Believing in War

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In my ongoing struggle to understand the rightie brain, I believe I have found a new clue. The rightie blogger Ace of Spades writes about “Democratic cravenness,”

I’m not calling them cowards because they won’t support the war. They’re liberals — they don’t believe in war. They believe in “aggressive, take-no-prisoners diplomacy.”

The clue lies in the words “believe in.” I take it the Ace does “believe in” war. But what does “believe in” mean in the context of war? Usually when one “believes in” something, it’s a statement of faith or trust. If someone says “I believe in capitalism” or “I believe in regular dental checkups,” he’s saying that he trusts the thing “believed in” to be to his benefit.

Sometimes you need context. Saying “I believe in spinach” makes no sense unless it’s in the context of, say, nutrition, commodity markets, or a Popeye cartoon.

Righties sometimes slam lefties for bumper-sticker slogans like “peace is the answer,” which draws the retort “so what was the question?” It’s a reasonable retort. “Peace” as a policy proposal is, well, inane. To me, “peace is the answer” is about peace as an ideal, but that’s what I’m reading into it.

I haven’t seen righties plaster “war is the answer” on their bumpers, but maybe I’m not looking hard enough. If someone “believes in” war per se, as I infer the Ace does, that’s pretty much the same thing. “Believing in” war makes war sound like foreign policy Pepto Bismol — the first remedy you reach for to soothe your foreign problem, whatever it is.

There are times when a nation must engage in war to save itself or a vital ally, and when that’s the case I guess I “believe in” war as much as the Ace does. But when someone talks about “believing in” war without qualifiers, I do wonder if he’s thinking at all.

Let’s flip that around. I “believe in” diplomacy in the sense that I think diplomacy should be the first remedy to try when foreign events are causing American discomfort. However, I won’t say that I have faith it will always achieve the desired solution. Sometimes diplomacy succeeds, and sometimes it fails. Sometimes diplomacy only preserves a status quo. But war doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee, either. And diplomacy is the safer remedy, in that it costs less and is less likely than war to have harmful side effects.

War, on the other hand, can have repercussions that are as bad if not worse than the original disease. Even when one achieves the desired outcome, the costs and side effects can leave a nation in a weakened, depleted state.

So even when diplomacy fails, sometimes it’s the better choice to live with the failure, or to patch together conditions — sanctions, perhaps — to keep a threatening situation from getting worse. It’s a matter of judging how vital the national interest in question is, what price the nation is willing to pay to achieve it, and what risks are involved. It’s also a matter of judging whether a military solution could achieve the desired result under any circumstances, or if sending troops would amount to dusting the porcelain with a hammer.

These are issues the Bush Administration, and the hawks, didn’t even try to think through before they got fired up to invade Iraq. So certain were they that war is the answer that they didn’t bother to formulate the question.

And after all this time, they’re still not thinking through the question.

The Ace (linking to Jonah Goldberg) repeats the usual drivel about how some people want to win but other people want to cut and run. But I think the fundamental question about Iraq is not whether the war is “winnable.” It’s whether a military victory in Iraq could help resolve the problem of Islamic terrorism (assuming that’s what we’re at war about) at all. And this is the question that righties lack the moral courage to address. Goldberg:

Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition — which not long ago favored increasing troops when Bush was against that — won’t say what it wants.

In fact, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have made it clear that it’s time to begin a withdrawal. Even Hillary Clinton has decided it’s time to withdraw. Other than Joe Lieberman and maybe a handful of conservative Dems from Red states, the overwhelming majority of Dems in Congress are now in favor of withdrawal, and have said so. Goldberg needs to keep up.

This is flatly immoral. If you believe the war can’t be won and there’s nothing to be gained by staying, then, to paraphrase Sen. John Kerry, you’re asking more men to die for a mistake. You should demand withdrawal. But that might cost votes, so they opt for nonbinding symbolic votes.

I don’t like the “nonbinding” resolution stuff, either, but I understand the strategy behind the “nonbinding” resolution is that Republicans are more likely to support it. We’ll see how that works.

Another Democratic dodge is the demand for a “political solution” in Iraq, the preferred talking point among Democrats these days. This is either childishly naive or reprehensibly dishonest. No serious person thinks that peace can be secured without a political solution. The question is how to get one. And nobody — and I mean nobody — has made a credible case that the Iraqis can get from A to B without more bloodshed, with or without American support.

Oh, really? How about

    “[M]y belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” — Vice President Richard Cheney, March 16 2003

What Goldberg is too thick to understand is that calling for a “political solution” is not a strategy, but a goal. If he agrees that “political solution” is the proper goal, as he seems to do, then he and other war supporters need to think long and hard about how “military victory” could bring about “political solution.” By itself, I don’t believe it would.

Saying we need a political solution is as helpful as saying “give peace a chance.” Peace requires more than pie-eyed verbiage. In the real world, peace has no chance until the people who want to give death squads another shot have been dispatched from the scene.

There are plenty of people in the military and the State Department who tried to explain this to BushCo before the invasion of Iraq. The early section of Thomas Ricks’s Fiasco is the story of how experts tried to tell Wolfowitz and other neocon hawks that military force, no matter how well used, might not result in the desired outcome. And the neocons just brushed off the advice and called it crazy.

“The people around the president were so, frankly, intellectually arrogant,” this general continued. “They knew postwar Iraq would be easy and would be a catalyst for change in the Middle East. They were making simplistic assumptions and refused to put them to the test. It’s the vice president, and the secretary of defense, with the knowledge of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the vice chairman. They did it because they already had the answer, and they wouldn’t subject their hypothesis to examination.” [ Ricks, Fiasco, p. 99]

In other words, war was the answer. But what was the question? I do not believe everyone in the Bush Administration, or its pro-war supporters, were asking the same question. By that I mean they weren’t on the same page about the purpose or objectives of the war. We know now the WMDs and links to 9/11 were just the sales pitch, not the reason for the war. Certainly control of oil was a big factor, but I think most of the neocons really believed the fairy tale that deposing Saddam Hussein would by itself result in a more stable Middle East. Some (Karl Rove) probably just saw it as the Greatest Wedge Issue Ever and didn’t give a hoohaw about either security or peace. The war also promised to reward certain big, supportive companies with fat contracts (if only Enron could have hung on a little longer; war contracts surely would have bailed them out). For the President himself, I think a desire to depose Saddam was related to his unresolved oedipal conflicts with his father.

But Bush in his public statements still evokes 9/11 and the threat of terrorism, and still claims that a military victory in Iraq will make America safer from terrorism, even though I see no logical reason why that would be true. Either he’s still not thinking through the question, or he’s lying about the objectives. Or both.

And what the righties also can’t see is that talk of achieving a political solution by means of “victory” verges on magical thinking. They can’t see that using the military to dispatch “the people who want to give death squads another shot” is just turning the wheel and creating more of those people. The violence now is so out of control it cannot be contained by force of arms, in my opinion. One can argue that if we’d had many more troops in Iraq with a solid plan for occupation in the spring of 2003 it might not have come to this. But we didn’t, and it did come to this.

The question we should be asking now is, will our staying any longer make a damn bit of difference to the outcome? Anyone who says yes should try to be realistic about what might be achievable, how much it’s going to cost, and how long it will take. And considering that the hawks haven’t been right about anything for the past four years, let me express skepticism that they know the answers to those questions.

And, of course, if the answer to the question is no, then why are we staying?

The Pentagon Goes Fishin’

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Following up the last post — in Slate, Andrew Rice provides a simple explanation of what’s going on (emphasis added):

The intelligence gathering, according to the agencies that conduct it, is meant to help discover potential spies and other security threats by giving them information about targeted individuals’ sources of income. When their suspicions are raised, the agencies issue so-called “national security letters” to banks and other financial institutions. Unlike the F.B.I., the agencies have no power to compel the banks to turn the information over, but they’re seldom refused. The military seems to be much more involved in it than the C.I.A. The strongest voices of criticism—and the sources for the story?—seem to be at the F.B.I., which thinks the spooks are going on fishing expeditions. “The more this is done, and the more poorly it’s done, the more pushback there is for the F.B.I.” when it goes to banks to conduct its own investigations, an anonymous “official” tells the paper.

The paper notes that the disclosure is significant, because it marks a breach of the traditional strictures on domestic operations by spy agencies. Congress has rejected several attempts by the agencies to gain the power to compel banks to give them such information. It’s not clear whom the agencies are investigating. The military claims it’s mostly keeping tabs on servicemen and private contractors, though others say the surveillance is broader, especially when it comes to the Pentagon, which has made the use of such letters “standard practice.”

Digby:

… the Pentagon and the CIA have taken it upon itself to investigate the finances of American citizens with no warrants or oversight and keep the information on file forever … The military, the clandestine spy service and the FBI have all been gathering financial information on American citizens. Nobody knows what they have, who’s been targeted or if the information is correct or useful.

Don’t miss this:

We are building a well funded national police state apparatus at the same time that we are giving unlimited money and power to our military and foreign intelligence agencies to operate in the United States. This is incredibly dangerous and I can’t help but wonder why there is so little effort on the part of anyone in public life to educate the public on the inherant dangers of such powerful, unaccountable institutions. This is why we had a revolution to begin with. It’s why we fought two world wars in the last century. (Where is the Al Gore of civil liberties?)

And the most laughable thing is that all of this is apparently perfectly acceptable to the principled right wingers and “libertarians” who spent decades railing against the jack booted government thugs — at least until a Republican administration was wielding the power. It seems that unless the target in question is buying weapons or explosives (in which case they come roaring in to protect the only amendment in the Bill of Rights they care about) these people are just fine with all this. After all, only the “right” people are being spied upon — Muslims, war protestors, liberals, Democrats and other enemies of the state.

Indeed, as near as I can tell from Technorati and Memeorandum, the only rightie blogger commenting on this story as of yet is this one, who says what the Pentagon is doing is “all perfectly legal,” and adds, “As usual, the left is in a snit! Gee, big surprise huh?”

Stupid is as stupid blogs, I say. As Tim F. writes at Balloon Juice, “Add power and subtract accountability. Abuses are inevitable like water flows downhill.”

Military Expands Domestic Surveillance

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I just saw this and haven’t had a chance to digest it yet, but Eric Lichtblau and Mark Mazzetti write for the New York Times:

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say. …

…The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

Betrayal

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Per Glenn Greenwald, don’t miss this audio essay by rightie Rod Dreher.

As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.

In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.

Like so many loyal soldiers of movement conservatism, Dreher’s earliest political memories are of the Carter Administration and the Iranian hostage crisis, followed by the triumphant ascension of Ronald Reagan. He was 13 years old when Reagan was elected, so you can’t fault him for viewing these events through a child’s eyes. The problem is, as it is with so many of his fellow travelers, that his understanding of politics remained childish. He seems to have retained a child’s simple faith that Democrats (and liberals) are “bad” and Republicans (and conservatives) are “good,” so one does not have to think real hard to know who’s right or wrong. In the minds of righties, Republicans/conservatives have an inherent virtue that keeps them on the side of the angels. What passes for “critical analysis” among righties is most often just the unconscious jerking of their knees in support of their faith.

Dreher’s is the voice of a man who realizes his faith has been betrayed.

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative – that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word – that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot – that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

The answers to your questions, Mr. Dreher, are (1) yes, and (2) because you were brainwashed. As I wrote here,

I noticed years ago that the rank-and-file “movement conservative” is younger than I am. Well, OK, most people are younger than I am. But surely you’ve noticed that a disproportionate number of True Believers are people who reached their late teens / early twenties during the Carter or Reagan years at the earliest. They came of age at the same time the right-wing media / think tank infrastructure began to dominate national political discourse, and all their adult lives their brains have been pickled in rightie propaganda.

Because they’re too young to remember When Things Were Different, they don’t recognize that the way mass media has handled politics for the past thirty or so years is abnormal. What passes for our national political discourse — as presented on radio, television, and much print media — is scripted in right-wing think tanks and media paid for by the likes of Joseph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife, and more recently by Sun Myung Moon. What looks like “debate” is just puppet theater, presented to manipulate public opinion in favor of the Right.

In this puppet theater “liberals” (booo! hisss!) are the craven, cowardly, and possibly demented villains, and “conservatives” are the noble heroes who come to the rescue of the virtuous maid America. Any American under the age of 40 has had this narrative pounded into his head his entire life. Rare is the individual born after the Baby Boom who has any clue what “liberalism” really is. Ask, and they’ll tell you that liberals are people who “believe in” raising taxes and spending money on big entitlement programs, which of course is bad. (Read this to understand why it’s bad.)

Just one example of how the word liberal has been utterly bastardized, see this Heritage Foundation press release of March 2006 that complains Congress is becoming “liberal.” Why? Because of its pork-barrel spending.

But I want to say something more about betrayal. One piece left out of most commentary on the freaks (not hippies, children; the name preferred by participants of the counterculture was freaks) was how betrayed many of us felt. Remember, we’d been born in the years after World War II. We’d spent our childhoods dramatizing our fathers’ struggles on Normandy Beach and Iwo Jima in our suburban back yards. Most of us watched “Victory at Sea” at least twice. Most of our childhood heroes were characters out of American mythos, like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone (who seemed an awful lot alike). Further, some of the scariest times of the Cold War unfolded during our elementary and middle schools years. We grew up believing the Communists would nuke us any second. Our schools (even Sunday School, as I recall) and media made sure we were thoroughly indoctrinated with the understanding that liberty and democracy were “good” and Communism was “bad,” and America Is the Greatest Nation in the World.

For many of us, these feelings reached their apex during the Kennedy administration. I was nine years old when he was elected. He seemed to embody everything that was noble and good and heroic about America. I remember his tour of Europe the summer before the assassination. I watched his motorcade move through cheering crowds on our black-and-white console television and never felt prouder to be an American.

But then our hearts were broken in Dallas, and less than two years later Lyndon Johnson announced he would send troops to Vietnam. And then the young men of my generation were drafted into the meat grinder. Sooner or later, most of us figured out our idealism had been misplaced. I was one of the later ones; the realization dawned for me during the Nixon Administration, which began while I was a senior in high school. Oh, I still believed in liberty and democracy; I felt betrayed because I realized our government didn’t. And much of my parents’ generation didn’t seem to, either.

The counterculture was both a backlash to that betrayal and to the cultural rigidity of the 1950s. And much of “movement conservatism” was a backlash to the counterculture, albeit rooted in the pseudo-conservatism documented earlier by Richard Hofstadter and others.

(And how weird is it that anyone is still talking about “hippies”? Did some hippiechick sitter drop Dreher on his head when he was a baby?)

Rod Dreher and others of his generation are now old enough that their children are at least approaching adolescence, if they haven’t already arrived. What “earliest political memory” will imprint on them? What form will the inevitable rebellion against their parents’ generation take?

Update: Sorta kinda related — Jonathan Zasloff speculates how much the Carter/Iranian hostage crisis episode caused the Dems to lose credibility on foreign policy. The fact is, to get the whole sad story of how the Dems lost credibility on foreign policy you have to go back to the 1940s. And it has little to do with anything the Dems actually did, or didn’t, do.

Murtha’s Plan

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Just posted at The Nation by Ari Berman:

At a hearing on Iraq today convened by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressman Jack Murtha offered a preview of how he plans to reign in the Bush Administration, from the perch of his chairmanship of the Defense Subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee.

Murtha announced his intention to use the power of the purse try and close US prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, eliminate the signing statements President Bush uses to secretly expand executive power and restrict the building of permanent bases in Iraq.

And starting February 17, Murtha will begin holding “extensive hearings” to block an escalation of the war in Iraq and ultimately redeploy US troops out of the conflict. Murtha predicts that a non-binding resolution criticizing Bush’s expansion of the war would pass the Congress by a two to one vote. But he believes that only money, not words, will get the President’s attention.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Bleep Lieberman

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Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek write that Senator Joe “Vichycrat” Lieberman has “quietly” decided to give President Bush a pass on Katrina.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Lieberman’s reversal underscores the new role that he is seeking to play in the Senate as the leading apostle of bipartisanship, especially on national-security issues.

Conventional wisdom says that Lieberman is so much in love with his self-image of the Good German Democrat that he’d send his mother to Iraq to make Bush happy. Of course, it’s always possible someone is paying him off.

On Wednesday night, Bush conspicuously cited Lieberman’s advice as being the inspiration for creating a new “bipartisan working group” on Capitol Hill that he said will “help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.”

Talk about someone backing the wrong horse.

Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.

Asserting that there were “too many important questions that cannot be answered,” Lieberman and other committee Democrats complained in a statement last year that the panel “did not receive information or documents showing what actually was going on in the White House.” …

…But now that he chairs the homeland panel—and is in a position to subpoena the records—Lieberman has decided not to pursue the material, according to Leslie Phillips, the senator’s chief committee spokeswoman. “The senator now intends to focus his attention on the future security of the American people and other matters and does not expect to revisit the White House’s role in Katrina,” she told NEWSWEEK.

Joe is finding other ways to sell us all out. From an editorial in today’s New York Times:

Making his umpteenth pitch to Congress to provide more security money for New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated the obvious when he said that money to defend against terrorism should be divvied up based on an assessment of risks, not “spread across the country like peanut butter.” After all, his testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee echoed one of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The mayor estimated that more than $3 billion had been distributed in this lunatic way to date.

Unfortunately, the committee’s incoming chairman, Senator Joseph Lieberman, is partial to peanut butter. Mr. Lieberman, who won re-election last November as an independent with help from Mr. Bloomberg, continues to believe that every state, regardless of the risks or threats it faces, should be getting antiterrorism money. In negotiations with the House, Mr. Lieberman is seeking a “compromise” formula that preserves guaranteed minimums for relatively low-risk places like his home state of Connecticut. The minimums he wants well exceed the financing favored by the House, and cannot be justified on the basis of national security.

If the Senator isn’t pocketing a generous amount of “thanks” from somebody besides his constituents ….

Blame Iraq

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While I was writing this, the BBC reported that U.S. troops stormed the Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized six members of staff.

In reviewing last night’s speech, Walter Shapiro wrote in Salon:

Ever since Bush denounced the theretofore unknown “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union Address, at a moment when the nation was still fixated on the horrors of Sept. 11, it has been instructive to listen for new rhetorical gambits in major presidential speeches. That is why it is possible that the most fateful words that Bush uttered from the White House library on Wednesday night were these: “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria.”

Even though the Democrats have won the rhetorical war in labeling the Bush war plan as escalation, 21,000 additional troops is pretty small potatoes by the standards of prior wars such as Vietnam. But expanding the battlefield to the borders of Iran and Syria — if that was indeed what Bush was suggesting — now that would qualify as escalation, as even Henry Kissinger might admit.

See rege at The Carpetbagger for more discussion. This truly is the part of the speech that needs the most scrutiny and attention.

Oh, and without even looking, I’m willing to bet that one could find critics of the war complaining about the unguarded borders from at least 2005, if not earlier.

Well, on to the reviews —

I have to say one good thing about the New York Times — its editorials beat the pants of the Washington Post’s. Compare/contrast what the two august newspapers cranked out this morning:

Shorter Washington Post: Risks, obligations, fudge, ponies, maybe, uncertainty, ponies, wait and see. More fudge.

Shorter New York Times: Bleep.

Here’s the first paragraph from the NY Times:

President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush’s war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.

It gets better after that.

Over at MSNBC/Newsweek, Howard Fineman is working hard to redeem himself from the days when his fawning deference to Lord Dubya earned him the title Media Whore of the Year.

George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup….

…if he was trying to assure the country that he had confidence in his own plan to prevent that collapse, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the words themselves weren’t that assuring either. Does anyone in America or Iraq , or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won’t be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?

To answer Howie’s question — yes, there are people who think that. There’s no end to the remarkable self-deluding properties of human cognition. But enough of the freak show.

Shorter Boston Globe: Bush won’t face reality.

Shorter Martin Kettle (UK): Blair is screwed.

Now for some substance, from Walter Shapiro, Salon:

Throughout the long century to come, any future leader contemplating sending American troops into combat should carefully watch a tape of George W. Bush’s speech to the nation Wednesday night — and ponder its underlying lessons. This was Bush deflated, his arrogance temporarily placed in a blind trust, looking grayer than ever with his brow furrowed with lines of worry. How humiliating for Bush to be forced to say with a stony face, “The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me.”

My take on the “unacceptable” line, in the context of the speech, was that Bush was wagging a finger at Iraqis for being messy. This is from the transcript:

The violence in Iraq — particularly in Baghdad — overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq’s elections posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam — the Golden Mosque of Samarra — in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

Is he not saying everything would have worked out if the Iraqis had behaved themselves?

Fred Kaplan at Slate wonders what Bush will do if the Iraqis fail again:

President Bush declared tonight that America’s commitment is “not open-ended” and that “America will hold the Iraqi government to … benchmarks.” However, he said nothing about what will happen if the Iraqis fail to meet those benchmarks. And without a warning (even a sternly intoned “or else!”), benchmarks mean nothing.

And let’s look at those benchmarks. Bush said that the Iraqi government has promised “to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November.” It “will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.” It will “spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure.” It will “hold provincial elections later this year,” to empower local leaders, especially Sunni leaders. And, in a further effort to co-opt Sunni insurgency, it “will reform de-Baathification laws and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.”

When did all these promises get made? Where did Maliki suddenly get the political power, or even the political audacity, to make them? One obstacle to reconstruction has been pervasive corruption within the Iraqi ministries; how does he hope to clean that up? The call for provincial elections has been ignored for months. The Shiite-led government promised to amend the constitution—with special attention to altering the language on oil revenue sharing and de-Baathification—back when the constitution was ratified; it has refused to bring up the issues ever since.

Still, if (if?) the plan fails, Bush will say it is Malaki’s failure, not his. From the transcript:

Only the Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents, and there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

That’s his exit strategy — blame the Iraqis.

Richard Wolffe, Newsweek:

… if you listened closely to President Bush on Wednesday night, the much-anticipated speech didn’t change the central mission much. It’s clear, hold and build—only this time with money behind it, but not that much money, and not enough new troops to really make a difference. And, Bush signaled loud and clear, it’s really the Iraqis’ problem now.

Yes, the president accepted a degree of responsibility for the failures that have characterized the war in Iraq. “Where mistakes have been made,” he said, “the responsibility rests with me.” But he didn’t go into much detail about what those mistakes were. The basic strategy had been right all along, Bush seemed to be saying. The tactics just needed a little tweaking. …

… Bush reduced the U.S. role to that of loyal watchdog to the Iraqi government. “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced,” he said. “If there is change in Iraq, it will have to come almost entirely from the government in Baghdad.”…

…Yet there was little discussion in the speech, or behind the scenes with the Iraqis, of what might happen if they failed to deliver once again. Bush’s aides say that talking about consequences—or threatening withdrawal—will weaken the Iraqi government and embolden insurgents and militias. President Bush simply said that he warned the Iraqi prime minister that the U.S. mission was not “open ended.”

“If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people,” he said, “and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people.” It was a curiously impersonal construction. He never suggested the Iraqi leader might lose the support of George W. Bush. And he never mentioned that the polls show a clear majority of Americans opposing his policy of sending more troops to Iraq.

Jack Murtha and others have been saying for months that it’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country. Now, I personally never saw this as much more than a talking point, to make the bugout seem less ignoble than it might otherwise. As much as I am all for getting out asap, let’s not kid ourselves that we’ll be able to go back to sleep and ignore Iraq after that. Whatever nastiness that goes on once we leave — and there will be nastiness, although not necessarily more nastiness than what will occur if we stay — will be seized by the Right as their next great “stabbed in the back” myth. For the rest of our lives, we’ll have to listen to the whackjobs whine about who lost Iraq? Anticipating this, it appears the politicians of both parties are pinning as much as possible on Iraqis. I can’t say I blame them.

But Bush is still reluctant to let go of his glorious little war, so 20,000 more troops will be tossed into the meatgrinder. Their purpose will be to buy Bush time to knit a bigger butt cover.

But this business about the Iranian consulate worries me; it seems, well, provocative. Is Bush deliberately trying to stir up enough trouble in the Middle East that Congress cannot deny him his 20,000 troops?

See also: Juan Cole, “Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland“; Glenn Greenwald, “The President’s intentions towards Iran need much more attention.”