Have you noticed? The Bushites’ zig-zagging military policy in Iraq has taken another zig. Or is it a zag?
It’s hard to know, because they change policy every few months. Last year, you might recall, the official line was that our troops were not there to do the fighting for Iraq, but to train the Iraqi military to take over. George W, wearing his little commander-in-chief suit, said, “Our strategy can be summed up this way. As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.”
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That implied a withdrawal policy, and the Bushites even cited the number of Iraqi troops who were to be trained – 325,000. You might also recall that they kept touting the training strategy as a great success last year. Eight of Iraq’s 10 military divisions, they asserted, were taking the lead against the insurgency. Progress!
Only… it wasn’t true. It was another Bush fabrication. In fact, in nearly every area where the Iraq military was given control, the security situation deteriorated rapidly. As one war analyst put it, “In our initial efforts to hand security missions over to Iraqi forces, we took the training wheels off too early, and the bike fell over.”
Although the Bushites have not announced it, they have now abandoned the stand up/stand down strategy. Instead, their new policy is that our soldiers will have to defeat the insurgents. That’s what Bush’s “surge” is about – sending another 22,000 U.S. soldiers into the Baghdad meat grinder. Indeed, the surge plan includes no new money or staff for training.
This is Jim Hightower saying… George W calls his surge scheme: “A New Way Forward.” Of course, it’s not moving forward at all; it’s a step backward. Rather than fighting for America’s national interest or to “extend democracy,” Bush has committed our troops and our treasury to fight someone else’s civil war.
“U.S. officials: Training Iraqi forces no longer top priority,” Austin American Statesman, April 21, 2007
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