Iraq & The Law of Lowered Expectations

“No matter how far your travel down the wrong road, it’s never too late to turn around.”

-- Turkish proverb

Expectations could not be lower for President Bush's primetime TV speech tonight on Iraq.

There has been a tidal wave of leaks about what he will say, and from all accounts it is more of the same old same old:

The same old tired strategy, the same old half measures, the same old historic amnesia and same old excuses for failure dressed up in the same old new package designed to assuage the shrinking minority of Americas who still support the war, people who were formerly known as his political base.

Ironically, it is the war's staunchest supports who have become the president's biggest critics of late. And there aren't those pesky generals to disagree with the commander in chief. He's had them transferred or sacked.

Is that a beauty of a trainwreck or what?

The simple fact of the matter is that this is the president's last chance, and even folks like Captain Ed over at Captains Quarters, a big hangout for the right-wing chattering class, has lowered expectations.

Face it: Iraq is engulfed by a civil war that is a direct result of the president's failed policies, the continued presence of U.S. troops, more of whom are now on the way, and the abjectly inept government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Malik. This is the gasoline that is feeding the fire.

The president is expected to present a new set of benchmarks for the Baghdad government to meet. Al-Maliki simply thumbed his nose at the last set. Will anything be different this time? Well, he apparently has agreed to play along.

And what difference can the paltry 20,000 or so troops that the president is expected to say will be "surged" over to Baghdad make? That's even less than a half measure.

I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised by what George Bush actually says, but disappointment is likely because the president has said and done nothing -- nada, zip, zero -- to show that he understands the consequences of his foolhardy conduct of the war.

That leaves the newly empowered Democrats to save the U.S. from itself.

One thing that the Dems can do – and already have set in motion – is to require the president get authorization from Congress for funding a troop surge, as opposed to declaring outright that it will not fund a surge.

They also can hold symbolic votes on the surge, forcing Republicans to take a stand.

That, methinks, is a good start in trying to untangle a very bad situation.

'DIVIDED, SECTARIAN, UNDERFUNDED, COLD AND HUNGRY'

Beyond being an attempt to give an emperor with no clothes some cover, the underlying purpose of the surge and concomitant increase in funding to be proposed by President Bush is to give the Iraqi army time to train up to the point where it can fully take over security duties.

That makes a report from Nancy Youssef from the McClatchy Newspapers all the more sobering.

Nut grafs:

"Five days with American trainers assigned to Muqdadiyah found the Iraqi army there divided, sectarian, underfunded, cold and hungry. It lacks equipment, motivation and a common belief in its mission. The old guard is suspicious of the American Army, which defeated them and now trains them. The young guard is suspicious of the old guard.

" . . . The American trainers said teaching counterinsurgency doctrine had become secondary to more basic pursuits, such as how to load a weapon, take care of equipment and even find basic supplies: food, water and bullets. In U.S commanders' sparse offices and barracks, piles of books on counterinsurgency tactics sit unused behind desks."

More here.

AND FOR GOOD MEASURE . . .

Newsweek intervied Leon Panetta, a member of the Iraq Study Group, about the surge:

Newsweek: When your bipartisan panel came to the conclusion that relying on Iraqi forces and embedding U.S. advisors was the right course of action, rather than a surge, did you think that you were reflecting the consensus of the U.S. military at the time?

Panetta: Yes. We sat down with military commanders there and here, and none of them said that additional troops would solve the fundamental cause of violence, which was the absence of national reconciliation. We always asked if additional troops were needed. We asked the question of [Gen. George] Casey and others, we asked it of Marine commanders in Anbar. Do you need additional troops? They all said the same thing: we don't need additional troops at this point; we need to get the Iraqis to assume the responsibility they're supposed to assume.

More here.

Cartoon © 2007 Steve Bell /The Guardian
Hat tip to Kevin Drum at Political Animal for Youssef, Panetta items