New Approach
 

I listened to the President's speech last night wherein he stated his "new approach". Surprisingly, I agree with some of his positions.
On moving forward with reconstruction, I agree. Let's start with New Orleans.
On "advancing liberty", I also agree. Let's start by repeal of the signing statements that allow his administration to monitor our phone calls and read our mail.
On Mr. Bush's definition of "victory" as " a functioning democracy that polices its territory, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people",
again I agree. Let's begin in the United States. This would be a "new approach".
I disagree with Mr. Bush's faith in Mr Maliki being able to bring resolution to the civil war that rages in his country. Mr Maliki has already demonstrated his competance in presiding over last week's lynching, oops, execution of Saddam Hussein.
I also will not bet on any horse that our President recommends. Though he has finally taken the reponsibility for mistakes that have happened in the past, I do not wish to exonnerate him for his continuing ones. He's good at picking losers.
DTS

lol. I was disappointed he didn't say lowering taxes on the rich would win the war.

I heard nothing that gave me the slightest bit of encouragement...I didn't really expect it but still...I stopped watching Buffy reruns to listen to him...waste of time!

Taxes didn't come up.
Do any of you find it to be a little amazing that the US and Iran (Shia) are fighting a common enemy, the Sunnis (Sadr's), for which we are sending an additional 21,500 troops? That makes sense.
But then again, the second biggest backers of the huge national debt we are incurring is the Saudis (Sunni) the ones we are fighting this proxy war for, to prevent Iraqi oil from competing on the open market. hmmm....
Didn't Osama bin Laden come from Saudi Arabia? 16 of the 9-11 hijackers?
The clear thinking that went into this "new approach" astounds me!

Richard Durbin's response:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007..._official.html

Before Cowboy George got on the horse, our Middle East politics were a bit more subtle. We supported the Shah, then cut him off. We supported Saddam then had cut him off. It was all about money.

It would be naive to think Bush would do anything that could remotely be considered critical of the Saudis. Too many film clips of his father hanging out with les Sheikhs as well as far too many friendly fortunes made.

And maybe you and I are the only two people in the world that don't know that the war is going so well we are now ready to take on the
Iranians and Syrians.

I am all for winning wars but this has gotten ridiculous.

Ridiculous...agree.

We just need to bring the troops home. Enough is enough. There will never be peace in the mid-east.

Hey, B! Hooray for playing Devil's Advocate in discussions! :) Thanks for chiming in.

Here's some thoughts on those issues, from Tim F. on balloon-juice.com. I'm just lifting it because he puts it better than I could. What do you think?

<<Let’s take a quick recap through last night’s speech, and then wrap up with what struck me as his one big idea.

First, the things that don’t matter:

* More troops. 20,000 more troops is a drop in the bucket. Unless we also change how our army operates (more on that below) I doubt that insurgents will even notice. The people who will notice, however, are the military managers who are trying to a strained force from collapsing entirely. Plus the poor saps trying to win in Afghanistan.
* A larger military. Fine idea considering our current readiness levels, but it won’t mean much for Iraq. How long will it take to transform policy into boots on the ground? Years, at best. Our time in Iraq won’t last that long, now even less long thanks to added strain from the President’s “surge.”
* Mandates. What are the consequences for Maliki blowing off our demands? As far as I can tell, nothing. The extra troops will go in anyway.
* “Diplomacy.” The only two regional partners who matter are Syria and Iran. As always the President will only talk to them if they agree to give up everything in advance. The best explanation that I have heard for such obvious bad faith involves fears by the administration about having a weak bargaining position vis a vis Iran. We don’t have any leverage, of course, because we removed Iran’s regional competitor, installed an Iran-friendly regime in his place and ground our fighting forces to dust in the process.

That leaves one point which could have an impact. Like Noah Shachtman I think that moving troops out of the insular FOBs and changing the rules of engagement will change life both for us and for the insurgents. Without a doubt this move comes from the Petraeus playbook and in 2003, with sufficient number of men, I think that we would have a chance of a positive result.

Sadly this isn’t 2003. Too much poisoned Euphrates wter has passed under the bridge for embittered Iraqis to give Americans the benefit of the doubt again. The sectarian mobs have had years to equip, train and exchange bloody shirts. Insurgents have years of hard training at our hands and porous borders to endlessly replenish their numbers, which will swell each time our new engagement rules accidentally makes another taxi full of civilians into a statistic. That has nothing to do with malicious intent on the part of our soldiers, it is simply the inevitable result of loosening the rules in a maddeningly complex urban environment. Good people will do bad things by accident and for perfectly understandable reasons, but none of that is visible to the local public. Only the bad things. And then you have idiotic stories like this which have the same war-losing value as a division of insurgents.

Of course the move out of FOBs is only a half-assed implementation of the Petraeus Doctrine . Fred Kaplan recently observed that Petraeus would need about twice as many combat troops as we have in all of Iraq. Instead of that America can spare 20,000. There is good reason to think we can’t even spare that. So if America’s best informed counterinsurgency strategist thinks that we have nowhere near the number of men needed to win, what exactly is the point of putting more men in harm’s way? Unless Petraeus’s own manual is comically off-base the change won’t win the war. As near as I can tell it will just put more Americans in convenient AK-47 range.

It helps to recall why American commanders pulled troops into secure FOBs in the first place. Insurgents became very good at picking off unprotected troops, to the point that casualty levels became politically dangerous. Barring a compelling reason to go out (say, an overarching war strategy) it makes sense to keep troops inside and in armored convoys until we can get out of Dodge altogether. So what has changed? The President has moved past reelection and isn’t grooming anybody to replace him, which means that casualties aren’t politically dangerous anymore. Democrats won’t impeach him and it seems vanishingly unlikely that they will cut off the war funds, leaving the President free to do more or less whatever he wants.

Democrats of course have nothing to lose by protesting. The more the public sours on this GOP war the more they stand to win. Obviously the GOP, who did everything possible to own this war when ownership looked like a good thing, has more of a dilemma on its hands. You have to wonder what they plan to do about it.

***Update***

Some extra points:

* Other than moving troops out of the FOBs there really is no there there.
* Now that’s interesting. Instead of pulling the funds, attach so many strings to them that Bush vetoes the money himself. I hope the President likes that GOP-brand medicine.>>

But I can't see how 20,000 is nearly enough men and women, if that's the intent, you know? It seems to me it would take a lot more boots on the ground, and that Bush is still trying to wage war on the cheap as it were.

I also see no way around Iraq descending into sectarian violence no matter what once we're gone. Which is horrible, though I wonder if it will take the focus of Islam vs. the West and put it on Islam vs Islam, you know?

GR,
Here's my "take". It's blame shifting. Dubbya says, we gave you additional forces. You Iraqis didn't stabilize, so we're out of here. It's all your fault Iraqis, not ours. We did our best. See ya...

another thought...sorry for the double post.
This is the "exit strategy".
Don't look at what people do, look at why people do what they do.
Game over.

Here's something that's interesting. If the Dems follow Teddy's lead, they look bad. (defunding).
Dubbya is looking to pass the tar baby to who ever is willing to catch it.
Smart move...let him keep it. It's his.
Action by the Dems opens them to blame. He's looking everywhere else besides the mirror.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/0...e_n_38434.html

The one man who kept Iraq together, they lynched, er hung.

Sumitas,
Sad to say that Saddam can't be brought back (not that I'd want him to be).
Looking back denies looking ahead to where we're going.
Sorry this is from common dreams...it's been a while, and it's long.
Take the time, poke holes if you can. Too easy to poke holes in Dubbya.
We are in fact a nation that is ruled by a madman. Sorry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0111-25.htm

well, that just goes without saying...