Now that President Petraeus and Vice-President Crocker have given us our marching orders, someone named George W. Bush will emerge today at the White House to rubber-stamp them, suspending troop withdrawals after this summer but sweetening the bitter medicine by cutting combat tours back to 12 months.
These actions will bring troop deployment back to where it was at the start of last year, a thousand American deaths and several hundred billions of dollars ago.
Even the good news is illusory. The tour cutbacks will affect only troops sent to Iraq in August or later. As the president of Veterans for America points out, nearly half of the Army's units are now deployed for 15 months and will stay there, making the "hollow announcement...nothing more than political posturing at the expense of our troops."
The net effect of this week's doings, as the New York Times points out quoting "senior administration and military officials" is "a bleak assessment that Iraqi forces remain unprepared to take over the mission of securing their own nation."
John McCain assures Americans the Surge has been a success, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seems closer to the mark in saying that “based on everything we have heard, we can reach only one conclusion: With 160,000 courageous American troops serving in Iraq, President Bush has an exit strategy for just one man--himself--on Jan. 20, 2009.”
Showing posts with label Iraqi readiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraqi readiness. Show all posts
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Our Hundred Years' War
When the fighting started, did the English have any idea how long it would go on? Did they expect to go through France in a cakewalk?
It’s Year 5 in Iraq, and the forecasts are lengthening. On Meet the Press this morning, retired Marine General James Jones, head of a commission studying the readiness of Iraqis to take over their own security, predicted “it’s probably a three to four year project for them.”
Today’s Washington Post, describing Bush Administration in-fighting over the war, reports one plan that calls for “slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010” and Gen. Petraeus “making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress.”
A New York Times blog reports that a poll “which contained an oversample of members of the United States military and their families, found that Americans say the Iraqi government is not doing all it can realistically be expected to do to establish order. Sixty-two percent of those polled said the United States made a mistake getting involved in Iraq.”
This week, the Washington air will be filled talk of “progress” in Iraq, and the questioning of what we are doing there will be branded defeatist by those who are planning to replicate the whole enterprise in Iran before American voters throw them out of power.
At how many points in the Hundred Years’ War did the English and French talk about progress, patience and persistence? And they were fighting for their national existence, not in a far-off hellhole for the misbegotten theories of armchair strategists named Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Libby.
It’s Year 5 in Iraq, and the forecasts are lengthening. On Meet the Press this morning, retired Marine General James Jones, head of a commission studying the readiness of Iraqis to take over their own security, predicted “it’s probably a three to four year project for them.”
Today’s Washington Post, describing Bush Administration in-fighting over the war, reports one plan that calls for “slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010” and Gen. Petraeus “making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress.”
A New York Times blog reports that a poll “which contained an oversample of members of the United States military and their families, found that Americans say the Iraqi government is not doing all it can realistically be expected to do to establish order. Sixty-two percent of those polled said the United States made a mistake getting involved in Iraq.”
This week, the Washington air will be filled talk of “progress” in Iraq, and the questioning of what we are doing there will be branded defeatist by those who are planning to replicate the whole enterprise in Iran before American voters throw them out of power.
At how many points in the Hundred Years’ War did the English and French talk about progress, patience and persistence? And they were fighting for their national existence, not in a far-off hellhole for the misbegotten theories of armchair strategists named Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Libby.
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