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Dear President Bush:

I read this morning with great concern that your advisors were surprised by the increasingly chaotic and violent situation in Iraq. 

President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

I'm sorry sir, but there simply is no excuse for this. Having had many friends and family, serving our nation in uniform, who have been in and out of Iraq many times over the past few years, it seems that I was more aware than the President of the United States of the horrible chaotic mess that Iraq has become under your stewardship. This is unacceptable, and I feel that it is past time that the nation ask you how you and your advisors could be so oblivious? Is this deliberate — a deliberate ignorance so that you could disclaim any knowledge of the results of your policy choices – or some public relations ruse to cover your failures?

Honestly, sir, we deserve answers, and the friends and family of our nation's military personnel especially deserve some thorough answers on all of this. When might we expect them?

Further, since I have a moment to ask, could you also explain the chants of "Moqtada" at the hanging of Saddam Hussein, and the fact that some person involved in witnessing said hanging was able to sneak a camera phone into such a highly secured area?  Just who is in charge of the Iraqi government at the moment?  Do you know — or is it that you just do not wish to say so publicly?  And, sir, in case you hadn't been briefed on this one:  allowing protestors to march with a faux coffin through the ruins of a mosque probably wasn't the best of ideas.  Just FYI.  You might want to have some of our already-stretched-to-thin-and-weary troops guard it for a while.  I'm just saying, since the Iraqis appear to have stood down on this one.

Also, The General has a question or two, so I thought I'd point that out, just to be neighborly.

In the spirit of helpfulness, I'd like to make a suggestion:  perhaps it is your edict that television sets be tuned to Fox that is causing this disconnect between reality and the Neverland that you would like to see in Iraq.  Just a thought.

If, as the BBC is reporting (h/t Atrios), your "new and improved plan" for Iraq is to be predicated on "sacrifice," will that mean I have to do more shopping?   And, if so, will you be chipping in for my monthly budget, because it's been a long few years of trying to prop up the war economy. 

Yours in liberty, Christy

PS:  I know it is too late at this point, but it would have been awfully nice if the worst-case scenarios had been taken seriously from the start of this mess.  Just something to keep in mind.

Related posts:

  1. Maliki vs. Odierno: Who Blinks First?
  2. The End of the Delusion in Iraq
  3. Torture: Obama Heeded Maliki on Abuse Photos, Says McClatchy; What That Says for Our Occupation
  4. Changing of the Guard: US Troops Withdraw from Iraqi Cities; Maliki Declares “Sovereignty Day”
  5. The Major General’s Temper Tantrum