Also at DKos.
Here’s how well the “surge” strategy is going. From the New York Times :
BAGHDAD, March 28 — One of the bloodiest chapters in Iraq’s sectarian strife unfolded over the past two days in the northern city of Tal Afar where gunmen, some of them apparently police officers, participated in the revenge killings of scores of Sunnis in the aftermath of a huge double suicide bombing in a Shiite area.
Two hours after the explosion of truck bombs, which killed 83 people and wounded more than 185, the gunmen — some of whom witnesses recognized as police officers — went house to house in a Sunni neighborhood, dragged people into the street and shot them in the head, witnesses and local leaders said.
Tal Afar was once regarded as one of the few success stories of the American occupation.
More Corners Turned
The diplomatic piece of the “surge” is going great guns too. At the opening of an Arab League summit, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, our biggest, bestest buddy in the Middle East, condemned the U.S. occupation of Iraq. “In our dear Iraq, the blood is spilling between our brothers in light of an illegitimate foreign occupation,” he said.
Ain’t that a kick in the head?
Saudi Abdullah also touched on the situations in Sudan, Lebanon and Palestine, and called on Arab states to increase their unity. It sounds to me like Abdullah is sending a clear message to the Bush administration: you’ve screwed up our whole part of the world. Take your cowboy hat and ride out of town. Sooner is better than later.
Arab leaders are queasy about America’s naval buildup in the Persian Gulf aimed at intimidating Iran. It’s not that they love Iran. They just don’t want another war in their sphere of influence.
It’s not just the Arabs who are looking to distance themselves from the U.S. Even our British bulldog is lifting its leg on us. The Brits have asked us in so many words to stay the hell out of the Shatt al-Arab waterway incident in which Iran grabbed 15 British sailors and marines.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
Thursday morning, the Senate passed a $122 billion war funding bill that requires Bush to begin to withdraw troops within 120 days and sets a non-binding goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008. I’m guessing it will take weeks to resolve this bill with the House bill, but it looks like some sort of bill containing timelines for withdrawal will make it to Mr. Bush’s desk.
Mr. Bush threatens to veto any bill that contains timelines, which means he’ll veto his own war budget request. Then, of course, he’ll blame Congress for not supporting the troops. What happens next is anybody’s guess.
Mr. Bush has an uncanny knack for painting himself in a corner. Until recently, his supporters in politics and the media have always managed to pry him out of his jams. He may be running out of juice.
The U.S. Attorney firing affair is heating up, and might handcuff (virtually if not literally) a number of his chief advisers, most notably Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. My guess is that Attorney-gate is just the first in a series of devastating investigations the new Congress will slap on the administration.
If Mr. Bush finds himself in a corner he can’t squirm out of, what might he do?
Another Fine Mess
In a worst-case scenario for Bush, congressional investigations could dig up enough dirt to justify impeachment proceedings against both him and Dick Cheney. Between the two of them, they have as many skeletons in their closets as they have bats in their belfries. I’ve been skeptical that an impeachment scenario could come to pass, but lately…
Last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said on the House floor that “impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran.” That might well be true, and I like Dennis Kucinich but he isn’t exactly the King of Clout in Washington.
But when Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) starts hinting around at the “I” word, one tends to sit up and listen.
Any president who says, I don’t care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed–if a president really believes that, then there are–what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that.
Given young Mr. Bush’s psychological profile, it seems that if he senses he’s in an “inescapable” corner, he’s more likely to act out than to compromise, and the most dramatic act he could commit would be a flimsily justified attack on Iran.
And he might just use the Iranian’s hijacking of 15 British sailors and marines as the “next Pearl Harbor” he needs to launch another lunatic war.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
I, too, am worried about how Bush will react if painted into a corner. I supect that dignity, reason, maturity or remorse are out of the question. I’m not sure his administration has much more “cunning” up its sleeves, so I anticipate there will be some major lashing out and acting out. It is a frightening prospect.
I have also heard reports that American troops are massing on the border with Iran. Perhaps that is why the “surge” isn’t working in other parts of that poor country. Perhaps the surge was about Iran all along.
You may be right. Uh oh.
Two articles worth a read:
The day Mr. Bush left the White House for a stroll in the park
“The Current Occupant decided to go for a walk one fine spring morning, and he strolled down the White House drive to the main gate and chatted with the cops in the guardhouse and then strolled down Pennsylvania Avenue and through Lafayette Park to Christ Church and turned and looked at the White House through the trees – and then it dawned on him that he was alone, no Secret Service in their dark suits and their earpieces with the curly wires. Nobody had tried to stop him from leaving. They just let him wander away.”
and
End-game of a tormented presidency has begun
BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
“Not since the latter days of Richard M. Nixon have we had so clear a spectacle of arrogant politicians bumbling into fatal mistakes and poorly planned and executed cover-ups as George W. Bush administration is now providing, day by day.
How strange that an administration that took such pride in putting up a seamless wall around the White House and marching in lock-step, all reading from the same script and spinning in one direction, has come to this.[.]”
Gonzales, who has lawyered for Bush since he was governor of Texas, seems unlikely to survive long enough to keep his mid-April date with the congressional committees to explain his actions and his Justice Department aides’ misstatements, misinformation, denials and flat-out lies on the issue of the dismissal of those prosecutors.”
I’m semi-proud to say that I’m a semi-colleague of Galloway’s these days. We both appear on the op-ed page at Miliary.com.
Impeachment is beginning to really look like a matter of OUR national security.
At the Arab League summit meeting in Riyadh on Wednesday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called the American presence in Iraq and “illegal foreign occupation”. That has gotten pretty wide coverage. (The NY Times tries to downplay the significance of that remark here.)
What hasn’t gotten much coverage is that King Abdullah has bowed out of a state dinner at the White House, as Jim Haugeland reports:
Nancy Pelosi’s keeping impeachment off the table is now not just putting off the draining of the cesspool that is Bush’s Washington, but severely impeding the U.S.’s ability to carry on any kind of effective foreign policy.