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January 5, 2007
New Plan for Iraq IV
In previous installments of this series I wrote about the proposed Keane-Kagan Plan to win the war in Iraq and whether or not it would work. Today it seems appropriate to write about whether from a political standpoint it stands a chance of being implemented.
We know that the vast majority of Democrats are opposed to any increase of troops in Iraq, whether for a short or long period of time. Most do not want a precipitous, immediate withdrawal, for they recognize that the country would likely descend into chaos and they'd be held responsible. They want a slow withdrawal that would take place over the next year or so.
What is not commonly recoginzed, I think, is that many conservatives and/or Republicans are now sour on the idea of a troop increase also. Robert Novak wrote yesterday that other than Sen John McCain and a few others, few Republicans in Congress support the new plan.
President Bush and McCain, the front-runner for the next presidential nomination, in pressing for a surge of 30,000 more troops, will have trouble finding support from more than 12 out of 49 Republican senators.
...Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add more troops.
...I checked with prominent Republicans around the country and found them confused and disturbed about the surge. They incorrectly assumed that the presence of Republican stalwart James Baker as co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group meant it was Bush-inspired (when it really was a bipartisan creation of Congress). Why, they ask, is the president casting aside the commission's recommendations and calling for more troops?
Read the whole thing, but I think that those quotes capture the gist of the editorial.
If Novak's piece is accurate, then it's going to be difficult if not impossible for Bush to implement any new plan that requires an increase of troops. The authors of the Keane-Kagan plan, as well as many others, have stated that a short-term increase would solve nothing. Their plan calls for a committment of about 30,000 troops for at least 18 months.
President Bush can order the troops to Iraq, but only Congress can fund them. It would seem to me that we're nearing the point where Congress is going to pull the rug out from under the entire entreprise, and it might be a bipartisan effort.
Are the Iraqis Worth It?
Charles Krauthammer thinks not. The execution of Saddam Hussein has convinced him that the current Iraqi government is not worth supporting. Writing in today's Washington Post, he reviews the execution, which he calls "botched", and concludes that
We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.
I don't agree, because I don't think that Krauthammer is asking the right question. The issue to me is that if we leave Iraq as it is, it will become a base for the jihadists. Yes I know that much or most of the killing now is sectarian and therefore not motivated by radical Islam. It's rather that a destabilized Iraq, heavily influenced by Iran, would become a base for terror.
But what I think doesn't really matter, because I'm sure no one on Capitol Hill is reading The Redhunter. President Bush wants to win the war, and Senator McCain is an important figure who holds a lot of sway. They're swimming against the tide, however, and I'm starting to become doubtful as to whether Bush can implement the new plan even if he wants to.
New Leaders
Just across the wires:
Bush intends to replace Gen. George Casey, his top military commander in Iraq, with Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, officials said. The president also will name Adm. William Fallon to replace Gen. John Abizaid at Central Command.The naming of a new military team coincides with Bush's plan to announce next Wednesday in a major speech his long-awaited new strategy for the nearly four-year-old Iraq war, which could include sending up to 20,000 more troops to reinforce Baghdad and other key cities.
The President is going to give it a try. Although he should have done all this some months ago, better late than never. The question is whether he can scrape up enough political capital to implement the plan.
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New Plan for Iraq III
New Plan for Iraq II
Here's the New Plan for Iraq
Posted by Tom at January 5, 2007 10:37 AM
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Comments
Tom,
I agree. From my point of view, we have a very fractured policy on Iraq that is adrift right now. I'm not sure what the stance of conservatives is right now, and most conservatives are not unified on what to do next. Meanwhile, as Novak points out, Republicans seem to have heard voters and a large portion seem ready to chase votes and join the Democrats who will be leaning towards a drawndown in troops.
Some conservative hawks say increase troops, others (Rush) to refer to the Baker report as the "Iraqi Surrender Report", and your links to Novak and Krauthammer illustrate how many new ideas there are. This is good to have new ideas, but it also reveals how our policy is floundering right now. What matters is what Bush plans on doing, knowing now that the Democrats in Congress control the funding of any of his efforts. Contrary to Rush's name calling about the ISG, the ISG is right on when they say the cost of the war should be included in the normal budget, not snuck in at a later date as 'emergency spending.' We know full well we are mired in a long war in Iraq, so to use Enron-like accounting to keep the cost of the war out of the regular budget (even though we all know the troops need funding) then produce an 'emergency spending' bill at a later date when we 'unexpectedly' have to fund the war is foolish and irresponsible. We have been funding the war for 3-4 years now, so the costs are no longer 'unexpected.' and should be included in the normal budget process, not hidden with offsheet budgeting like Enron.
My fear is that the President is all out of political capital, and as the Democrats begin to investigate the no-bid contracts, unaccountable reconstruction funding, intelligence failures/manipulation used to justify the war, his standing will diminsh even more. We really need to be two steps ahead, looking at what could happen if we do pull out, and what our response should be to the events that would occur. This is not defeatist thinking, this is realism. It was 'defeatist' to think that Iraq would turn into and insurgency and the post-war period woudl become a mess, and a quagmire, but the reality is that the post-war period has been botched, thus we control a 'country' in crisis.
Posted by: jason at January 5, 2007 1:14 PM
Tom: Your analysis is spot on. A Democrat sponsored slow withdrawal would be a slow defeat.
And of course the minute we leave under those circumstances, violence in Iraq would quadruple. Not that the left would care. They only use the deaths of Iraqis as pawns in their political game.
The Keane-Kagan Plan seems to be where Bush is heading. And I wonder if the President might not also surprise some folks by giving the US a new mission in Iraq: get rid of Al Sadr. We should have done it a long time ago when it would have been easier, but it's not too late.
Break a few more eggs in the Iraqi government if we have to, but we can and should get the job done right.
Posted by: Mike 
at January 6, 2007 12:01 AM
