Holy Crowley, has it really come to this?
Today Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker were grilled by Senators via video hookup. McClatchy’s article leads with the question posed by Sen. Lugar: are you planning for a change of mission or a redeployment? A clever question in a sense, because it emphasizes the issue of competence. Any military commander in Petraeus’s position had better have a plan for withdrawing, even if he’s been ordered not to admit it.
The Cheney administration has tricked, blamed, and otherwise exploited the military command structure beyond anything I’ve seen or read about in American history. As a result, the military, still harboring bitter memories of Vietnam, has lost significant prestige in the eyes of Americans. The command structure has again been presented with the choice between following orders and doing what’s right, and some officers have chosen poorly.
But the well-known preference of Americans for winning over for losing pales in comparison to the anger provoked by cheating and incompetence. Or at least we hope it will. We’ll know soon enough, if this is the best spin the administration point men can mount:
Asked for examples of progress, [Amb. Crocker] said that Iraq’s Shiite Muslim prime minister, Kurdish president and two vice presidents — one a Shiite and one a Sunni Muslim Arab — now met every Sunday morning. “I’m encouraged they can at least come together and thrash out their differences face to face,” Crocker said.
Which is something, I guess, but at this rate of progress there’ll be few Iraqis left by the time an entire legislature can even be convened, let alone decide on who gets how much of the oil wealth and, more importantly, how quickly rights to the oil can be signed over to American companies.
In response to Sen. Lugar’s question, the ambassador said No, we’re not planning.
The Indiana senator, who’s called for planning ahead for a withdrawal so that it won’t be done poorly, said there’d been reports that the Bush administration had pressed officials to abandon any such planning.Crocker said he knew of no efforts to create a Plan B.
“I’m fully engaged, as is General (David) Petraeus, in trying to implement the president’s strategy that he announced in January,” he said, referring to an increase of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops, mainly to try to quell sectarian fighting in Baghdad. “The whole focus is implementation of Plan A.”
Which reminded me of a very old line so typical of loyal Bushies.
Some neocons began agitating inside the Bush administration to support some kind of insurrection, led by Chalabi, that would overthrow Saddam. In the summer of 2001, the neocons circulated a plan to support an INC-backed invasion. A senior Pentagon analyst questioned whether Iraqis would rise up to back it. “You’re thinking like the Clinton people,” a Feith aide shot back. “They planned for failure. We plan for success.”
Faith-based planning works just as well as faith-based birth control and faith-based farming.
Krugman's op-ed in todays Times is entitled "All the President's Enablers" and who are the two examples he gives as enablers of the religion of Bushyism? Lugar and Petraeus. Krugman gives Lugar some credit for being an intelligent guy, but noted that even though he's made some intelligent moves lately, when it came time to a vote, Lugar's faithful adherence to the Republican national religion - Bushyism - won out. Krugman says we can expect the same from Petraus.
But there's rancor in the holy temple of Bush. How long before it boils over? I don't know. It's surprising to me that it hasn't already happened. The only logical conclusion is that when push comes to shove these folks are absolute True Believers. Or someone has the goods on them - enough to make a J. Edgar proud. Hoffer would have a field day writing about this crowd if he were with us.
Posted by: Buck on July 20, 2007 7:11 AM