We’ve been kind of kicking around whether or not the Bush administration really is changing course in counter-terrorism strategy. The question really is whether the change from the “Global War on Terror” to the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism” is anything more than a smoke and mirrors attempt to divert public attention from the desperate situation in Iraq.
Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution weighs in today with a post over at tpmcafe. (No, I don’t read the cafe, but I do still check in with Josh Marshall regularly and he front-paged it this afternoon.) In Daalder’s view:
GSAVE’s focus is on transnational networks rather than on states, on extremist ideology rather than on terrorist tactics, on a multidimensional struggle rather than on military combat, on working with others rather than on going it alone. In short, it represents a repudiation of the last four years of American policy.
More on the other side…
Now, Daalder is not just Joe Blow from Kokomo but rather a former foreign policy maker himself in the Clinton administration. As an ex-insider, I’m sure he’s got access to players in the current administration. That is, he almost certainly has a better sense than any of us of what the real decision makers are thinking.
He writes that the initiative to change course comes not from the WH, and specifically not from Rove, but rather from the Pentagon. This makes sense, actually, because it is military prestige and lives that are on the line as the US suffers defeat after defeat after seemingless endless defeat while pursuing the neo-cons go-it-alone, we’re the only superpower strategy.
On the down side, Daalder believes that Cheney, and Bush himself, are not yet on board with the policy shift.
If Daalder’s right, then the disarray in the US foreign policy making apparatus is at unheard of levels for early in a president’s second term.
The Bush administration looks as if it is coming apart at the seams. An opportune indictment by Fitzgerald — hopefully at the height of the ’06 election cycle — could lead to a total collapse.
Could you just imagine the recriminations and finger-pointing if this coalition of neo-cons and the religious right breaks into all of its constituent parts? We could be looking at thirty-six years of Democratic Party dominance!
It makes sense that the change isn’t coming from the White House. But the Pentagon? I am not used to seeing any sanity coming from there. Has there been a power shift because the continuing death of soldiers?
If there really is a change in emphasis and strategy it is quite welcome. But I suspect it will hurt Republicans. Now when they say “we are at war!” they can only mean Iraq. And Iraq isn’t polling so well. A lot of the Republican raison d’etre has been “we’re at war!” so unless they have something else to replace it with, they’ll be somewhat adrift. I doubt Scary Gay Marriage is going to do it.
The military is a strange institution. All about killing, yeah, but there’s a real current within the US military at least of intellectual curiousity. There’s a fair amount of ok scholarship done at the military academies and the War College, and some officers have a decent sense of the way the world really works. They’re the ones who know just how fucked up Bush foreign policy has been.
Before it became totally clear that we were losing this war, dissenting voices in the armed forces really had to keep quiet. Now, however, it’s patently obvious to everyone — and especially to the soldiers who have had to implement at least three different and contradicting strategies since we conquered Iraq — that the Bushies really don’t know what they’re doing. That gives dissenters an opportunity to influence their superior officers, and the high command are probably the people outside the neo-con inner circle who still have any real power in this country.
I’m rambling, so I’ll let it go there.
Could you just imagine the recriminations and finger-pointing if this coalition of neo-cons and the religious right breaks into all of its constituent parts? We could be looking at thirty-six years of Democratic Party dominance!
One can only hope!
And pray, if you’re so inclined.
Keep throwing them anchors!!!
blog:
Apparently Bush doesn’t approve of the Pentagon’s new description of the military occupation of Iraq + Gitmo + the military occupation of Afghanistan + the Patriot Acts – all that comes under GWOT. He wants to be a WAR president, a boy soldier. The only time he is fluent in English is when he is speaking malice and threats so he needs war to keep talking. Otherwise his speech gets bogged down in stuttering and stammering when he has to pretend he cares about people and domestic issues.
They did consider WOE, War on Extremism, but the acronym was not attractive (though appropriate) and Bush would have to declare war on his extremist self and his extremist administration.