you say tomato, i say, um, er, tomato

"I believe the president has no strategy for success in Iraq.  His plan is to muddle through, and hand the problem off to his successor." -  Senator Joseph Biden, April 5, 2008.
 

"By the middle  of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush’s tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America’s withdrawal, and Iraq’s descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of. The challenge, therefore, was to develop and implement a workable strategy that could be handed over to Bush’s successor. Although important progress could be made on that strategy during  Bush’s watch, ultimately it would be carried through by the next President. This was the reality behind the course followed by the administration in 2005-2006, and it remains the reality behind the new and different course the administration has been following since 2007." -  Peter Feaver, Bush's NSC special adviser for strategic planning, in "Anatomy of the Surge" (April 2008)

Comments

[Adrian]

Makes sense that the Surge was designed in part to maintain political support for the war in Washington. What's the point of developing a "workable strategy" for your successor if your successor doesn't want to partake?

[ebw]

"By the middle of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush’s tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America’s withdrawal, and Iraq’s descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of.

I'm glad you dug up such a nice instance of the belief system. Thanks!

[ebw]

"By the middle of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush’s tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America’s withdrawal, and Iraq’s descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of.

I'm glad you dug up such a nice instance of the belief system. Thanks!

[JHM]

P. Feaver has to be tellin’ the truth for the passage to work as polemically deployed. But is he? Nobody who really cares for her Party can refuse to fib for it a little.

What the vigilante cowpokers say to one another when they are alone cannot be established from reliable sources, but is a consensus on "The only decisive outcome that can be achieved during President Bush’s tenure is the triumph of our enemies and America’s withdrawal" dated to the middle of 2005 credible? I'm not sure I could believe that most Big Management bozos think that in April 2008. Sir J. Sidney de la Guerre des Cent Ans does believe it, but the rest of the paladins?

In any case, down to, if not including, the suRGe, during four full years from the original aggression, everything they did made it look as if Mr. Micawber was in charge of AEI-GOP-DOD invasion and occupation strategy. Not only would somethin’ good -- somethin’ "decisive" good -- inevitably turn up for ’em, it was bound to turn up soon. That was how it looked. (Wasn't it?)

P. Feaver does his Boy and his Party little good if he reports accurately. Suppose the perps really did think what he attributes to them. In that case, all the vast parade of milestones and benchmarks and inky fingers and Khalílzád Konstitutions was a systematic campaign of mendacity, the biggest fraud in our political history. Down at the ranch everybody knew privately (sure they did!) that none of these nifty gizmos would do the trick, but they wanted Televisionland and the electorate to think otherwise and lied through their teeth accordingly.

(( "Ain’t you glad you joined the Republicans" on that basis, America? ))

Happy days.

[anomalous]

AlHayat via badger

"The official spokesman for the Sadrist bloc (in parliament), Saleh alAkili told AlHayat, "The announcement issued by Maliki about stopping the [arbitrary] searches and arrests was an attempt to throw sand in our eyes", explaining: "The arrests have not stopped, in spite of Maliki's announcement to that effect. And the American forces continue to spread terror among the people of Sadr City, stationing themselves in force at the entrances of local streets, carrying out nighttime raids, arresting hundreds of Sadr City youths, without warrants."

"America’s withdrawal, and Iraq’s descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of."
Worse than the last 18 years?

And if you're going to quote Nir Rosen as you did recently you should use the best parts:

"BIDEN: Based on what you’ve said, there’s really no hope — we really should get the hell out of there right now. I mean, there’s nothing to do. Nothing.
ROSEN: As a journalist, I’m uncomfortable advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power. And I don’t think that we’re there for the interest of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that’s ever been a motivation. […]
BIDEN: [If we withdraw], the good news is we wouldn’t be imperialists in Iraq, from your perspective.
ROSEN: Only elsewhere in the region. (laughter). … There’s no positive scenario in Iraq these days. Not every situation has a solution."

Now there may or may not be a positive scenario for the US, and there may not be one for Iraq, but those are to different issues and depending on your point of view they're in conflict. It would be nice if you, as a hip-hop loving white boy who likes to hang with the brown skinned folk in Harlem [if they're any left] and Damascus would make it clear which side you're on. But of course as a made man in the US diplomatic industrial complex you can't burn any bridges.
If a united Iraq is possible it's going to be under a nationalist government very much not in the American sphere of influence.
This doesn't bother me. It bothers many of your friends.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

Blech:

Sunday: 22 are dead 92 wounded in nighttime clashes the Shi'ite quarter of Sadr City between militiamen and Iraq and US troops.

This looks to me like the "last gasp" of the SuRGe. And no, no political space is being created for compromise, its just the same old slaughter.