The acknowledged US troop fatalities in Iraq ratchet toward the mediagenic number of 3000, and the White House seems determined to time the announcement of its "new way forward" so as to divert public attention from that sad milestone. But what will that "way" be? Sidney Blumenthal writes for the Guardian(Dec. 21):
Bush's touted but unexplained "new way forward" ... may be the first order of battle, complete with details of units, maps and timetables, ever posted on the website of a thinktank. "I will not be rushed," said Bush. But apparently he has already accepted the latest neoconservative programme, artfully titled with catchphrases appealing to his desperation - "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq" - and available for reading on the site of the American Enterprise Institute.
Repudiated in the midterm elections, Bush has elevated himself above politics, and repeatedly says, "I am the commander in chief." With the crash of Rove's game plan for using his presidency as an instrument to leverage a permanent Republican majority, Bush is abandoning the role of political leader. He can't disengage militarily from Iraq because that would abolish his identity as a military leader, his default identity and now his only one.
Unlike the political leader, the commander in chief doesn't require persuasion; he rules through orders, deference and the obedience of those beneath him. By discarding the ISG [Iraq Study Group] report, Bush has rejected doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility. By embracing the AEI manifesto, he asserts the warrior virtues of will, perseverance and resolve. The contest in Iraq is a struggle between will and doubt. Every day his defiance proves his superiority over lesser mortals. Even the joint chiefs have betrayed the martial virtues that he presumes to embody. He views those lacking his will with rising disdain. The more he stands up against those who tell him to change, the more virtuous he becomes. His ability to realise those qualities surpasses anyone else's and passes the character test.
The mere suggestion of doubt is fatally compromising. Any admission of doubt means complete loss, impotence and disgrace. Bush cannot entertain doubt and still function. He cannot keep two ideas in his head at the same time. [Former Secretary of State Colin] Powell misunderstood when he said that the current war strategy lacks a clear mission. The war is Bush's mission.
No matter the setback it's always temporary, and the campaign can always be started from scratch in an endless series of new beginnings and offensives - "the new way forward" - just as in his earlier life no failure was irredeemable through his father's intervention. Now he has rejected his father's intervention in preference for the clean slate of a new scenario that depends only on his willpower.
"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush told the Washington Post on Tuesday, a direct rebuke of Powell's formulation, saying he was citing General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs, and adding, "We're going to win." Winning means not ending the war while he is president. Losing would mean coming to the end of the rope while he was still in office. In his mind, so long as the war goes on and he maintains his will he can win. Then only his successor can be a loser.
Bush's idea of himself as personifying martial virtues, however, is based on a vision that would be unrecognisable to all modern theorists of warfare. According to Carl von Clausewitz, war is the most uncertain of human enterprises, difficult to understand, hardest to control and demanding the highest degree of adaptability. It was Clausewitz who first applied the metaphor of "fog" to war. In his classic work, On War, he warned, "We only wish to represent things as they are, and to expose the error of believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make himself distinguished in war."
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, "clarity" of a kind may be discernible through the fog. The LA Times, in a report on the Iraq refugee crisis, notes that "The violence has been escalating for so long that it's difficult for refugees, most of whom are Sunni Arab Muslims, to pinpoint the exact horror that sent them rushing across borders" (emphasis mine).
That's right: the refugees are mostly minority Sunnis, fleeing the Shi'ite-dominated army and police and Shi'ite militias. So, if there really is a civil war in Iraq, the Shi'ites seem pretty close winning. Or, rather, it's all over but the mopping-up (don't let's call it "ethnic cleansing"). That might explain Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's repeated insistence that his government does not need or want a "surge" of additional foreign troops, and is in fact ready to "stand up" to take charge of Baghdad as early as March.
But if the Shi'ites have won, why can't Bush simply say they're the "right faction for the job" and declare "victory"? That would be consistent with Acting President Cheney's reportedly favored tactical/rhetorical adjustment, and with his mentor Donald Rumsfeld's parting advice to "go minimalist" in formulating the US mission. But even Bush may know better than to try floating the "Mission Accomplished" line a second time. His bravo-ry faces its ultimate test in putting Cheney and al-Maliki in their respective places [Dec. 24: the skeptical field command is easy to get into line]. "We'll succeed, unless we quit." Or finish. As Blumenthal points out, war itself now is the mission.
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