Dominoes

Last November, the White House unveiled- with great fanfare- something called the 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' (in reality a 2+ year-old document dusted off for PR purposes). It broke down the strategy into three parts: the political track (fundamentalist Shia government? check.), the security track (rampant sectarian violence? check.), and the economic track (something about 'reconstruction').

In an analysis looking at the President's grimmer tone in discussing Iraq, the New York Times wonders why that document hasn't been mentioned since-

President Bush’s newest effort to rebuild eroding support for the war in Iraq features a distinct shift in approach: Rather than stressing the benefits of eventual victory, he and his top aides are beginning to lay out the grim consequences of failure...

...It is reminiscent of — updated for a different war, and a different time — President Lyndon B. Johnson’s adoption of the “domino theory,” in which South Vietnam’s fall could lead to Communism’s spread through Southeast Asia and beyond. In the case of Iraq, Mr. Bush’s argument boils down to a statement he quoted from General Abizaid, his top commander in the Middle East: “If we leave, they will follow us.”

Yep, if we leave, all those feuding Iraqi factions will surely follow us home, if only to continue their civil war in towns that get more than four hours of electricity a day. Ohh, did he mean terrorists? Because they only make up a small percentage of the groups we're fighting there (and only are there because of our invasion). But hey, maybe Bush is right... he all but left Afghanistan so that he could invade Iraq and the terrorists did follow us there. Maybe he should've stayed the course in his first war.

Continuing on-

...Missing from Mr. Bush’s latest speeches, at least so far, is detail about the progress of his previous plan, the “Strategy for Victory” of November, billed as the product of a review and rethinking of what had worked and what had failed...

...The Pentagon’s latest report to Congress about progress on that strategy painted a mixed but largely grim picture, especially about the rise of sectarian violence and the failed effort to create an effective Iraqi police force. So why not announce a new change of strategy? A senior official said this week that the president could only talk about a change of strategy so many times, without looking as if he is constantly casting about for solutions...

...For now, with a critical election looming in just 10 weeks and nervous members of his own party searching for an argument they can sell back home, he is trying to focus voters not on the high price of winning but on the harder-to-define cost of letting the dominoes fall.

The domino effect that they don't want you to think about are the consquences that starting this war of choice have brought us: a damaged reputation worldwide as a go-it-alone bully, terrorism inflamed, an empowered radical Shia movement, a depleted military and treasury, reports of rampant abuses by U.S. soldiers further hurting U.S. credibility, a divided and angry U.S. population, and an inability to focus on other foreign and domestic priorities. None of that had to happen.

The President wants us all to forget that he chose this war for increasingly dubious reasons; it was not a war of necessity by any means. The President tries to use the 9/11 conflation to obscure that, by stating that this war "came to our shore". That can be said of Afghanistan, but not Iraq. Iraq didn't come to our shore or anyone else's. We came to its shore (to preempt things we would soon find out the administration knew were exaggerated at best), and brought our shock and awe with us.

Meanwhile, in a speech the other day, President Bush downplayed the shadow of civil war in Iraq, stating that "only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country." I'm sure most of the people want peace, Mr. President, but if wishes were horses, etc... You can't end the sectarian violence with peppy speeches littered with the word 'victory' as frequently as possible. Victory is not possible if you continue to quibble with what is reality. Even your own Pentagon doesn't share your optimism, which notes rises in violence and how the threat of civil war occupies our military in full. They've taken their efforts as far as they can go and are now just treading water sand. Your own military commanders have been saying the same thing as well. But the White House does not want us thinking about that, because they know that American disapproval of the war will increase, as only the Bush loyalists will accept U.S. soldiers fighting and dying for another country's civil war.

Their real strategy as November approaches appears to be confusing us as much as possible.