While most of the speech last night was predictable, it is worth noting once again just how profoundly this administration misreads the current problems in Iraq. Juan Cole gets it exactly right, and is absolutely required reading this morning, writing, in part:
To listen to Bush's speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.The problem is not "al-Qaeda in Iraq", which is not even the global al-Qaeda of 9/11, the USS Cole, etc. but rather a collection of regional Salafists who adopted that name. There are not very many of them, and the bloodshed certainly didn't miss a beat when their leader, Zarqawi, was killed last June. More importantly, though, a "clear and hold" strategy doesn't work against a group that actually holds virtually no territory. The primary goal of the limited number of terrorists in Iraq is to foment intra-Iraqi sectarian violence, and they can do that on the run or by occasionally appearing and then melting away (see: Golden Mosque, bombing of).
The current conflict is an Iraqi one, and this idea that there is a moderate, unified government which just needs a little help to pacify a few extremists is an absolute fantasy. Andrew Sullivan, whose slow, glum move towards the reality-based camp has been fascinating and almost depressing (and, yes, very much overdue), also understands this:
The premise of the speech, and of the strategy, is that there is a national democratic government in Baghdad, defending itself against Jihadist attacks. The task, in the president's mind, is therefore to send more troops to defend such a government. But the reality facing us each day is a starkly different one from the scenario assumed by the president. The government of which Bush speaks, to put it bluntly, does not exist.But if the president can pretend it exists for another year or so, then he can pass the problem off to a successor. And he can also pass more triangle-folded flags to the families of men and women who will die because of perceptions and strategies divorced from the ground truth.
