Wow! Two posts in a single day! As a follow on to my last posting, I am now beginning to think the President is actually shifting policy on Iraq. As posted, the moves in Anwar and the Kurdish areas at the local level may be seen as additional pressure on Baghdad to do SOMETHING. One guesses that the primary concern of the Baghdad government is essentially two-fold: staying alive until tomorrow and getting their hands on as much American aid as possible.
Now that I think about it, the actions involving local decision-making in Anwar and the north go hand-in-glove with the British decision to abandon the city of Basra in the south and fall back to the Basra international airport to the west of the city. I have "war-gamed" an Iranian invasion of Iraq simultaneous with an upsurge of the insurgency throughout the country. A quick way to lose the game is to abandon Basra and retreat to the airport. This opens the door to Iranian invasion, over the Tigris River in Basra. Assuming the Iranians are not stupid enough to invade, as a minimum, the British redeployment opens the south to increased Iranian infiltration. Another sign that the alternative to doing nothing in Baghdad may be partition.
So, these three actions (in Anwar, the Kurdish north and Basra) coupled with what amounted to a commitment to withdraw 5,000+ by Christmas and another 50,000 to 100,000 by July 2008 may be a strategic shift and message to the Maliki government that our patience has run its course. [Hmmm...it could also be a means of suckering in Iran to do something stupid, which would justify a counter-strike against its nuclear facilities]. Either way, it would seem to be indication of a major forthcoming change in U.S. policy and an awareness by the Bushkies that they have only about 14 more months to influence ANY outcome in Iraq.
IMO it could go either way. While Bush's stubbornness is legendary, so is his political ability to co-opt the ideas of others as his own. Partition has been Joe Biden's plan. One guesses that Bush will keep his options open - i.e. if the Maliki government responds with significant benchmark improvements, the current shift to supporting regional decisions will go away and Bush will have cause to claim "victory." If it fails to work and Baghdad still fails to respond, the shift will continue toward partition, with Bush co-opting the Biden proposals as his own. Regime change and regional autonomy in Anwar and the Kurd provinces, plus the failure of the American people to support a sizable and costly occupation (in lives and dollars) will suffice to claim a partial victory and blame the failure part on a dysfunctional Maliki government and, of course, us.
Best case for Bush: Baghdad gets its act together and we have withdrawals based on stability between now and the 2008 elections. Second Best Case for Bush: Baghdad fails to get its act together and we have partition, with withdrawal from Shiite areas and retention of buffer forces (roughly 50,000) in semi-permanent bases in Anwar and the north, accompanied by reduced casualties for U.S. forces (the "Let'em fight it out" option).
Aside from the rhetoric to the Republican base about "freedom and democracy," what Bush really needs is time. Time to have another go at resolving, at least temporarily, the Palestinian/Israeli issue and time to transition away from our dependency on mid-east oil. Once both of those strategic goals are met, we can move to a mid-east policy of containment and who really cares how many Sunnis kill how many Shiites or vice versa among those left in Iraq? If there is any "up-side" to our policy to date it is that our presence (and almost 4,000 American lives) have given some 4 million Sunnis the opportunity to flee as refugees to camps in Jordan and Syria and to avoid being slaughtered by the Shiite majority. [I assume the 4 million refugees are overwhelmingly Sunni in Sunni Jordan and Sunni Syria and not Shiite].
None of this detracts from the colossal error of the invasion in the first place, which brings me to impeachment.
Personally, I would just as soon impeach the President as not...perhaps for incompetence equating to criminal negligence, if not simply for launching an aggressive war based on false intelligence regarding the extent of imminent threat to the United States of attack by non-existant WMD and the false association of a very evil regime with the events of 9/11.
However, in the last analysis, right or wrong, our founding fathers made the impeachment process basically a political one. No court of law within the United States will bring George Bush before it on the basis of what I have suggested above [although certainly the International Court of Justice might, but then we've already denied them jurisdiction]. Sooo...the removal of George Bush rests with the Legislative Branch...ergo a political decision....and there just aren't enough votes to bring a bill of impeachment in the House, much less the votes to convict in the Senate. If we impeached every politician who failed to act in the best interests of the country, we wouldn't have a government...and that's OUR fault, not theirs.
And, in a curious way, I really do not blame Bushkie for his incompetence, ignorance, stubbornness or any other invective one wishes to throw his way. I blame us. I didn't vote for him, but having very deep suspicions about his abilities, neither did I try and defeat him as hard as I might have. And, I suspect that had George himself known in advance that 9/11 was coming, he would have declined to run for the Presidency. Instead, he probably did the best he could, given his limited perceptions occasioned by the world in which he lived and grew up in; a world foreign to you and I and the vast majority of the American people; think about that long and hard before you make a 2008 Presidential decision.
Four thousand American lives, hundreds of coalition lives and many multiples of that in Iraqi lives leads, I suspect, to a great deal of self-justification, just to be able to get up in the morning, but that is something he will have to live with the rest of his life and it is relatively unimportant to our future about what George thinks about himself once he leaves the Presidency. I suspect that there are still sufficient Bush supporters that he may insulate himself from his own legacy. A huge Presidential library on the SMU campus. A staff of historians and research specialists all dedicated to rewriting the history of his administration and polishing the image (everybody has to eat). Friends and speaking engagements a plenty and a sufficient number of crazy rich people to ensure his financial security. GW will never need to worry about receiving a social security check or medicare and, if he chooses, will never have to worry about having been wrong.
But, I predict, the one single judgement regarding his tenure as President of the United States from which he cannot personally escape will be found in the fact that he will never become Commissioner of Baseball...and that will truly eat at his very soul.
And, with that, sports fans...I bid you goodnight.
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