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Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.

-Rene Descartes

The Surge - Continuing Bush's Inability to Spell Anything Out for the Public

Does the American public have any idea what progress has been made by the Iraqi government in the last year? As the map above shows, progress has been made in training the Iraqi forces and in turning over some authority to the Iraqi government - clearly positive steps and a prelude to the eventual American withdrawl. Iraq might yet more closely resemble post-war Germany or Korea than Vietnam. (We can't really hope for another Japan, of course.)

But how aware is the American public whose opinion is solicited so carefully and frequently? Do they see more than the body count on TV? Is the message getting through?

By now we all know that President Bush has ordered a "surge" of 20,000 more troops to Iraq, and Congress is debating exactly how impotent it will be in protest. Polls show the American people are unhappy. But it matters whether this is an unhappiness borne of ignorance, or an informed decision that they disapprove of Bush's new strategery and the surge of troops to Baghdad.

I just read an instructive editorial in the Yakima-Herald:

Ever since America invaded Iraq nearly four years ago, the public has heard about the lack of exit strategies, insufficient military strength to fulfill an occupation role and misjudging the depth of the sectarian violence that would follow the departure of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

We've heard about the need to allow time for Iraqi security forces and the fledgling new government to get up to speed. We heard it again Wednesday evening from Bush.

Now it rings hollow.

Of course it does. This administration has made several big mistakes in foreign policy, especially in Iraq. They are not unforgivable, unfixable mistakes - except that the president has never attempted to really come clean about making them. This editorial is instructive because it highlights that the administration has never explained itself very well – it’s been a PR nightmare even when good is accomplished. Conservatives seem willing to chalk up the problem to a liberal media, but the buck has to stop on Mr. Bush’s desk, and the fact is that he’s been a terrible salesman all along.

Salesman?!? Oh, Wulf, you demean the War on Terror if you say that the president has to sell it like a can of beans.

Come on. This is politics. You can eradicate disease and still look like a villain if you are incapable of controlling your own image. As the editorial noted, the public has heard about the lack of exit strategies over and over and over again. Rather than have an exit strategy or even a clearly articulated goal, this administration has relied on platitudes and bromides. But Americans want more than appeals to patience and patriotism. They want to know when we leave Iraq, even if it isn’t right now. By refusing to talk about timelines, the administration has ceded the debate to those who invoke Vietnam. By refusing to focus on the progress of the fledgling new government – for example, the map above - the administration has ceded the debate to those who simply count casualties.

It's not that America doesn't have the stomach for a war. It's that America doesn't have the stomach for a war that appears open-ended and whose worth is uncertain.

Back to Yakima (I can’t believe I just said that):

What will come of this new effort? Do we go in with more troops, beat up on the insurgents, declare victory and then leave the country -- expecting things to level out and for the Iraqis to find peace as we define it?

Or do additional troops just make us more of an occupier -- a role history shows is not a good one for any superpower -- while we wait for the situation to improve?

How long must we wait?

Exactly the problem. Most people I’ve talked to just have no idea what the surge will do, or what it is supposed to do. Most of them think it’s pissing down the well to send 20,000 more troops to an area we want to be done with and withdraw from – an area that only ever seems to be on the news when Americans are shot at or blown up. The president has neglected the bully pulpit over the course of our time in Iraq. That he would do so seems unfathomably stupid, given how much the president has at stake here. Military success is very uncertain, and Bush also has a lot of domestic chips riding on this hand. That's a ballsy move for a lame duck whose party just lost both houses.

I don’t agree with the editorial that we should be looking for the U.N. to get involved. And I don’t agree with the main thesis - that it is "too late". But our troops will someday, somehow leave Iraq, and the question since day one has been how that will go down. There is only one person who should be able to give a definitive answer to that question. I consider it his biggest failure that he has not recognized the importance of that question and answered it to an acceptable degree.

Posted by Wulf on January 15, 2007 at 09:39 PM

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Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.

-Rene Descartes

The Surge - Continuing Bush's Inability to Spell Anything Out for the Public

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