One last push and that’s you finished in Iraq, Mr President
Simon Jenkins
The Sunday Times (London)
This is the week, we are told, when George Bush will announce positively the last military assault on insurgency in Iraq before he finally loses patience and quits. The so-called surge will supposedly correct the mistake of last year’s Operation Together Forward. Without law and order in the capital the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq is impossible. But since that order cannot, after all, be assigned to Iraqi forces, the Americans must throw another 20,000-30,000 troops into the conflict instead.
I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the “Battle of the Surge”. Leaks have indicated that commanders on the ground are strongly opposed to giving the enemy yet more targets. Pentagon chiefs are equally opposed to the cost in men and money of a transient boost in control on the ground. American public opinion and Congress are overwhelmingly against the plan, which Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator, calls “Alice in Wonderland”.
American puppets in Baghdad’s green zone will do as they are told, but the only real enthusiasts are neocon diehards and Tony Blair. They were represented on this page two weeks ago by Frederick Kagan, in a fantasy revival of the 2003 “clear and hold” strategy, which amounts to telling American soldiers to commit suicide.
Leaders contemplating defeat far from the front are always tempted to order “one last push”. Thus did Hitler order the battle of the bulge, Nixon the bombing of Cambodia and Reagan the blasting of the Shouf to cover his retreat from Lebanon. A general must pretend to victory even in the jaws of defeat, or his soldiers will not fight. America has 1m men under arms. Surely they are not to be beaten by a few hundred guerrillas in the suburbs of Baghdad? So Bush will tell them to make one last heave, however pointless. He does not want to share his father’s legacy of cutting and running from Iraq.
(The rest is here.)
The Sunday Times (London)
This is the week, we are told, when George Bush will announce positively the last military assault on insurgency in Iraq before he finally loses patience and quits. The so-called surge will supposedly correct the mistake of last year’s Operation Together Forward. Without law and order in the capital the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq is impossible. But since that order cannot, after all, be assigned to Iraqi forces, the Americans must throw another 20,000-30,000 troops into the conflict instead.
I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the “Battle of the Surge”. Leaks have indicated that commanders on the ground are strongly opposed to giving the enemy yet more targets. Pentagon chiefs are equally opposed to the cost in men and money of a transient boost in control on the ground. American public opinion and Congress are overwhelmingly against the plan, which Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator, calls “Alice in Wonderland”.
American puppets in Baghdad’s green zone will do as they are told, but the only real enthusiasts are neocon diehards and Tony Blair. They were represented on this page two weeks ago by Frederick Kagan, in a fantasy revival of the 2003 “clear and hold” strategy, which amounts to telling American soldiers to commit suicide.
Leaders contemplating defeat far from the front are always tempted to order “one last push”. Thus did Hitler order the battle of the bulge, Nixon the bombing of Cambodia and Reagan the blasting of the Shouf to cover his retreat from Lebanon. A general must pretend to victory even in the jaws of defeat, or his soldiers will not fight. America has 1m men under arms. Surely they are not to be beaten by a few hundred guerrillas in the suburbs of Baghdad? So Bush will tell them to make one last heave, however pointless. He does not want to share his father’s legacy of cutting and running from Iraq.
(The rest is here.)
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