vietnammemorial.JPGPresident Bush yesterday hid as he often does in front of a politically safe audience and proceeded to mention the threat of “al Qaeda” over 90 times (by CNN’s count). The repetition was partly an effort to prove something no one has ever disputed — that the reason the small group of men who both identify with al Qaeda and are fighting in Iraq call themselves “Al Qaeda in Iraq” is because — and here the President paused to allow the full force of his newly discovered insight to sink in — “they are al Qaeda in Iraq.” Just like OBL in Baghdad.

The audience did not quite know what to make of this Presidential revelation, but I suspect many of them considered just for a moment the possibility that their Commander in Chief might not be up to the task of sorting out the real threats to our strategic interests, let alone discerning whether his efforts were helping or hurting the cause. It may even have occurred to some of them that the reason there are insurgents in Iraq identifying with al Qaeda when there weren’t before we invaded is because we are in Iraq with 160,000 US troops propping up a Shia regime that is allied to Shia Iran and unwilling to share power with the sectarian Sunni elements we’ve tried to marginalize.

But none of this matters, because the whole point of Mr. Bush’s endless al Qaeda repetitions was to implant ever more firmly in the minds of his dwindling supporters [h/t Digby] the absolute necessity of continued US fighting in Iraq as long as there is anyone in Iraq whom Mr. Bush might identify as al Qaeda. After all, he argues, as long as there are any left there, they could attack us here, so we have to fight them there. Never mind how illogical and unlikely this connection, it is a formulation guaranteed to keep us there forever, or until we’ve completely destroyed Iraq or our own Army, with the last likely to occur first.

While the President was revealing this political strategy, Michael Gordon, the Pentagon’s ever reliable press agent now embedded at the New York Times, was revealing the corresponding military strategy, as given to him by General Petraeus and his Joint Campaign Redesign Team. The interesting thing about Petreaus’ plan is that it bears no resemblence to the misleading impression he and the White House deliberately created during the Iraq withdrawal debate last week. Gordon’s press release proves, without Gordon saying it, that the Republicans were essentially misled by Petraeus, Rice and Hadley, who implored wavering Republicans to wait until September to assess the surge, while never mentioning that the real plan — the only plan there is — would leave the surge forces in Iraq for another year and probably into 2009.

Remember Stephen Biddle’s op ed arguing we either had to “go deep or get out”? Biddle was part of the strategic assessment team behind the plan, and guess what, we’re going deep. Now we know why the Washington Post carried his article last week; it was a plant to prepare us for the plan.

But what’s this? Gordon’s editors managed to slip in one revealing paragraph towards the end of his lengthy press release and buried on the inside pages:

The overarching goal, an American official said, is to advance political accommodation and avoid undercutting the authority of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While the plan seeks to achieve stability, several officials said it anticipates that less will be accomplished in terms of national reconciliation by the end of 2009 than did the plan developed by General Casey. [my bold]

Got that? We replaced General Casey’s plan of training Iraqis and turning over security to them because it supposedly wasn’t working, and we’ve replaced it with a plan that will accomplish even less in promoting national reconciliation, even though promoting national reconciliation is the President’s current declared justification for the surge. But don’t worry, this time we have the right plan:

“We are going to try a dozen different things,” said one senior officer. “Maybe one of them will flatline. One of them will do this much. One of them will do this much more. After a while, we believe there is chance you will head into success. I am not saying that we are absolutely headed for success.”

Over 30 years ago, I was a radio operator in the First Cavalry Division, operating in the jungles of Viet Nam, and one of my jobs was to call in “medevac” helicopters to carry out our killed and wounded. During my tour (’69-’70), we went through one of these mindless strategy changes by our generals. Some regard it as disrespectful to suggest all that was in vain. But we’ve been here before; you can see the signs. And we’re going to need another wall.

Related posts:

  1. You Got To Move
  2. Failed Models are a Fixture on Wall Street
  3. H1N1: Writing Is On The Wall For Health Care Now
  4. Slowing, Killing Health Care Reform is about Politics, not Policy
  5. The Downturn is Over for Wall Street, but Main Street’s is Still Going On