from CommonDreams:
Published on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Presidential Campaign Launched in America with Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq
As Debate Begins, Sunnis Decry Massacres
by Tom Hayden
Politically, the coming escalation by 20,000 US troops in Iraq is best understood as the comeback strategy of the neo-conservative Republicans rallying around Sen. John McCain’s presidential banner.
The political spin-doctors are calling it a “surge”, an aggressive term implying a kind of post-election erection for Bush and the neo-conservatives. In fact, or course, it is an escalation, a term apparently carrying too much baggage from Vietnam.
The hardcore neo-conservatives, their ranks thinned by defections publicized in Vanity Fair, leaped immediately to salvage the war from November’s voter disapproval. Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard began promoting an increase of 50,000 troops, mainly to Baghdad. Bush, who all along said he was listening to his generals, now sacked generals Casey and Abizaid, who had plans to reduce troop levels over one year ago, and who now opposed more American soldiers in Iraqi neighborhoods. John Negroponte, a specialist in the black arts of counter-intelligence, became the State Department’s point man on Baghdad. US ambassador Zalman Khalilzad, a Sunni who has been critical of the Shi’a-controlled interior ministry, was removed from his Baghdad post. An Ivy League general, David Petraeus, with a counter-insurgency agenda to prove, took over command of US troops.
Right after the election, Sen. McCain was touring Baghdad with his potential running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, promoting the plan to escalate, although supported by only 20 percent of Republicans, 11 percent of independent voters, and a statistically-insignificant 4 percent of Democrats
It is a brilliant strategy – for a faction dealt a losing hand.
If and when the 20,000 Americans plunge into Baghdad neighborhoods, there will be dramatic television coverage of soldiers at risk. It is possible, though far from easy, to “stabilize” a Baghdad neighborhood for several months or one year, carrying the surge into the next presidential cycle. The strategy fits the polling data showing only 21 percent of Americans favor immediate withdrawal, while the moderate middle might be open to an undefined new strategy if convinced it will shorten the war and bring the troops home.
More likely, the ranks of the peace movement are likely to swell with people angry over the perceived betrayal by Bush of the November voter mandate. A failure by majority Democrats to prevent the escalation will convince more people to take to the streets or look to 2008 for a fix.
If the proposal to escalate somehow is blocked by Congressional Democrats along with a few Republicans facing re-election, McCain and the neo-conservatives will be able to salvage a narrative blaming the “loss of Iraq” on Democrats. Their Plan B is to claim the US should have escalated from the very beginning.
The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report offered a hint that this escalation was coming in its formulaic compromise stating that it “could” support a “short-term redeployment or surge” but only if “the US commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.” With the arrival of a new commander in Iraq, that mission is accomplished.
The term “could” represents one of the partisan trade-offs in the writing of the Report. The Republicans on the ISG would have been advocating the optional language on behalf of the White House while others tried to weaken the “could” by relying on a commander like Gen. Casey to nix it. ........(more)
The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0109-21.htm
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