Sidney Blumenthal’s analysis in Salon of Bush’s mindset is pretty close to my take on it, which is that his attitude toward the war in Iraq is no longer about what’s in America’s best interest, if it ever was, but what is in George Bush’s self-interest, namely, to avoid confronting his failure:
The mere suggestion of doubt is fatally compromising. Any
admission of doubt means complete loss, impotence and disgrace. Bush
cannot entertain doubt and still function. He cannot keep two ideas in
his head at the same time. Powell misunderstood when he said that the
current war strategy lacks a clear mission. The war is Bush’s mission.
No matter the setback it’s always temporary, and the
campaign can always be started from scratch in an endless series of new
beginnings and offensives — "the new way forward" — just as in his
earlier life no failure was irredeemable through his father’s
intervention. Now he has rejected his father’s intervention in
preference for the clean slate of a new scenario that depends only on
his willpower.
Government by will of the executive? He might be an elected official, but he’s acting like a military dictator.
Repudiated in the midterm elections, Bush has elevated
himself above politics, and repeatedly says, "I am the commander in
chief." With the crash of Rove’s game plan for using his presidency as
an instrument to leverage a permanent Republican majority, Bush is
abandoning the role of political leader. He can’t disengage militarily
from Iraq because that would abolish his identity as a military leader,
his default identity and now his only one.Unlike the political leader, the commander in chief doesn’t require
persuasion; he rules through orders, deference and the obedience of
those beneath him. By discarding the ISG report, Bush has rejected
doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility. By embracing the
AEI manifesto, he asserts the warrior virtues of will, perseverance and
resolve. The contest in Iraq is a struggle between will and doubt.
Every day his defiance proves his superiority over lesser mortals. Even
the Joint Chiefs have betrayed the martial virtues that he presumes to
embody. He views those lacking his will with rising disdain. The more
he stands up against those who tell him to change, the more virtuous he
becomes. His ability to realize those qualities surpasses anyone else’s
and passes the character test.
But as I wrote last week, even the most irrational forces use reason to come up with a self-justifying rationales. Blumenthal points to Fred Kagan’s "Choosing Victory" as filling that role. In it you will find the kind of thinking that makes clear we are dealing with people who think they are in the real world but really are not:
"Choosing Victory" is a prophetic document, a bugle call for an additional 30,000 troops to fight a decisive Napoleonic battle for Baghdad. (Its author, Kagan, has written a book on Napoleon.) It assumes that through this turning point the Shiite militias will melt away, the Sunni insurgents will suffer defeat and from the solid base of Baghdad security will radiate throughout the country. The plan also assumes that additional combat teams that actually take considerable time to assemble and train are instantly available for deployment. And it dismisses every diplomatic initiative proposed by the Iraq Study Group as dangerously softheaded. Foremost among the plan’s assertions is that there is still a military solution in Iraq — "victory."
The strategic premise of the entire document rests on the incredulous disbelief that the U.S. cannot enforce its will through force. "Victory is still an option in Iraq," it states. "America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion." By these gross metrics, France should never have lost in Algeria and Vietnam. The U.S. experience in Vietnam goes unmentioned.
As does any number of insurgencies in the last century when an aroused local populations makes its mind up to throw out the foreign invader. Sure we have the power many times over to dominate Iraq–just as we had it in Vietnam. But that line of thinking inevitably leads to the "destroy-it-to-save-it" approach. The point is that we long ago lost the battle for the minds and hearts, and the only way to win now would be through brute force.
By the way, did you see Bill Kristol on "The Daily Show" the other night. The guy’s a snake, but he’s a suave, slithery clever propagandist–and he had nothing. It’s the first time I’ve seen him look defensive, flummoxed, and stupid. The best he could come up with was to accuse Stewart of having the biases of the upper-west side liberal, which Stewart pointed out was a narrative that was only true in his own mind because he in fact did not live on the upper west side–Kristol does. But not to quibble.
And the best rationale he could offer for supporting the surge was that most Iraqis want peace and order. Again let me restate the obvious: Empowered, focused, well-organized minorities can easily dominate unorganized majorities. It’s true of the militias in Iraq, and it’s true, even now, of the neocons in the American government. It doesn’t matter what the majority wants if it doesn’t have the power to obtain it.
The majority of Americans doesn’t want to send more troops to Iraq, but at this point it doesn’t look like it can prevent Bush from persisting in his folly. I still have some faint hope that the combined forces of the ISG establishment and the Democratic congressional majority could rope Bush down, but support for the surge from people like Harry Reid seem to make it unlikely. It would take an organized, united front and clearly that’s not something that has gelled yet.
In any event, no one knows this principle regarding the power of organized minorities better than Kristol. So does he really believe that victory is still a possibility in Iraq, or is he, like Bush, mainly motivated by the desire to postpone for as long as possible his having to face the reality of his failure?
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