by Tan Copsey
Today President Bush will announce his new strategy to win the war in Iraq. A so-called ‘surge’, that will entail increasing the number of troops in Iraq by 20 000, with a commensurate increase in funds further draining the US Treasury. Bush will make his announcement against the new and unfamiliar backdrop of the White House Library. The notion that fresh window dressing will somehow disguise the depressing and inevitable familiarity of the strategy and accompanying rhetoric is of course preposterous. The choice of location is further deeply ironic on a day when it was revealed that faculty at Southern Methodist University in Texas, a bastion of conservatism, have expressed serious concerns about a proposal to locate the George W. Bush Presidential Library on their grounds. Many at the University do not wish to cement their association with Bush, as his car-crash Presidency winds down dragging yet more Americans and Iraqis with it.
The surge flies in the face of American public opinion as expressed in countless polls, including that taken in early November last year. It contradicts the findings of the Iraq Study Group, and the majority of Bush’s top General’s – several of whom have now resigned or been forced out. It also goes without saying that most in Iraq are not keen on it.
Despite all this, it will go ahead, and Congress lacks the courage to take those measures that could prevent it. The problem for congressional Democrats is not, bar a notable Kansan absentee, that they are as fractured and disunited as they have been in the past. Rather there is division over how far they go in opposing Bush’s plan, and a common avoidance of articulating an alternative vision.
An obvious option is to limit funding for the surge. The Centre for American Progress has issued a report highlighting the many instances where congressional control of funding has been used to limit troop deployment. It is notable that such methods have been used to limit the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, troop increases in Vietnam itself, the Lebanese civil war, and rather interestingly given yesterdays activities – in Somalia in 1994.
Despite past-precedents, many Democrats are afraid that cutting off funding would back-fire and that they would be painted as unpatriotic. It therefore seems likely that their activities will be of the more symbolic nature – a bipartisan non-binding bill condemning the surge, named the ‘Pale Action and Timid Gesture Resolution’ - at least according to Slate. Although Ted Kennedy has arguably shown more steel, introducing legislation to require the President to gain Congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq.
The surge has also left Republicans facing tricky choices. John McCain in particular has been a long-term proponent of a troop increase and as such his fortunes are now effectively tied to its success. Its failure could end his chances of winning the Republican nomination for President. Other Republicans have been more circumspect, dancing between the need to avoid contradicting the President, whilst simultaneously not wholly supporting a futile effort that will do long term damage to their political careers. As Dana Millbank puts it in the Washington Post - they have displayed ‘more dance steps than the Joffrey Ballet’.
So once more into the breach will US troops go. That many among there number will die is inevitable. That many more Iraqis will die is inevitable. That vast swathes of money will be wasted is inevitable. In desperately seeking an impossible victory in Iraq, George Bush has now assured that defeat is inevitable.
