Go Big, Go Long, Go Fish

[babylonsister]

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,137518,00.html

Go Big, Go Long, Go Fish
Jeff Huber | May 30, 2007

Bush's victory over the war-funding bill was, in fact, only a partial one. The popular opinion lately is that the Democrats caved. They didn't really. The bill does have a deadline--September 30, 2007. That's when the present war appropriation ends. It's also when General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, is scheduled to give Congress a briefing on the progress of the "surge" plan.

As things look now, Petraeus won't have anything to show Congress come September except the spit shine on his heinie. Barring divine intervention, which hasn't been abundant in this war to date, all Petraeus will be able to say is yeah, well, things look better on the ground in some places but worse in others, and the Iraqi Parliament has made progress in some areas but the political situation still basically, uh, sucks.

snip//

Whispered leaks suggest that a segment of the active duty flag officer community have tacitly threatened to turn in their walking papers if the White House doesn't start listening to them and ignoring think tank neocons like Fred Kagan. But these are just whispers.

Mr. Bush himself gives the appearance of flip-flopping on Iraq. For years he stuck by Donald Rumsfeld's insistence that no more troops were needed in Iraq, and on the eve of the November election, indicate that Rummy would stay on the job throughout the remainder of the Bush term. When the election results became official, Rummy was out, the ISG recommendations were shelved, and Kagan's troop escalation was in. Now, amid concerns expressed by congressional Republicans that the Iraq war could devastate the GOP come November 2008, Bush gives indications that he's leaning back toward the ISG's policy and strategy tenets--tenets like engaging diplomatically with Iraq's neighbors and focusing U.S. troop efforts on training Iraqi troops, tenets that Kagan said "will fail."

One theory says that Mr. Bush intends to stall for as much time as he can to ensure that the Iraq war isn't "lost" on his watch, and intends to let the next guy clean up the mess. Another theory posits that Mr. Bush has promised Republican legislators and presidential hopefuls that by hook or by crook, he'll ensure that the Iraq issue is off the table come election time. We can't really know what will happen until it happens, and even then we'll have reason to wonder what really happened.

Even the people in charge of making things happen won't really know what happened because, as the past four years have clearly illustrated, they never really knew what they were doing. And as recent developments indicate, they still don't.