* Hat tip to the folks at Redstate for the generic, um, “euphemism”
I have long thought of this administration as the “Max Power” administration, for the following Simpsons’ reference:
Homer: Kids, there’s three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!
Bart: Isn’t that the wrong way?
Homer: Yeah, but faster!
That about sums it up – not just fucking things up in a grandiose fashion, but doing so faster than even imagined. Katrina. No Child Left Behind. Clear Skies Initiative. Cutting and running from Afghanistan. Dropping the ball on and before 9/11. The economy. Healthcare. Social Security. And every single step on Iraq.
The credibility was gone long long ago. And on Iraq, it wasn’t even there from the start. Lies about yellowcake. Lies about aluminum tubes. Lies about the “stockpiles of WMDs”. Lies about ties to 9/11. Not listening to our generals about how many troops to send initially. Not listening to the Joint Chiefs of Staff about not disbanding the Iraqi Army. Not heeding the warnings about the consequences of not having any post-invasion plan. Not heeding the warnings about the potential for a civil war. Denying all responsibility for everything that was happening, all while pretending that everything was just peachy. And so on, and so on and so on.
Frankly, I didn’t even watch the speech last night – no need to. And I’m not going to dissect it here either, as that was and will be done by many others. No, what I want to do is ask one simple question – to Bush, to the war cheerleaders, to the wingnuts, to Holy Joe, to the talking meatsticks and those who have been proven to be 100% wrong on each and every thing that they have said or done – all while mocking those of us who were right and calling us traitors or terrorist sympathizers or “haters of America”: Why the fuck should we trust you once again when you couldn’t have been more wrong on everything, and are only proposing more of the same approach that failed countless times already?
The Wall Street Journal has a pretty decent article called ”Bush’s Iraq Plan Faces Obstacles on Two Fronts”. And while it may be behind a subscriber wall, I’ll reproduce a couple of points here that prove how much of a disaster this is – before the first troops even touch ground in Baghdad:
Still, the administration’s ability to control events on the ground in Iraq is rapidly diminishing, and it’s far from clear that the strategy will find enough support in either Baghdad or Washington to have much chance of success.
Mr. Maliki has long opposed the deployment of additional U.S. forces to Iraq, and his government crippled earlier U.S. efforts to stabilize Baghdad by failing to deliver the Iraqi security forces it had promised and by refusing to allow a crackdown on the Shiite militias responsible for much of Iraq’s current violence.
Now, maybe it’s just me here, but if the plan is to “secure Baghdad” from the violence and crimes that are rampant, isn’t that a job for the police, not the Army? When there are riots, do we call in the military, or do we have the police come in? And wasn’t the stabilization of Baghdad supposed to have been taken care of the last time that we were promised that the 75,000 troops in Baghdad would stop the violence. And that was nearly 8 months and thousands of bombings ago.
I forget where I saw it (but would give props to whoever pointed it out) but there are around 37,000 police in the NYPD, which is the largest police force in the US. This is for a city that is a fraction of the size of Baghdad and even in its worst years can’t even be compared to any one day in Baghdad. So even if we had all 150,000 of our troops in Baghdad as well as all of the Iraqi “troops”, and it was their job to actually act as police – isn’t there still the small matter of Iraqis wanting us out of Iraq, Maliki not wanting a troop escalation and Iraqis (both Sunni and Shiite) thinking it is just fine and dandy to attack US troops.
I guess the approval of attacks on US troops is one thing that Bush can say that the Sunnis and the Shiites agree on.
Two other points that come in the WSJ article which show just how little thought has gone into this “plan”:
A senior Bush administration official described the new push to bring order to Baghdad as Iraqi-planned and Iraqi-led, with American troops in support roles. To assist the Iraqis, the U.S. will increase the number of embedded U.S. advisors that live and fight with Iraqi soldiers.
—snip—
Senior U.S. military officials, who remain skeptical about the Iraqi Army’s abilities and Mr. Maliki’s will to take tough stands, downplayed the Bush administration’s suggestions that Iraqi forces would be in the lead initially. Instead, they suggested U.S. troops would take the more prominent role until the situation was stable enough for Iraqi troops to move to the front. “We first have to set the conditions for an Iraqi-led defense of Baghdad to work,” said one senior military official involved in planning the operation.
—snip—
But the surge of about 20,000 more soldiers — all the overstretched U.S. military can provide – is far less than what most proponents of a “surge” have called for. Hawks like Sen. John McCain and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, have called for a minimum of 30,000-35,000 soldiers to stabilize Baghdad.
So the military isn’t even agreement with the administration on who is to take the lead. The thoroughly unqualified “architechts” such as Kagan don’t agree with the level of troops in this escalation. Maliki has more loyalty to al-Sadr (unless Makili is truly hating his job so much that he would buck al-Sadr and risk losing his life), since al-Sadr is a big political backer of Maliki.
There is also, with this complete lack of credibility here – the question of “what is your plan B for if this doesn’t work?” While we are still subject to “Democrats have no alternative” whines like this:
Most reckless is the contention, also by Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi, that “it is time to bring the war to a close.” No one serious — not even the Iraq Study Group — believes that the war will end if we leave.
—snip—
If Congressional Democrats want to be constructive, they can insist that Mr. Bush and his generals truly implement the strategy he is now endorsing.
Oh, I see – so Democrats should go along with a “repackaged” failure of a plan to be “constructive”. And that if “we leave then the war won’t end”. Well, guess what, brainiac – if we stay, the war won’t end either. In fact, under the same tired plan – it will get worse than if we leave and leave smartly.
Or this lovely “trust us” outlook:
President Bush’s challenge last night was to convince Americans that his new plan to secure Iraq won’t mean risking more lives on a conflict that critics say has become “unwinnable.” We think he offered compelling reasons for skeptical Americans of good faith to back him, but the key will be deploying enough forces to accomplish the task.
—snip—
With the new strategy, new forces and new generals President Bush is putting in place, we have a fighting chance to create a virtuous circle whereby better security leads to more anti-insurgent cooperation from the public — which in turn leads to still better security. If Congressional Democrats have better suggestions, we’d love to hear them. But the one “strategy” that simply isn’t credible is the idea that anybody’s interests would be served by a hasty U.S. exit from Iraq.
Well, I’m glad that someone at the WSJ editorial board – always a place to look for exactly what is the WORST thing to do – is ready to trust Bush yet again – and tell us that we should too. All with no concrete reason to believe that an escalation of not enough troops to do something that is more the work of a police force in a country where the only thing that the “warring factions” in a bloody civil war agree on is that it is ok to attack our troops.
And frankly, this “Democrats have no plan” is even more of a farce, considering the fact that there has NEVER been another plan offered by the republicans (Iraq Study Group report notwithstanding). But, isn’t a phased withdrawal (supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans) or Biden’s plan for somewhat of a partitioning of the country or, hell, the Iraq Study Group all alternative plans?
Friggin jackasses. They should be scorned and mocked. Their simplistic, unrealistic out-of-the-mainstream view of the world is only exceeded by their smug condescending arrogance that is oozing from their “you should trust us” words.
And you know what? Too fucking bad. We didn’t trust you then, and we were right. You offer up nothing new and we are to trust you still? All while being sneered at? Sorry. That ain’t gonna work.
Repackeged bullshit is still bullshit, even with a bright shiny ribbon on it.