New Strategy!!!

Guess what? That "surge" that was going so well? In fact, it's moving forward so swimmingly that the military is completely ripping it up and coming up with a new strategy! And guess what? The new strategy is like the fifth reiteration of the old strategy!

Top U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq are completing a far-reaching campaign plan for a new U.S. strategy, laying out military and political goals and endorsing the selective removal of hardened sectarian actors from Iraq's security forces and government [...]

The overarching aim of the plan, which sets goals for the end of this year and the end of 2008, is more political than military: to negotiate settlements between warring factions in Iraq from the national level down to the local level. In essence, it is as much about the political deals needed to defuse a civil war as about the military operations aimed at quelling a complex insurgency, said officials.

This is, you know, exactly what Democrats have been saying for years, that Iraq requires a political solution and not a military one. It also includes increasing the size and training of the Iraqi army, which is at least the third time that has been made a priority. And we're talking about "protecting the Iraqi population" as if that's never been a concern before (which, in a way, it wasn't).

In contrast, U.S. operations in 2004 and 2005 "had the unintended consequence of killing off Iraqis who supported us. We would clear an area, encourage people to sign up for government programs, but then we would have to leave and those people would be left exposed and would get killed."

Amazingly, I don't think the Bush Administration has figured out that this government doesn't really want any unified cooperation with each other.

Finally, the campaign plan aims to purge Iraq's leadership of a small but influential number of officials and commanders whose sectarian and criminal agendas are thwarting U.S. efforts. It recognizes that the Iraqi government is deeply infiltrated by militia and corrupt officials who are "part of the problem" and are maneuvering to kill off opponents, install sectarian allies and otherwise solidify their power for when U.S. troops withdraw.

"For the surge to work, Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus have to identify the Iraqi nationalists and empower them, while minimizing" two other groups - namely "the militant sectarians . . . and the profoundly, personally corrupt," said Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

There ARE NO IRAQI NATIONALISTS. Say it with me. There are Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds, and the Shiites will never give up the power we've provided them. This is just wishful thinking.

If you squint, you can look at this "new strategy" as a detailed assessment of what will happen when we eventually leave, and how to bridge that divide. That will only happen with a change of leadership, of course. But the diplomats and military personnel in the country see the handwriting on the wall. Taken along those lines, maybe what the Democrats have done wasn't so horrible. I still think the politics were miserable. But clearly it's motivated some parts of the government to action. However, it's absurd that we still have to do these rudiments of "nation-building," as it were, four-plus years into the conflict.