More Cold Water on the “Surge is Working” Rightwing Circle Jerk

Just days after FauxNews triumphantly declared, “Sens. Warner and Levin Travel to Iraq, Praise Surge Results” Senator Warner called for the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq to push the failing Iraqi government towards greater efforts at national reconciliation.

Returning from a visit to Iraq, Warner urged Bush to announce next month “the first step in a withdrawal,” bringing perhaps 5,000 of the nearly 162,000 troops home by Christmas. Warner, a veteran and former Navy secretary, said it was important to show the Iraqi government “that we mean business” and that the U.S. military commitment is not open-ended.

“We simply cannot as a nation stand and put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action which will get everybody’s attention,” Warner said at a Capitol Hill news conference.

It was also reported that General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will separately urge Shrub to drastically reduce US force levels, in order to alleviate the strain on our overstretched military:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

My guess is that this will severely test Bush’s putative commitment to be a “Commander Guy” and listen to his generals rather than have politicians make military decisions. In the past, when the commanders have given advice he didn’t want to hear, the Decider decided not to listen.

Finally, a National Intelligence Estimate, portions of which were released yesterday, underscored the fundamental flaw in the “surge” strategy — any temporary reduction in the level of civil violence (from obscene to merely horrendous) has been unaccompanied by any progress in resolving the political problems contributing to the civil war in Iraq.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep sectarian rifts before next spring, when American military commanders have said that a crunch on available troops will require reducing the United States’ presence in Iraq.

Bush, meanwhile, is engaging in revisionism over the Vietnam War. The problem, he says, wasn’t our costly 20 year commitment to unpopular and unviable regimes in that country, but rather that we left after hundreds of thousands of casualties and emptying our treasury. In theory, we (or rather “they” since Bush assiduously avoided combat in Vietnam thru deferments and the Air National Guard) should still be there, maintaining a civil conflict that already stretched from 1946 to 1974 without any hope of ending by foreign intervention.

In October, 2004, nearly three years ago as he stood for reelection, Bush described his Iraq policy in these simple terms:

We’ll help Iraq get on the path to stability and democracy as quickly as possible, and then our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.

Now, three years after vowing to leave Iraq “as quickly as possible,” Bush is saying the lesson to be learned from America’s longest war is that we didn’t prolong our involvement and make the war last even longer, past the 8 (or 12 or 20, depending on you reckon things) years of war which divided our nation, destroyed a popular president, and took such a terrible toll on America’s youth — the callow, rich, alcoholic, coke-snorting sons and grandsons of Congressmen and oilmen excepted.

UPDATE Bill Kristol, whose misjudgment on Iraq is unparalleled, is in favor of fucking stretching our troops since “the surge clearly is working” even though in the absence of any progress stabilizing the Iraqi Polity our loss of lives and the sacrifices of our troops mean not a fucking thing.