Bush’s “Troop Surge”

In what is one of the best-known “secrets” in Washington, President Bush goes on television tonight to sell to the public his plan to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq. The speech has been seen by some as one of the most important Mr. Bush has made in his time in office; it is probably the most important he will make since the beginning of Gulf War II, and certainly since the 2006 elections. In this decision, Mr. Bush will be seen as either of two things by those watching him: a man who is determined to keep fighting his war as he sees it, and the public and critics be damned; or as a man who is trying to create a plan that will end the situation our country has been mired in since 2003.

No matter what the advocates of proactive defense say, this sort of situation comes when you take the aggressive stance the USA has since 2001. At some point, the drive to protect yourself from perceived threats outweighs the ability to discriminate rationally between actual threats and situations that only seem threatening. And arrogance and overconfidence can cloud your ability to select between plans that make long-term sense or failure. The President to date has listened to advisors that have steered him on the course of fear and arrogance; we’re all hoping that this will truly be a new course, instead of committing another 20,000 people to a potential meat grinder.

I truly wish there was a way for the United States to just pull out from this mistake of a war. No matter the sins of Saddam, we went into a place where interference was not required for our national security; we instigated a war, something the country is normally at pains not to do; and we went in without enough resources or strategy to do the deed properly. One is tempted to compare Iraq to Vietnam. Our being in a morass that is wracking the country is the same, at least. The operations are different here, though; in Vietnam, we started with tons of men and materiÃ©l, and kept up the support through the phasing out in the early Seventies. It was the invisibility of the enemy and their ability to get swallowed by the terrain that did us in. In Iraq, we helped dig our own pit by undercommitting forces/supply to the plan, and not creating a support plan to quickly replace the infrastructure and guarantee order, and by blithely removing people that could have helped achieve that order. Now we stand in the heart of a whirlwind of our own making, and we search for a way to endure or to escape.

If these new troops do not do the job, and if the Iraqi government cannot assert its authority and begin stabilizing its own country, President Bush will truly create a legacy — one even less savory than that which he faces currently. He, if not his successor, will be forced to pull out of Iraq by the Congress, whether controlled by left or right, and we will watch another country degenerate from potential ally to long-term enemy, with a memory of American interference — and this time with a desire for vengeance that will not disappear for several generations. Let us hope — let us pray — that this is the right choice.

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