|
11 Jan 2007
www.rockfordinstitute.org
Bush Plays Va Banque
by Srdja Trifkovic
" Va banque " is a risky strategy deployed most commonly by emotionally unstable or inexpert players, usually with disastrous results. In essence it means risking the balance of one's capital on a single card, or roll of dice, or spin of the wheel. In extremis a seasoned pro may resort to it, but usually he will do so in conjunction with a radical change of strategy to reverse a losing streak and on the basis of a rational calculation of costs and benefits of his action.
On Wednesday night President George W. Bush announced he was going to play va banque in Iraq. Evaluated dispassionately and without prejudice to the many lies and errors that had preceded tha war, his plan suffers from two major weaknesses. It does not entail any major, let alone radical, change of strategy. Its one novelty-the commitment to exert more pressure on the Iraqi government to meet certain political objcetives-makes the success or failure of the plan contingent upon the behavior of local actors over whom Mr. Bush has diminishing control, and whose motives and goals are very different to his own.
While it contained many elements present on previous such occasions, it has escaped most commentators' attention that Mr. Bush's speech had an uncanny semblance to his address at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in November 2005, when he unveiled his " clear strategy for victory ." The largely-forgotten "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," outlined by Mr. Bush to the graduating class of Navy cadets, rested on three pillars:
On the political side . . . we're helping the Iraqis build a free society with inclusive democratic institutions that will protect the interests of all Iraqis . . . engage those who can be persuaded to join the new Iraq, and marginalize those who never will. On the security side, coalition and Iraqi security forces are on the offensive against the enemy . . . leaving Iraqi forces to hold territory taken from the enemy, and following up with targeted reconstruction to help Iraqis rebuild their lives. As we fight the terrorists, we're working to build capable and effective Iraqi security forces, so they can take the lead in the fight-and eventually take responsibility for the safety and security of their citizens without major foreign assistance.
To that end, Mr. Bush added, out, "we have increased our force levels in Iraq to 160,000-up from 137,000" to fight "an enemy without a conscience." As the Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, he went on, "we will be able to decrease our troop levels in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists." But, he concluded,
victory in Iraq will demand the continued determination and resolve of the American people . . . In Iraq, there will not be a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship. We will not turn that country over to the terrorists and put the American people at risk. Iraq will be a free nation and a strong ally in the Middle East-and this will add to the security of the American people.
One year, two months and two thousand American lives later, last Wednesday Mr. Bush announced that U.S. force levels in Iraq would be increased to 153,500-up from 132,000. We are still engaged in a struggle against "the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq [who] are without conscience," that struggle is still decisive for "the global war on terror-and our safety here at home." And once again we were told, word for word, that "there will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship."
If Mr. Bush lacks the good sense to find speechwriters capable of coming up with new cliches for such important occasions, it is hardly surprising that his new plans, strategies, or blueprints for Iraq also look barely distinguishable from those preceding it. The "deck of the battleship" metaphor displays a doubly patronizing attitude: it assumes that the public will not notice, or mind, that it is being fed recycled platitudes; and-worse still-that the public does not grasp the intricacies of a challenge as complex and multi-layered as Iraq.
Mr. Bush's diagnosis for the failure to provide security to ordinary Iraqis thus far is that "there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents," but this time Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated":
I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people-and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced . . . America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks.
What Mr. Bush fails to grasp is that there is no "Iraqi people" as a coherent polity that shares the sense of common destiny and common aspirations. Mr. al-Maliki's pledges are worthless. He and his fellow Shiite Islamist politicians don't give a hoot for "the Iraqi people" outside the confines of their own community. They are not concerned about the support of "the American people" either-if that support (or lack thereof) was capable of being translated into actions and policies on the ground, American forces would be withdrawing from Iraq, rather than increasing their numbers.
Iraq is in the grip of a vicious civil war, whether Mr. Bush accepts that term or not. By condoning the indecently hasty execution ("lynching" would be a more appropriate term) of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush has effectively taken sides in that war.
The Shiite leadership, thoroughly penetrated by Iranian agents and Muqtada al-Sadr's radicals, will not be intimidated by Mr. Bush's threat of disengagement. He has already finished the job for them. If and when the withdrawal is completed-and it will come, under terms probably even less favorable to American interests and American reputation than today-Iraq will disintegrate into three ethno-sectarian units. President Ahmadinejad of Iran or his successor will be the main beneficiary. Had Mr. Bush exerted his pressure on al-Maliki's predecessors when the Badr Brigades and al-Mahdi's Army were first detected embedded inside Iraq's new security services, it could have worked. Now it is too late.
All
rights reserved, Погледи - 2007. године.
Design
and maintenance - www.proxy.co.yu web
master
| 
