Home > So What Is Bush’s Post-Iraq Strategy?

So What Is Bush’s Post-Iraq Strategy?

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 27 June 2006
7 comments

Wars and conflicts International Governments USA

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/em...

So What Is Bush’s Post-Iraq Strategy?
By Ellen Goodman
06/24/2006

It was probably not the wisest metaphor to choose for a country with only 58 kilometers of shoreline. "Cut and run’’ is, after all, a nautical term. More to the point, one person’s metaphor for cowardice is another’s description of speed and survival. As for the other mantra of war debate? We’re still at sea on whether to "stay the (disastrous or not) course.’’

The good news is that the public seems to have finally recognized the sound of spin. But there is a phrase in the rhetorical war that has not fallen on deaf ears. It’s the assertion that we are fighting the terrorists there so we won’t have to fight them here. In the midst of the mutual taunting and sound biting, this still resonates with the American people.

So it’s time to ask whether we are indeed fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them in the New York subway. If so, what does it mean? What does it portend?

From the get-go, the Bush administration framed the war in Iraq as self-defense, as part of the war on terror. In fact, the attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 was as phony as the assertion of weapons of mass destruction. By no stretch of Dick Cheney’s imagination was Iraq a front line on the war on terror. But it is now.

It has become the recruiting ground, the favorite destination for terrorists who take their place alongside insurgents and civil warriors. No sooner is Zarqawi killed than another group claims the brutal torture and murder of two American soldiers as the work of his successor.

If Iraq is the neighborhood in which terrorists have chosen to fight America, are we now sending sons, daughters, husbands, wives to be the designated terrorist attractions? If they are not cannon fodder, are they IED fodder?

This week at a news conference, The Wall Street Journal’s David Rogers, a Vietnam veteran, challenged the House majority leader. "In Vietnam, they used to put us out in these fire support bases and hope we would get attacked. Is that what you are doing?’’ he asked. "You are putting people in Iraq and hoping they get attacked so you can bring out the terrorists?’’

The president says, "It will endanger our country to pull out of Iraq before we accomplish the mission.’’ The stated mission is a functioning Iraqi government in a country currently so out of control that workers don’t dare tell friends they work in the Green Zone.

That’s a hard enough mission to accomplish. But I am troubled by an even darker thought: What if the unacknowledged "mission’’ is to keep the terrorists over "there’’? There is no dearth of recruits to terrorism. If the Iraqi front line miraculously becomes a demilitarized zone, terrorists may indeed look for a new American target. The alternative to that worry is an Iraq war with no end in sight.

We’ve had two weeks of political wrangling over support for a timetable for withdrawal versus support for a policy with no exit door. The pro-war

administration calls any timetable a form of retreat. Yet in Iraq itself, where escalating violence brings 40 fresh bodies a day to the Baghdad morgue, 87 percent of Iraqis want a timetable for American withdrawal.

This administration had no post-Saddam strategy for Iraq. Now it seems they have no post-Iraq strategy for the war on terror. It’s not just the Iraqi government that needs a deadline. It’s our government that needs a timetable for withdrawal and a strategy for its aftermath.

Forum posts

  • No timetable for withdrawl, just a list for upcoming misadventures; Iran, Syria, North Korea. The AWOL Commander in Chief and his chicken hawk advisors were extremely naive about the progression of the war, and are utterly clueless and disinterested in extracting American forces from this mess. What the country needs is a post Bush strategy, and to start to enact it immediately.

    check http://www.impeachbush.org and send them a few bucks to help buy advertising in major newspapers around the country

  • There was no strategy going into the ILLEGAL INVASION other than the secure the second largest oil reserves on the planet for the greed and profit of BushCo. That’s been accomplished to some degree. Now the strategy is to concentrate on the other country with massive amounts of oil. IRAN.

    Since the collapse of the old Soviet Union, there remains only one super power which intends to wield it to it’s own benefit, and at the expenst of all other nations who refuse to comply with the will of the imperialists.

  • There is only one strategy: kill all Iraqis (Sunni, Shiites and Kurds), or better let them kill themselves by iraqifying the war.
    The only answer for the Iraqi people is civilian disobedience: don’t work with the occupants or their puppet regime in the green zone.

  • Ms. Goodman is like many American analysts in that they continue to use the lexicon of the neocon, i.e. that this war was necessary for our protection, our liberty and our security. This has been patently proven to be false. This war is nothing but the abhorrent conquest of another sovereign nation. There is no ’cut and run’ from a war that was unjust to begin with.

    If home invaders had taken over your family and home for years, even after admitting that your home had no weapons to assault them, but still continued to occupy your home, would asking them to leave, demanding them to leave, would you consider that to be cutting and running?
    NO, of course not. Home invaders are criminals, asking them to leave would be the first thing to do, and if they don’t, you would have all the right in the world to force them out, to strike back at these criminals. Why is it that this simple logic escapes the mind of the average, addled American?
    Simple answer : the common American continues to believe in their government, and continues to use the lexicon, the terminology of a government that uses language as a form of control over our lives and as a weapon, a weapon against the truth.
    Have we become a nation of hypocrital apologists for a lawless government?

    As long as so many ’analysts’ submit to using the language of the conqueror, who calls this war of annexation and occupation a "War on Terror" this unjust, criminal war will forever confuse them.
    After all, you are supposed to be independent thinkers, able to think out of any box, able to understand that when you allow someone else to redefine the terms of the debate, when you allow these powerful forces that are out to control our lives to pervert the language as they see fit, you inevitably allow them to win the debate, and you inevitably allow them to control our lives.
    The more I read from both sides of this issue, the more I see that there are very few American journalists who are able to think independently, and even fewer who understood the prophetic warnings of Orwell and Hayek, that even democratic nations can fall under the spell of totalitarianism. This article is great example of that fact.

  • It is overwhelmingly evident that Bush had only the NEOCON strategy of world conquest in mind when 9;11 hit him. Afghanistan had the Taliban that sheltered Bin Laden, so o.k. we hit them, but let Bin Laden escape. This is a BUSH failure.
    The biggest failure of out nation was to "declare" war on Iraq, a nation that had NOT attacked us, was not about to attack us, and was under constant U.S. aerial attack because Bush Senior did not finish the job.
    It is also evident that Bush had no IRAQ strategy other than kill as many MUslims as posssible with planes and bombs and tanks and grenades and shells, and machine guns. He destroyed large parts of the infrastructure, and took the lives of MANY innnocent civilians as part of his arrogant neocon plan for world domination. He wanted the oil, the wanted bases from which to dominate the entire middle east, and he wanted to install a huge embassy from which to terrorize all surrounding nations. Yes, Bush is the number one terrorist of the world. He has killed many thousands of innocent people and wants to kill more as befits a moral coward with aspirations of imperial Napoleonic glory.
    He has no idea how to withdraw. STay the course is stupidity in inaction. The flypaper strategy has killed how many American boys now?
    The legacy of Bush is death and destruction. We already know he is NOT compassionate conservative, and that he has no idea of diplomacy other than issuing threats and sending missiles. He is undoubtedly the worst president in our history.

  • The neoconed Bush strategy is to create chaostan forever in the entire OPEC oil nations. This will stop the capital out flow from the British Empire.