The Iraq war was, has been, is, and will be fought for political purposes.
The right wing can howl all they want to about "Islamofascism" or the so-called "Global War On Terror," or what a bloodthirsty tyrant Saddam Hussein was, or how al Qaeda used Iraq as a springboard for whatever; and those who have the balls, like Alan Greenspan of all people, can admit that it was really fought for oil...(the oil part is basically true)...but the REAL truth is that this war was fought so that George W. Bush could run for re-election as a war president.
The reason I know this is that, way way back in 2002, when Bush first started mouthing about Hussein and Iraq publicly, he did so during Republican fund-raisers.
Who starts talking about invading a whole other country at a FUND-RAISER?
About that time, Karl Rove was quoted as saying that a good war would be a great way to mobilize the base; that it would make a great campaign. Why, they spent more time planning the "Mission Accomplished" campaign ad than they did the war itself.
Oh yeah, there were plenty of right-wingers (including John McCain) who'd been spoiling for war since Clinton was president, and we now know it's true that, as retired general Wesley Clark had been saying all along--the day after 9-11, the White House was trying to figure a way to blame Iraq so they could go to war there. Rumsfeld was quoted as complaining that "there's nothing to bomb" in Afghanistan.
But the real idea was that we'd roll into Iraq as heroes, be greeted as liberators, be pretty much out within six months--which, conveniently, would be right before the '04 elections--and Bush could strut around in his flight suit on T.V. all that fall and the White House would be his in a landslide.
Then, whatever civil liberties they wanted to destroy, they could do so under "national security" restrictions; whatever constitutional powers they wanted to thieve for the president, they could do because he was a "war president," and so on.
And just THINK of all the money they could raise, using troops as photo-op backdrops!
Consequently--much to the abiding horror of most of the troops and officers who were actually having to FIGHT this war--every decision made up to the present day has been a POLITICAL decision.
As Dr. Phil would say: "How's that workin' out for ya?"
Now, one thing the White House has been aces at controlling about this uncontrollable war, has been media coverage.
So imagine their chagrin when things actually did deteriorate so much "on the ground" that all their previously lap-dog media was covering was bloodshed and bombings day in and day out. Bummer.
And it was looking bad, politically, because it cost the Republicans their comfortable majority in congress.
Damn the fickle liberal media!
Something had to be done, and quick, to get the media--and thus the ADD-afflicted public--back under control where the war was concerned, because there was, after all, a big election coming up in '08.
Hence the Petraeus Plan.
Just when the whole country and every wise man in Washington and every military figure who still had the guts to speak up was begging for a troop drawdown in Iraq, Bush decides to flood Baghdad with a troop escalation.
The excuse given was to give the Iraqi puppet-government time to make some political reconciliations that would look good enough on paper to convince the American public that "progress" was being made.
And lucky for Bush & Co., that was the same time that Muqtada al-Sadr called a cease-fire of his powerful militia and that was the same time that Sunni sheiks in the Anbar decided to quit shooting at Americans and instead, let the Americans pay and arm them not to.
Meanwhile, Muppet Maliki did his part by forbidding journalists to photograph any more bombings, while at the same time, the Pentagon began to forbid them to photograph wounded American troops. Of course, they never have been permitted to photograph flag-draped coffins. Too depressing.
Only GOOD NEWS must be shown!
And lo and behold! IT WORKED!
Violence did indeed come down, and what there was usually did not make the evening news, on account of all the new restrictions. Plus, American camera crews couldn't get around the country very well because it was too dangerous.
The White House and John McCain began to crow about how the surge not only WAS working, but HAD worked!
Those miserable Defeatocrats who wanted to surrender and cut and run and retreat and defeat--wouldn't they look like idiots come November, eh?
Oh, happy times are here again in the ole White House!
Because even though the so-called surge was supposed to come to an end right about now, well, Bush told Petraeus a couple of months ago to stop the drawdowns this summer and keep it stopped for the next several months, at least until the elections, so that it would look like we were "winning" in Iraq.
Petraeus, like the good general he is, agreed that he did want to "preserve the progress" that had been made, and scheduled his report to congress in a couple weeks.
So the White House spinmeisters came up with another inocuous term: "pause." The drawdowns would merely...pause...for a while. An indefinite while. But just a pause, that's all.
And everything was set up to look just like another great Mission Accomplished Moment.
Last week, Bush started the pre-production work by giving three big speeches on the Iraq war, all about how "normalcy is returning" to Iraq and all this great progress was being made and victory was at hand and stuff, and McCain did his part, giving a big speech on the war and parrotting the talking-points.
But the Democrats stubbornly hold to a great advantage in the upcoming race, in spite of all the feel-good propoganda and mind-melding being done from the White House. It was going to be really hard to get that fifty-plus-one majority Cheney cherishes.
And one of the things those damned pesky Democrats just would not stop harping on, was how it really did not matter if our brave and brilliant U.S. troops did indeed bring down the violence when asked to do so, if, at the same time, the Iraqi government was taking month-long vacations and squabbling amongst one another and accomplishing not one single braggable political point.
Bush and Cheney knew that, come Petraeus's big moment in the spotlight, he would be grilled heavily about how long our troops were supposed to continue dying to support a government that was doing absolutely NOTHING in return.
The Sunnis, for example, who had laid down their arms against the Americans and taken them up against al Qaeda, had been begging Maliki's Shi'ite government to provide help with restoring power, providing jobs, and taking Sunnis into the Iraqi army and police.
While Maliki ignored them, they started demanding that the provincial elections promised two years ago would finally take place, so that they could vote in a larger bloc in the government. (Sunnis largely boycotted the first elections, and have regretted it ever since.)
A bloc of Sunni, Kurd, and Shi'ites actually did pass such a law, but one of the vice-presidents vetoed it.
Meanwhile, down in Basra, where the Brits have pulled out, Maliki's bloc of Shi'ites had been struggling for control over al Sadr's militia ever since, and al Sadr was making all the right moves to set himself up as a major political figure. Provincial elections might prove to give him a large majority in parliament.
Which of course, Maliki did not want.
And so things languished.
But dammit, Petraeus was about to go before congress and claim all this "progress"! And the stupid Democrats were demanding to know what kind of progress had been made by the Iraqis that would somehow justify 4,004 dead Americans?
Think of the sound-bites!
Enter Cheney.
Bush's Rottweiler. Let off his leash.
He heads straight to Iraq and growls and bares his teeth at Maliki.
MUST have political progress, he snarls. PASS THE DAMN PROVINCIAL ELECTION LAW!
This way, Petraeus will have a REAL slam-dunk when he goes before congress, and it will be President McCain before you know it.
Maliki whines that he's losing control of Basra--which strikes fear in the heart of the old oilman--and so he says, FIX IT.
The U.S. will back you up, says Vice, if you will pass the damned election law.
Two days after Cheney leaves, suddenly, the provincial election law passes!
Yay!
Media's happy, Bush's happy, McCain's so damn happy he actually goes to Iraq his very own self to observe all the peace and prosperity.
Media glosses over the fact that he cannot, in fact, visit the market he visited last time, because of "security concerns."
No worries! The surge has worked! Vote for me!
A few days after that, Maliki launches a huge military offensive against Basra.
Bush and Cheney both howl at the moon about how this PROVES that the surge has worked because NOW the Iraqi government can fight their own battles, sort of, but not quite COMPLETELY, not yet, but still, it's all good.
Cheney returned to Washington convinced that Maliki would have this grand show of strength right before Petraeus's visit; provincial elections would be scheduled for...let's see...how about OCTOBER--right before the U.S. elections?
Think of THOSE sound-bites, suckers!
And the Republicans would triumph on the backs of the U.S. soldiers and Marines YET AGAIN.
But you see, the thing is, when you fight a war POLITICALLY rather than MILITARILY, and you expect the military to do EVERYTHING--we don't need no steenkin' diplomacy!--what happens is, disastrous political decisions get made that backfire so badly that a six month war drags on for six years.
EVERY decision in this war has been made from the White House for political reasons--even the first Iraqi elections were rushed under a flimsy deadline that did not allow for truth on the ground--every single decision--and every single decision has been horrible for the U.S. troops and the Iraqi people.
Because the sad truth is that, there was a time that John McCain was RIGHT about this war--before he flip-flopped.
It was actually John McCain who first used the term "whack-a-mole" to describe the impossibility of fighting an unconventional guerilla war with conventional means. Like Joe Biden described it, you take a balloon and squeeze one end, the air is just redistributed to the other end.
Every place that American soldiers and Marines are present in force, the insurgents flee, only to regroup elsewhere. Like my son said, they fought a massive battle to get the bad guys out of Fallujah in '04, but when they returned in '05, many of them had just moved back in. This has happened everywhere. Though bad guys did flee Baghdad before the so-called "surge," they regrouped in Mosul, where U.S. troops are still waging daily bloody battles for control.
Cheney's pressure on Maliki to produce results Petraeus could brag about in front of the U.S. congress--and media, thus influencing our own elections--has instead incited a tinderbox of explosive blowback in that unstable country.
If Cheney had spent any time studying the REAL conditions "on the ground" in Iraq rather than those he WANTS to study, it would have told him that al Sadr has a pervasive and large, growing presence all over Shi'ite areas of Iraq, and that they are well-armed and experienced against U.S. troops. That al Sadr pretty much controls the police in Iraq and that Basra police would shed their uniforms and join up with Sadr's militia against Maliki's forces.
He would have known that a situation Maliki assured him he could control in one little area of the country, the coastal tip, would instead spread like a grass fire all over Iraq--right into Baghdad. American troops would come under increasing pressure to maintain what security they have, but because of the complicated releationship with al Sadr and the delicate balance of his "cease-fire,"--they would not be able to fight back as completely as the military might like. (It's a miserable godforsaken way to ask trained troops to fight.)
He would have known that Maliki's forces aren't like U.S. troops; that they're as likely to turn and run as fight, depending upon their tribes and loyalties, and that in order for the U.S. to provide REAL back-up to Maliki, they would have to, indeed, play a game of whack-a-mole by pulling troops OUT of volitile Baghdad in order to send them on down to Basra. With wearily predictable results.
And he would have known that, the more it appears that provincial elections WON'T be held, after all, well, then the less reason the Sunnis have to continue working with the Marines in the Anbar. Which puts THEM in greater danger.
And if he'd been listening to the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and most of the Pentagon and his secretary of defense--among others--he'd have known that the American military can't possibly sustain this level of commitment in Iraq much longer without damn near breaking it in half. Especially with another war raging in Afghanistan.
But of course, he didn't listen, and even after five years of war and thousands of dead Americans and tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, he has not learned.
No one in the White House has.
Consequently, Cheney might just as well have traveled to Baghdad and declared a whole new war, because that is what we have now.
Good luck, General Petraeus. You've just learned the most bitter lesson the U.S. military has had to learn in Iraq: this is not your war.
And no matter how hard you fight and how many of your boys and girls die, nothing you do will matter, because the White House will still manage to lose it for you.
