Handing Over Control Of The Government

There's one passage in today's execrable op-ed by Saints McCain and Lieberman from Our Lady of the Endless War that give you pause:

As the surge should have taught us by now, troop numbers matter in Iraq. We should adjust those numbers based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders in Iraq -- first and foremost, Gen. Petraeus, who above all others has proven that he knows how to steer this war to a successful outcome.

So we're supposed to basically outsource commander-in-chief operations to a military commander instead of the civilian leadership. Hm. Mike Huckabee has said this as well, by the way, and it's been George Bush's mantra for some time. Of course, Petraeus only commands one piece of our military footprint. He's going to ask for as many resources as possible to sustain his theater. So will those commanders in Afghanistan, who want 3,000 more Marines. So will every commander in every operation around the world. That's why this is a democracy and not a military junta.

The answer, clearly, is that while a responsible president needs to listen to what his military commanders in theater think but then he needs to use independent judgment. You're never going to get an answer like "Sir, my strategy has failed" or "Sir, this other guy's mission is more important than mine" out of an official in any kind of organization -- military or civilian.

What's President McCain going to do when it turns out that all of his subordinates throughout the government want more resources to be put at their disposal?

Well, we kind of know what he'll do: overburden the military in a quest for endless war. It's what he's been doing for a long time. And talk of exit strategies, of the political progress needed to get us out of Iraq, will be put aside in favor of some other narrative he wants to spin. Here's how that plays out in practice:

From Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to Army privates and aid workers, officials are expressing their willingness to stand back and help Iraqis develop their own answers. "We try to come up with Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," said Stephen Fakan, the leader of a provincial reconstruction team with U.S. troops in Fallujah.

In many cases -- particularly on the political front -- Iraqi solutions bear little resemblance to the ambitious goals for 2007 that Bush laid out in his speech to the nation last Jan. 10. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis," he pledged. "Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year . . . the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution."...

To Crocker, the meaning of "Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems" is "blindingly obvious. Iraq has got a government. It's got a system. It's got provincial governments. It's got a military and a police. And it has leaders of all of these things who increasingly take themselves seriously as leaders."

That's basically surrender. That says "we don't know what to do to influence the mess of a government we've ended up with, so we'll let them fight it out." It's completely irresponsible. So is this continued talk that any uptick in violence represents a "desperate" insurgency. If that's true they've been desperate for five years.

McCain's "plan" for Iraq is to do absolutely nothing, put it all in the hands of the generals, give them every last resource at the expense of breaking the military, and hoping the Iraqis can stumble across a political solution on their own.

That's considered the "experienced and sensible" view of foreign policy.