Capping Off a Bad War

It just gets dumber and dumber. Matthew Yglesias links to a Jim Miklaszewski NBC report on the thinking going into the surge. Miklaszewski claims an administration source “admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one.” Miklaszewski goes to say that the administration is seeking to salvage some kind of success out of Iraq.

If this is the case, the administration is paring what Al Gore calls the "biggest strategic mistake" in American history with the "biggest political mistake" in American history.

So far, reports on plans for a surge indicate that 20,000 more troops will be stationed in Iraq for eighteen months. Miklaszewski indicates that the additional troops will be sent to stabilize Baghdad (although he doesn't say whether the troops will be leaning on the Sunnis or the Sadr City Shiites) while the training of Iraqi troops is accellerated under the command of new general Petraeus. The new slogan will be "Surge and Accelerate."

If the increase in troops begins in February, 2007, an eighteen month commitment would put the end of the surge in July or August 2008. Though more than zero, the chances of success for the surge are very low. If the American command focuses on clearing the Sunni neighborhoods of insurgents, that will mostly free the Shiite militias for more death squad activities. If they focus on the Shiite militias, they run a serious risk of igniting a general Shiite rebellion to go along with the Sunni insurgency. If the military command tries to do both, they'll just dissipate their energies to little effect in Baghdad.

But the consequences in the United States will be enormous. An eighteen month commitment means that the U. S. will have 170,000 troops in Iraq through the entire presidential primary season. If the mission is not clearly successful, Republican candidates for the presidency will be in a difficult bind. They will be under intense pressure from the conservative media and Republican primary voters to support President Bush at the same time that the war grows less and less popular with the general electorate. This won't be a problem for Sen. John McCain. As John Dickerson of Slate points out, the surge is McCain's big policy initiative and he'll either sink or swim with it. However, all of the other presidential and Congressional Republican candidates will be tied just as tightly to the surge as McCain and a lot of them will sink in the 2008 election if the surge doesn't succeed.

Unless the surge in Iraq is surprisingly successful, President Bush is practically guaranteeing a big Democratic win in 2008 and a couple of elections beyond that. That would make the Bush surge the biggest political miscalculation in American history.