Pants-on-Fire Exit Strategy

originally published January 24, 2007

Challenges are a problem for our president. As a result, perhaps as no other president, Bush has sought an autonomy free from oversight, has seen cooperation as weakness, dissent as disloyalty, and disclosure as outright betrayal. The truth has become what he’s said it is, and no one in his gravitational pull has had the stones to argue.

However, history is catching up with the president, and he has an accounting coming. He’s lost Congress, and he’s lost the good will of the American people. As a result, the jarring inconsistencies between what his administration says and how events unfold in Iraq are increasing. The various rocks under which his policies have been crafted are being upended, and he and his water boys are being exposed as rather pathetic and inept liars.

New Way Forward?

For instance, on Jan. 10, two hours before the president’s speech outlining the “New Way Forward” in Iraq, John Burns, Baghdad correspondent for the New York Times, was on “The News Hour” to describe the Iraqi position in relation to the president’s anticipated proposals. “Mr. Maliki did not want more American troops,” said Burns. “He wanted American troops pulled out of Baghdad to the periphery of the city…. He doesn’t like much the idea of more American troops embedding, as transition teams or advisers, if you will, with Iraqi military units.

“And he very much doesn’t like the idea of their embedding down to the level of companies. Why? Because he has made it very clear for some time now that he wants to be - not only be regarded as, but to actually be - able to behave as the sovereign government of Iraq.

“He doesn’t want American generals standing at his shoulders. He doesn’t want American captains radioing in saying, ‘The Iraqi army is moving here or there to do this or that,’ which does not conform to what we came here to do. So there’s much in this plan that Mr. Maliki doesn’t like,” Burns concluded. “There’s much in it that has an effect, whatever they say, [of] being imposed on him.”

That was a few ticks after 6 p.m. on Jan. 10. About two hours later, the president succinctly stated the premise of his “New Way Forward” in Iraq: “Only Iraqis,” he said, “can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do so.”

The plan that followed outlined a course of action that seemed to reflect all that Prime Minister Maliki did not want: “America will change our strategy,” said the president, “to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad…. So I’ve committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them - five brigades - will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.”

Later in the speech, the president addressed specifically what he meant by working “alongside Iraqi units:” “[W]e will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq.”

On the whole, to Prime Minister Maliki, the Bush address must have seemed like a postage-due parcel from Opposite World. Are these guys even talking to one another?

"Augmentation"

Burns’ report from Baghdad, though, was merely the beginning of the administration’s embarrassment. The next day, according to the Washington Post, Condi Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In her opening comments, she introduced her two key talking points. The first affirmed Bush’s whopper of the previous night: “The Iraqis have devised a strategy [italics added],” she said, “that they believe will work for their most urgent problem: that is to return security to Baghdad.”

The second talking point contained a change in the administration’s lexicon, an equivocation that’s come to typify the administration’s penchant for doing the same thing, but calling it by a different name: “We are going to support that strategy through the augmentation of American military forces.” The committee’s reaction, overall, was oddly surreal. Rice’s exchange with Senator Chuck Hagel encapsulates the essence of the administration’s capacity for denial. Characterizing the president’s decision as “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam,“ Hagel questioned Rice about the addition of 20,000 troops. According to the Washington Post, Rice said, ”I don’t see it, and the president doesn’t see it, as an escalation.“

I saw the exchange on “The News Hour.” Senators, in general, have a pretty good poker face, but Hagel looked stunned. He said, ”Putting 22,000 new troops, more troops in, is not an escalation?“ Rice responded that the increase was “an augmentation.” Hagel looked like he’d lost a bet with someone he hated and was looking at having to swallow an angry badger while wearing a too-revealing prom dress.

Avoidance of Failure

To the president’s credit, to be capable of such transparent lies requires, I think, a pretty stiff amount of insulation. One has to be absolutely oblivious to all evidence, all people aware of the evidence, all arguments that point to evidence that what is being said is a rank lie. The ability would be admirable in, say, an uncle one saw only at funerals. At that point, one could give a grudging, detached admiration for his ability to stare straight into oncoming headlights and lie his ass off.

But this is the President of the United States, and he’s dangerously detached, evidently, from what his allies, supporters, detractors and 70 percent of the citizenry he serves believe ought to be done. “Stay the course” at this point means let the lie serve until it loses its potency, whatever the contravening evidence.

Such evidence includes Maliki’s canceling a press conference and avoiding any public comment on the president’s plan. It also includes a full-court press over the weekend following the speech, with Stephen Hadley, Bush’s National Security Advisor, appearing on “Meet the Press” to assure the public that the Iraqis' displeasure with the president’s plan had nothing to do with the plan itself… because it was an Iraqi plan: “[O]ur military commanders,” Hadley said, “have assessed that there is a new Baghdad strategy.  It is the Iraqi government strategy.  It can work.  It needs to be resourced by the Iraqis.  But they’ve made a judgment that the Iraqis simply do not have the wherewithal to get it done.  And therefore the president has made a judgment that, yes, the Iraqis have to be in the lead, it has to be their strategy, but we need to reinforce our troops so we that can be standing with them and to ensure that it succeeds.”

Frankly, I think the avoidance of failure is an inadequate measure of “success.” Bush’s new strategy seems to be a minor variation of his old strategy: lie in order to evade the inevitable withdrawal (AKA “redeployment”) until the ’08 election, turn the whole burning slag heap over to the next administration, and head to Crawford, pants blazing and flags waving.

Sam Prestridge