Bush: Defeat With Dignity

NOT MUCH PILING ON. I haven't seen a whole lot of piling on from the defeat of the Democrats on Iraq war funding yesterday. CNN and Fox headlines focused just as much on Democratic pledges to keep fighting as they did on Bush winning. There was relatively little gloating from a right-wing blogosphere that's extremely agitated about immigration (here's an exception). Even President Bush refrained from a lot of gloating. Why the sudden lack of preening from people who have made preening an art form?

BUSH'S OWN TIMETABLE. Instead, what the Bush administration did was put out its own timetable for withdrawal. According to the New York Times, administration officials led by Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates are floating ideas of reducing the number of American troops to 100,000 and changing the mission from combat to training Iraqi troops. President Bush mentioned these ideas at yesterday's press conference as well. In certain ways, this is just a return to Gen. Casey's strategy for withdrawal in 2005 and 2006 and has been posed several times before. It may also be a sop to a public opinion which was 2/3rds in support of the Democratic timeline strategy. My impression though is that Bush realizes that the game is up in Iraq, but is determined to withdraw on his own timeline rather than timelines dictated by the Democratic opposition. The administration seems to be giving up on the two main goals of the surge--stabilizing Baghdad and promoting political reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis. Given that there is going to be no "victory," Bush seems to be angling for "defeat with dignity."

IN ADDITION. Glenn Greenwald scoffs at the Times story about reducing troops by half and produces a variety of quotes from war supporters to that effect over the last four years. And he's right to a large extent. So does Atrios (linking Greenwald). However, there is more debate and division within the warmaking machine than Greenwald acknowledges. It turned out that the Iraq strategy of Gen. Casey and Gen. Abizaid was to get the bulk of American troops out of the country as soon as possible.

Another item that leads me to believe that war advocates might actually want to reduce the U. S. military presence in Iraq is that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was emphatic about it. “I think that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it . . . In other words, I think he, himself, has certainly indicated he’s not happy with where we are. And I think we are looking for a new direction in the fall.”

Mitch McConnell is my senator here in Kentucky and he cares about the well-being of the Republican Party much more than anything in his own life and much more than Dick Cheney. I interpret McConnell's remarks as indicating that the President had better get in front of troop withdrawals or Republicans are going to suffer major reverses in 2008. In other words, the pressure on Bush to retreat from the surge is real and there's at least some chance that Bush will respond by "going in a different direction" in the near future.