The Loaded Dice

The Throw. Today, President Bush threw the dice on his new Iraq strategy--increase the number of troops by 25,000, primarily by keeping the next rotation of troops in Iraq rather than taking them out as planned. Merry Christmas guys!

The Dice. As a result of his own incompetence and cynicism, the dice are heavily loaded against the President and American interests in general. What are the 25,000 troops going to do. If we had 25,000 troops, that would double the number of Americans in al-Anbar but still wouldn't allow us to maintain the continuous offensives and massive economic reconstruction needed to stabilize the province. In fact, it wouldn't come close.

The most likely deployment would be to Baghdad where the additional troops would either be driving around the streets trying to provoke attacks (it's called DAB--Driving Around Baghdad) or launching a major offensive against Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. The former deployment would be pointless; the latter a major disaster. Attacking and defeating al-Sadr would leave the remnants of his fighters fragmented, angry, and ready for the sort of long insurgent campaign being conducted by the Sunnis in Anbar. Defeating al-Sadr would also inflame a big part of the Shiite population into being more sympathetic with or joining a Shiite insurgency. The American military would "win," but the victory would be self-defeating. Just like the all the other American victories in Iraq.