« Bush's Insight: No Magic Formula | Blog Index | "No Matter How Much You Hate Bush..." (What's Up With the San Francisco Chronicle?) »

Advertisement

recent entries Obama's Grand Speech: Reason for Hope Fox. Is. Amazing. Gore's Speech: A Reminder of What's Missing Hezbollah Operating From Venezuela? Obama's Speech Tonight: What to Expect? Republican Solution to Health Care Crisis: Head, Meet Sand God Understands Irony, Part 2 John McCain Does Not Understand Cause and Effect Dep't of Rapid Response: 1968 Edition

Reaction to Bush's Speech: Will This Change Anything? Is This is a Kissingerian Ploy?

Everyone knew what Bush was going to say before he made his address tonight. And the 'surge' which Democrats hoped to block had already begun with advance elements of the 82nd Airborne already in Baghdad to arrange for arrivals of 17,500 more troops. "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home," Bush said. But the Iraqis are responsible for running their own government, and if they don't shape up, that's it for them.

Bush made clear he is embarking on a straightforward pacification program in Baghdad, made possible by an occupation run by American troops. This is to be an American military occupation. Maybe with a façade of Iraqis, but run by Americans, just as yesterday, American GIs ended up running the show in Haifa Street fighting.

As Bush has said in the past, Americans know what the word victory means, So, whatever happens, no matter what anyone says, we have to win the war. "Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States," Bush said.

Observers grasp wildly for explanations as to why Bush does what he does. No matter what one thinks of the President, when push comes to shove, it's hard to believe he really wants to drag out the war so it can be handed over to a successor in 2008; or that he is such a psycho that he can't stop calling defeat victory. The Bushes doubtless don't consider their family legacy to be made of such stuff.

There may well be a much more sinister game at play here. That centers around the emergence of Henry Kissinger over the last year as an outside advisor to Bush and other top officials in Washington.

Gareth Porter, the historian who ran the Indochina Resource Center in the early 70s, points out in a January 11 article on Asia Online that "although he knows very little about how to deal with Sunnis and Shi'ites, Kissinger does know how to convey to the public the illusion of victory, even though the US position in the war is actually weak and unstable."

Porter continues, "One of Kissinger's accomplishments was to sell the news media on the Nixon administration' s propaganda line that the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi had so unnerved the North Vietnamese that it had allowed president Richard Nixon and Kissinger to achieve a diplomatic victory over the communists in the Paris Agreement. That line was a gross distortion of what actually happened before and after the bombing." Moreover, it was Kissinger who figured out how Ford could claim a Vietnam victory and blame the whole mess on the Democrats.

So, it's quite possible that Bush will plunge into a counterinsurgency operation in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, and then amidst mass civilian carnage, declare victory and announce negotiations. Sooner or later there will have to be negotiations, and this may be his ploy.

But things aren't going to be so easy for Bush because American troops yesterday in the Haifa Street firefight in Baghdad appear to have fallen into an ongoing ethnic cleansing operation by Shia militia.

GIs call Haifa Street "grenade alley." As Juan Cole points out, Haifa Street has become a fixture of the civil war, twisting and turning in one pacification effort after another. In July 2004 there was Operation Haifa Street involving 3,000 American troops. A police station got blown up in a big bombing there. In March 2005 reports had things calming down a bit. Some said the tide had turned. Today it is once again called a terrorist stronghold and there is a fresh pacification effort. Now things are ever more complicated since at least one report in Arabic claims Shia invaded the area Sunday, killed residents, and threw their bodies into the street. "In this context, some Sunni Arabs see the US as having been duped by the Shiites to join in the ethnic cleansing of the Karkh district," says Cole.

And now there are reports the Shia are worming their way into the Green Zone, a feat long attempted unsuccessfully by the Sunnis.

-- James Ridgeway

Posted by Mother Jones on 01/10/07 at 6:40 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Furl | Yahoo! MyWeb

---

Comments

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: