, it can now be acknowledged, "die for oil", or die for Bush's legacy, or die for little else, don't win. The American people, who will be even more hated worldwide than we are now, and who will in the future have a much-reduced standard of living because of the huge cost of this war, don't win. The Iraqis, who will see much of their country's wealth go into the pockets of American oil executives, don't win.

In 1988, I used to say that the Bush family views the entire United States as a private fiefdom for enriching themselves and their friends. Little did I know that they view the entire WORLD that way.

It's not about the politics anymore. This is no longer about Democrat and Republican, right and left. It's about what kind of country we are and what kind of country we want to be. It's about "moral values" -- the kind of moral values that really count.
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