You Call That a Surge?

The global warming that Pach wrote about this morning seems to have the Bushite brain trust even more confused than usual; instead of the "new way forward" in Iraq that we were promised, they're giving us a summer re-run… an almost perfectly condensed mish-mash of all the screwups that have sent that country to hell in a handbasket.  First, the Washington Post explains that the "surge" escalation which the denizens of Shrubville have been hyping is getting limper by the day:

Bush is looking at three broad options involving one to five additional brigades, according to U.S. officials. The smallest increase would basically be limited to the brigade from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, comprising fewer than 4,000 troops, which has already departed for Kuwait. It would eventually be deployed in Baghdad.

The second option would involve deploying another Army brigade to Baghdad and two battalions of Marines to Anbar, the volatile province that has been a battlefield for the Sunni insurgency and foreign fighters associated with al-Qaeda. The Marines could not be deployed until February, U.S. officials said. The joint Army and Marine deployment would bring the increase to between 9,000 and 10,000 troops.

The third option would supplement the first and second with additional Army brigades, bringing the total to about 20,000, largely deployed in the Iraqi capital. But U.S. officials said this would take considerable time — possibly three or four months, with a complete deployment as late as May — because of the difficulty of assembling additional troops through accelerating planned deployments and remobilizing reserves, U.S. officials said.

You read that right — with Iraq racing faster toward anarchy every day, the only change that even barely raises the speedbump American forces represent won't happen until four months from now.  As with the idea of the invasion itself, it's a dubious goal with not nearly enough resources committed for it to be achieved.  No wonder even Republicans in Congress are backing away from the idea.

And it's no wonder that we're now starting to hear proclamations that this will really be an Iraqi-led effort, with those extra U.S. troops providing support.  Lots of the usual suspects have already pointed out that this is not just a rehash of the same Vietnamization "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" formula that has failed miserably (and repeatedly) over the past few years, it's duplicating a specific plan to pacify Baghdad that fizzled twice over the summer.  As I wrote during the second go-round in August:

. . . now that the U.S. is doubling its troop levels in Baghdad, the Bushites face a sobering no-win situation: Either the added patrols fail to put the lid back on the Pandora's box of Sunni-Shiite violence, or they succeed… and have to take the risk of seeing it open back up the moment they walk away. Now that fears of sectarian violence have infected the entire city . . . how can a security effort lasting a mere few months hope to erase them?

Of course, that's only bad news if you choose to live in the real world.  It's a friggin' godsend if you prefer fantasies — and how did you know that I was talking about St. John McCain  there?  Cue this morning's Los Angeles Times:

The leading advocates of an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq warned President Bush on Friday that any buildup lasting less than 18 months was doomed to fail, and urged the White House to avoid compromises that would scale back the plan.

The hard line taken by such backers as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and retired Army Gen. Jack Keane comes as the Bush administration continues to debate the size and the scope of an expected troop increase. . . .

A strategy advocated by McCain and Keane, who has advised Bush on Iraq policy, calls for about 30,000 additional troops who would remain in Iraq from 18 months to two years. About 140,000 U.S. troops are now in Iraq. . . .

"The worst of all worlds would be a short, small surge of U.S. forces," McCain said at a forum on the final version of the plan, developed by Keane and Frederick Kagan, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. "This troop surge [must be] significant and sustained; otherwise, don't do it."

It's very important for St. John to move the goalposts here — he had earlier endorsed an escalation of 20,000 troops thinking there was no way that Dubya would enact it, given the election results and the simple fact (which even McCain has admitted) that the military can't sustain such an increase. 

But it turned out that the Shrub's susceptibility to delusion is nearly as great as McCain's.  So, since the sine qua non of St. John's recommendations on Iraq is that they never be put into practice — that way, he can accuse everyone but himself of having "lost" Iraq because they didn't follow his brilliant plan — he's had to shift it further beyond the realm of physical possibility. 

Has a nation involved in a war ever been led by such cynical, yet inept cowards? 

Related posts:

1. Conn Hallinan: Why the Afghan Surge Will Fail
2. Doing it Right in Afghanistan: You and Whose Army?
3. Afghanistan: 21,000 Plus 13,000 – or Plus 115,000?
4. Gen. Ray Ordierno: We May Never Win in Iraq
5. Costs of Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Proving Unsustainable