Required Reading for Bush's Iraq Speech Wednesday
President Bush is now scheduled to deliver his "new way forward" in Iraq in nationally televised address on Wednesday, January 9th at 9:00 EST. Ironically, Bush's coming strategy of "surge and purge" features troop increases he previously rejected, benchmarks for the Iraqis he hitherto scoffed at, cleansing the military leadership of the generals Bush once promised to listen to, and a $1 billion infusion of U.S. taxpayer funds for Iraqi jobs program.
In preparation for President Bush's latest prime-time departure from reality, Perrspectives recommends a quartet of books that document the arrogance, naivete, deceit and miscalculations that brought the White House to the current disaster in Iraq.
A good place to start is with The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer. Packer, a New Yorker regular and one-time Iraq war enthusiast, details the surreal fantasies and shattered dreams of Iraqi exiles, White House neocons and average Iraqis in the violent and chaotic wake of the fall of Saddam.
The Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran offers the definitive story of the American occupation of Iraq in Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. Chandrasekaran documents the arrogance and dangerous detachment of American imperial viceroy Paul Bremer. Among Bremer's cavalcade of calamities highlighted are the demobilization of the Iraqi army, his destructive DeBaathification policy, free market economics reforms and electoral initiatives unrelated to actual reality on the ground.
Thomas Ricks, also of the Washington Post, offers perhaps the seminal work on the American military in Iraq in his Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Ricks provides the disturbing tale of the U.S. military's inability to bring the lessons learned in Vietnam to bear against the growing insurgency in Iraq. Ricks describes an undersized U.S. force going to war without a "Phase IV" post-conflict plan to ensure the security and rebuilding of occupied Iraq. In places like Fallajuh and Tal Afar, Baghdad and Ramadi, Mosul and Basra, Ricks describes an uneven and often-iron fisted approach of the Army and Marines that fails to win the true prize in the Iraq war - its people.
Last is Bob Woodward's State of Denial. After his hagiographic portrayal of President Bush and his team in Bush at War and Plan of Attack, Woodward delivers a damning account of the White House's duplicitous and slipshod rush to war in Iraq. From its manipulation of intelligence and fear-mongering to its almost complete cognitive dissonance regarding the exploding insurgency and looming security meltdown, Woodward paints a Bush White House too arrogant, too proud and too stubborn to yield to reality on the ground in Iraq. His portrait includes a feeble and naïve President Bush, a manipulative and controlling Donald Rumsfeld, a dark and dishonest Dick Cheney and an out-of-touch Condi Rice collectively leading the United States to ruin in the Middle East.
For more background on President Bush's supposed Iraq strategy, visit the Perrspectives Iraq Archives.
For recommended reading on other topics, visit the Perrspectives Reading List.
What? No mention of the profit motive? Rumor has it that petro-dollars underlies a lot of the mess. Or do any of those books cover that?
I'm always confused by the (il)logic of our sitting President. So as not to belabor the point, I'll throw out just a couple of my points of confusion for deliberation.
1) As I understand him, and he has been very clear on this, it is better to fight the terrorists in Iraq rather than here at home.
2) As I understand him, the purpose of a surge of troops in Iraq is to quell the violence in Baghdad.
Point 1 - on the surface, who could disagree. However, assuming one has an IQ greater than that of a door knob, one might be compelled to ask a question (or two....he's a simple man, I'll keep the questions simple as well) such as:
A) Is there a guarantee that the terrorists, who reside in nearly every country in the world, will not attack the mainland US as long as we keep our troops in Iraq?
B) Is there some kind of agreement with the terrorists, that they will not attack the mainland US as long as we keep our troops in Iraq?
Result - Assuming that both questions above can not be answered with an absolute "YES", which, of course, they can't, then logic leads me to deduce that the President is either an imbecile or a liar or both.
Point 2 - One of the problems in Iraq thus far is that when US (or British) troops move into an area to quell violence, the militia and insurgents depart, only to return after the US (or British) troops are removed. Given the covert nature of the President's plan to deploy additional troops in Baghdad and go door to door through the neighborhoods (don't spread this around because we don't want to alert the militia and insurgents):
A) You don't suppose the militia and insurgents will move out only to return at a more opportune moment.....
B) one that works more in their favor....
C) maybe after the troops are removed?
D) and for those who stay, how exactly will the US troops understand that they are militia or insurgents, by their uniforms (oh that's right they'll maintain large ammo caches and lots of bomb making material in their homes just waiting to be discovered in the door to door searches)
E) Is Iraq so small that the militia and insurgents have nowhere else to go and will therefore just stay in Baghdad and await their fate?
F) Will we be able to surprise the militia and insugents who stay as we move neighborhood by neighborhood, day after day, over a period of weeks and months?
F) Does the President (and anyone left out there who still supports him) honestly believe that these people are as imbecilic as the President himself?
Lesson from Vietnam. If the enemy saw you coming they disappeared into the jungle to live for and fight another day.....on their terms.
It is painful and insulting, that in this day and age, a man with the mental capacity and simple-mindedness of a small child has been placed in a position to have such a profoundly negative impact on the present and future state of our country and indeed, the world at large.
It is just as painful and insulting that there are people in this country who don't have the mental capacity to contemplate anything this ignorant jackass of a human being utters, which is really nothing more than an indictment of their own mental intellect (or lack there of). History will look back on Mr. Bush's reign as the beginning of the dark ages for our country.