Bush: 'Where Mistakes Have Been Made, the Responsibility Rests with Me'

You can't really blame democratic opposition for anything going on in Iraq. Bush has had both houses for years.

The truth is that the people who said this would be a quagmire have been proven right and, on every single point, Bush has been wrong. No WMD, no ties to al Qaeda, no grateful iraqis greeting troops with flowers and candy. Bush presented an extremely unrealistic vision of postwar Iraq (and it is postwar, we've accomplished everything we set out to do -- again, no WMD, no ties to al Qaeda) and public opinion reflects the fact that people didnt get what they were sold.

I've always found the phrase 'politicization of war' a little weird. War is about politics -- every time. This one's being waged by an elected government and a whole bunch of those elected have been elected to stop the war. To say that there should be no oversight and that the president should have dictatorial power in time of war is to invite dictatorship and war --  we're in the business of choosing temporary leaders in this democracy, not Caesars.

Democracies are inefficient, they're messy, they're noisy and contentious and slow. As Winston Churchill once said, "It has been said that democracy worst form of govt. -- except for all the other forms that have been tried." The executive who can't perform within the democratic frame or finds it unwieldy is a crappy executive. FDR and Lincoln seemed to be able to manage their wars pretty well and both had plenty of opposition in congress.

Oh, I can, and I do.

However, I've never made the case for "no oversight in time of war", nor have I heard it made by anyone on the right. Strawman argument.  

The Lincoln comparison is interesting.   Had Mr. Lincoln not changed his generals and his tactics, the outcome of the WBS, very much in doubt at teh time of Grant's appointment, could have been much different.  

FDR's wartime congressional opposition?  I recall plenty of New Deal opposition, plenty of opposition to court-packing, plenty of domestic political opposition amounting to furniture arrangement within a house united.  After 12/7/41, I don't recall the opposition and constant criticism and harping by the republicans, nor by the 4th estate, which is tantamount to having the furniture arranging argument while the house is on fire.  This, my friend, is what I blame on the democrats.  This is the criticism that I've held back, but no longer. 

I've had my political beliefs, and my religious beliefs treated as the true enemy of the state by my political opponents.  If it is time for the gloves to come off, then so be it.  It is a fight that I look forward to.

It's not a straw man, it's the process of elimination. If the democrats can't criticize the president or practice oversight, then the president has dictatorial power. You can't have it both ways -- it's not a democracy if everyone has to vote the same way. FDR did have opposition to the war. Bush's own grandfather, Prescott Bush, said of FDR, "The only man I truly hated lies buried in Hyde Park." And Col. Robert McCormick was giving away state secrets with his Chicago Tribune. The present Bush has it easy, comparitively.

All we've managed to do with this misadventure in the desert sands is to create terrorists. If you doubt that, consider that al-Sadr was a nobody and there was no such thing as the Mahdi Army or the sunni insurgency before we showed up. We've actually managed to take one of the worst places in the world and make things worse.

What Bush is trying to do here is uncrack eggs and unmix paint -- you can't do it. We had Saddam contained and, likewise, we can contain any new threat that comes from post-war Iraq. It's not extremely difficult. But we can't keep fighting without a clear goal or any sort of strategy at all. It just can't work. Just as throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it, neither does throwing soldiers at it.

If that's the public opinion fight you welcome, I don't envy you. This just plain isn't going to work -- which is the consensus of just about everyone, from the pentagon to congress to Baker-Hamilton to the lady who sells me coffee in the morning.

Interesting that you should bring up the coffee vendor.  Mine is a disabled vet who makes the case that Iranian and Syrian meddling reminds him of Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries which were forbidden targets in the last war, and the utter futility of trying to fight a war with restrictive ROE.  Last night's speech did address the ROE, albeit indirectly, as well as Syrian and Iranian meddling.

I do, in fact doubt that this desert 'misadventure' has created terrorists.  But, I won't play semantics.  There are armed factions on both sides of the sectarian divide that will either stop attacking each other, or not.  Maliki addressed the disarming of mookie's militia yesterday, and announced that they would either disarm, or be disarmed by the IA. The terrorists, foreign hajis are estimated to be around 2000, 
Algeria-20%, Syria-18%, Yemen-17%, Sudan-15%, Egypt-13%,Saudi Arabia-12%,Others-5%.

Approximately 25000 "insurgents" including militias.  Of the 18 Iraqi provinces, only 3 are not under the control of the IA,and remain problematic.  Bagdhad is the largest in population, and Anbar is the largest in area.  Mike Fumento just completed his 2nd embed in Fallujah, Anbar, and reported great progress. 

Bill at In Iraq Journal also completed an embed in Anbar, and had an interesting report: 

What makes the insurgency tick? How are they funded? Why is the civil
administrative infrastructure in the city so broken? And how can the
insurgency be ultimately quelled? These questions are frustratingly
complex, but some of them - from a local Fallujan perspective, at least
- are answered in this interview. And as interviews go, I think this
one is important.

Anything like this ever get reported?  I see your Chicago Tribune and raise you AP, NYT, al-Reuters, and most of the Green Zone media. 

Clear goals were laid out last night.  The strategy depends on whether or not the Iraqi government will do what they say they will do.   If indeed nothing changes from Maliki's givernment, then I agree it's time to get the Hell out of there, and hit hajis' targets from 40,000 feet.  More rubble, less touble.  It is quite an admission from any democrat that throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it.  I agree completely.  Changing leadership to be commanded by a Special Operations was recommended by Rumsfeld in 2003.  Regular Army held sway over the President and convinced him that those changes were not needed.  Anyway, that's just more 20-20 hindsight.  We do now have a Special Ops guy in command (Patraeus), and this reinforment of some 20,000 troops deployed in conjuntion with IA troops is not a new idea, nor has it ever been tried like this.  But again, it depends on the Iraqi government walking the talk.  

This strategy will either work, or it will not.  We're going to know in a matter of months.  If your party is indeed convinced that the mission is hopeless, and that it is an awful idea that should be stopped, then  why wait around these next several months.  Cut off the funding.  You've got the Congress, and you don't need republican permission to act on your convictions.  Do it.  I wouldn't envy you that public opinion fight either.

regards,n