Mismanaging the Run-Up to Escalation

This strategy by the President of waiting to give a final assessment of a new Iraq policy is really backfiring. Maybe they deliberately timed the disclosure to early January to put additional troops in Baghdad at a time when, historically, attacks have decreased; or maybe it was timed to blunt the emergence of the new Democratic majority in Congress. But politically speaking, what it's done is raise expectations for this big change in policy while present the President as out of touch with the urgency of the situation. I think that's a really poor way to sell the idea of escalation to the public.

Anticipation is high not just because people are weary of war, but also because of the way Bush has gone about deciding his next move.

Saddled with a reputation for stubbornness, Bush has gone the other direction. He has made a visible effort to seek advice — from the military, diplomats, academics, retired generals, a special study commission, Iraqi officials, Republican leaders, even Democrats he once ridiculed.

"He has built up expectations," said David Gergen, a former White House adviser in the administrations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. "People are saying, 'OK, if you've spent all this time and effort on it, you better have a pretty darn good plan.'"

And as we know, the "plan" is to add 30,000 troops or so, and... not much else. And to people who don't pay as much attention to the news, that's going to come as a great shock. After all the buildup, to suggest the opposite of what the evidence appears to demand will really turn people off more, if that's possible. I think the public reaction will largely this reaction from Jane Smiley:

I'm interested because the "surge" is a classic example of a loser's strategy, and it is about to be put in place by a bunch of losers. The "surge" is about saving face rather than achieving an objective, and, let me say it right here, it's a guy thing. It's like "going down fighting", except that those who are going to be going down aren't going to be those who want to save face.

People always comment on how stubborn George W. Bush is, or how stupid he is, or how ignorant he is, but what they don't comment on is how selfish he is. Clearly, the face that is being saved in this probable "surge" is his face, and that's how he wants it. He is willing to sacrifice any number of troops (and we don't know what that number will be, but it could be high) and any number of Iraqis (certainly a higher number, because the American troops will throw off all restraint) in order to say that---Well, what? What would be the expression? "We did our best"? Well, no. The Bush administration didn't do their best, because they never gave their post war strategy any thought. "We tried"? Hardly. "We did everything we could"? But no. They gave the PR a shot ("weapons of mass destruction"), but in the end, they were indifferent to everything about the war except George W. Bush's mood.

Some of that is psychoanalysis, but much of it is set up by these expectations. He appears to be waiting to find a way to make this selfish call to save face without it seeming to be selfish. And the fact that it's taken weeks just plays into that. Nobody believes that the President is sitting in Crawford diligently weighing options. He's on his bike, and his speechwriters are trying to figure out how to sell this turd.

Even using the word "surge" is problematic, because it suggests a short-term solution, when even the architects of the policy know that their meaning of surge is a long-lasting escalation of the fighting.

Reports on the Bush administration's efforts to craft a new strategy in Iraq often use the term "surge" but rarely define it. Estimates of the number of troops to be added in Baghdad range from fewer than 10,000 to more than 30,000. Some "surges" would last a few months, others a few years.

We need to cut through the confusion. Bringing security to Baghdad -- the essential precondition for political compromise, national reconciliation and economic development -- is possible only with a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so. Any other option is likely to fail.

You won't hear that from the President's mouth, because it'd be the death rattle of the policy. So they hide behind more palatable language when the actuality is to increase the force for an open-ended period of time.

This White House used to pride itself on stagecraft, but they've now built up a change of course in Iraq to be an end-all be-all when they're going to announce the opposite of what people want to see, and they are going to use euphemistic language to describe it while their public figures going out to speak about the policy are undermining them.

Good job, guys. The AP article gives a good sum-up of the pickle Bush has gotten himself into:

Bush now faces his own test of great expectations, largely of his own doing. He's promised a new approach, yet even his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, has acknowledged that "there are no new ideas in Iraq."

Indeed, some of the main ideas under consideration — sending in more troops, embedding more U.S. advisers in Iraqi units, engaging in more aggressive diplomacy — aren't novel. And if Bush does come up with a remarkably fresh approach after nearly four years of war, that will raise the question of why he hadn't thought of it before.

John Kerry did an admirable job showing the way that a reasonable, principled leader might approach this kind of situation, where instead of stubbornly "sticking to your guns" in the face of chaos, you explain yourself with honesty and candor.

There's something much worse than being accused of "flip-flopping": refusing to flip when it's obvious that your course of action is a flop.

I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world's complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous -- it is immoral.

I'd rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live [...]

We cannot afford to waste time being told that admitting mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory. We've already lost years being told that we have no choice but to stay the course of a failed policy.

This isn't a time for stubbornness, nor is it a time for halfway solutions -- or warmed-over "new" solutions that our own experience tells us will only make the problem worse [...]

How else could we end up with the famous mantra that "only Nixon could go to China"? For decades, Richard Nixon built his reputation as a China hawk. In 1960, he took John Kennedy to task for being soft on China. He called isolating China a "moral position" that "flatly rejected cowardly expediency." Then, when China broke with the Soviet Union during his presidency, he saw an opportunity to weaken our enemies and make Americans safer. His 1972 visit to China was a major U.S. diplomatic victory in the Cold War.

Ronald Reagan was no shape-shifter, either, but after calling the Soviet Union the "evil empire," he met repeatedly with its leaders. When Reagan saw an opportunity for cooperation with Mikhail Gorbachev, he reached out and tested our enemies' intentions. History remembers that he backed tough words with tough decisions -- and, yes, that he changed course even as he remained true to his principles.

President Bush and all of us who grew up in the shadows of World War II remember Winston Churchill -- his grit, his daring, his resolve. I remember listening to his speeches on a vinyl album in the pre-iPod era. Two years ago I spoke about Iraq at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Churchill had drawn a line between freedom and fear in his "iron curtain" speech. In preparation, I reread some of the many words from various addresses that made him famous. Something in one passage caught my eye. When Churchill urged, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in," he added: "except to convictions of honour and good sense."

This is a time for such convictions.

It's a good piece of writing - and it's a good piece of leadership. Would that we had some right now.

UPDATE: Joe Biden's got the stagecraft down. Sure, he's doing it to pump up his profile for a Presidential bid, but holding 3 days of hearings a week before the State of the Union is a pretty darn good way to wrestle control of the narrative. It should be radioactive to commit more troops to a war like this. Biden's fighting the good fight toward making that so.