A surge, in context - Excellent article in Cleveland Plain Dealer

[liberal N proud]

A surge, in context
Instead of papering over disaster in Iraq, the president must embrace the Iraq Study Group's regional approach
Wednesday, January 10, 2007

As he pitches tonight's latest "stay-the- course" message masquerading as an Iraq strategy, President Bush needs to remember that the American people aren't in the mood for more of the same.

That's why voters bounced Republicans from congressional leadership in November.

That's why a clear majority tell pollsters that they want the troops to start coming home, now.


That's why skepticism and no confidence in the president's leadership dominate in poll after poll.

And that's why voters consistently say they want more bipartisanship in foreign policy and more assertiveness from Democrats.

Which makes it all the more astounding that tonight the president will not embrace the detailed, pragmatic road map to a less chaotic Iraqi future laid out by the Iraq Study Group a mere month ago.

He should reconsider and look again at the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations that encompass both best and worse cases.

The group's bipartisan authors took a holistic approach to a crucial task that has so far eluded both the Bush administration and Iraq's radical Shiite government: empowering moderate Iraqis and influencing Iraq's neighbors, friends and adversaries to play a positive role in framing Iraq's future. What's needed is not more unilateral U.S. military action but a joint regional effort to stave off holy war and a larger-scale conflict that could threaten every single one of the Persian Gulf's governments, including Iran and Syria.

The Iraq Study Group recognized that the stakes go far beyond Iraq.


Should access to Persian Gulf oil be cut off and parts of Iraq morph into a terrorist Sunni Islamic state and a terrorist Shiite Islamic state, the world would pay a horrific price.

Yet President Bush thanked the study group's participants and then seemed promptly to have forgotten their overriding message: That it can no longer be business as usual in Iraq.

Either political pressures from the White House are again distorting military advice from below - or Iraqi forces proved so immutable to change and so resistant to the idea of taking charge of Iraqi security that the long-term prospects for the Iraqi nation must be considered grim.

The November election wasn't just a vote of "no confidence" in political business as usual. It was a vote of no confidence in this president's leadership of the war. A "surge" that cannot be sustained will merely confirm that view.

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1168421851322880.xml&coll=2&thispage=1

[BuyingThyme]

1. kcik