A 20,000-40,000 "surge" of additional troops into Iraq makes no more sense politically than it does militarily. Militarily, there is absolutely no chance of such a small number even improving the situation, much less giving us a "victory". And when it doesn't work militarily, it will simply deepen the political hole the President and his party are in over Iraq. Worst of all for their side, even a 40,000 surge won't require the Democrats to assume the partial responsibility for the Iraq project that the Republicans desperately need before 2008.
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I think it unlikely, though many would differ, that hundreds of thousands of extra troops would have made a difference even at the outset of the occupation. But even those optimistic about large numbers of extra troops early on, mostly don't think that even a comparably large surge now would do any good. And, to enter the final circle, it's hard to see how anyone not seriously delusional would think that a small surge this late in the game would stand any chance of improving things even marginally, much less allowing us to "win".
Any administration escalation that doesn't succeed on the ground in Iraq will simply worsen the administration's position even further, especially since these latest elections. Of course, sensible people warned even before the initial invasion that the Iraq project wouldn't work. But because they were few, and their voices drowned out by the mass of opinion that approved of the war, the administration was able to diffuse the blame for being wrong. An error shared by so many seems less culpable. But at every stage since May 2003 of the worsening situation on the ground, and the administration's ineffective responses to that worsening, more and more voices have defected from the war boosters to the side of the war skeptics. And now, the 2006 elections have shown that the electorate has defected to the war skeptics. Being wrong about Iraq up until now has been bad enough for the Republicans, but they could always claim that they were doing the electorate's bidding, and simply found that to not work. But to escalate further now that the electorate has told them to stop, and then be proven wrong once again, as they will when the 20,000 doesn't work, would seem to be outrightly suicidal.
Now, this seemingly suicidal impulse might still be chalked up to stupidity about the results on the ground. Conceivably -- hard to believe, but barely conceivable -- they still believe that 20-40,000 more troops really would turn things around. And, if they really thought another 20,000 troops would lead to a decisive victory over the insurgents, perhaps they wouldn't care to associate the Democrats with the decision to escalate, so as to not be forced to share the glory of this brilliant maneuver. But it really is inconceivable to me that even the last three years experience in Iraq hasn't at least made the point that victory in Iraq is far from certain, that, as Dubya himself says, this is really hard. It seems to me that they would understand that they absolutely have to get the Democrats to assume at least partial ownership of any escalation in the war. They clearly understood before the invasion that they needed to get the majority of Dems trapped into a vote, the AUMF, that would spread responsibility around. But adding 20-40,000 troops is so small an increment to the ongoing war, that no new vote, no new AUMF, or any other vote specifically on escalation, that would trap the Dems into partial ownership of the war, will be needed. So Dems in Congress will be able to rail against the escalation as much as they want, without actually having to vote either "against the troops" or for an escalation that events will quickly show to have been foolish. Not only will the Demns not have to take responsibility for the escalation, opposing it, added to the 2006 election results, will tend to retroactively remove the ownership many of them already have from the 2002 AUMF vote.
An escalation that doesn't work militarily, that the Democrats will be free to oppose in theory, without being forced to vote one way or the other on, seems too perfect a political "worst of all possible worlds" for the Republicans, for me to be comfortable believing that they will bring it upon themselves. The last election may have refuted the idea that these guys are politically infallible, but it shouldn't lead us to the opposite extreme, the idea that they would make such an obvious and massive political error. They have to be working on something less obviously foolish, for which the surge is a cover story, if only to distract attention and buy time for the real plan.
War with Iran would seem to fit the need of the administration to change the subject from Iraq. A surge in Iraq would be politically foolish, but perhaps they take the not unreasonable view that "stay the course", or even a phased withdrawal, would be only marginally less disastrous for them. Yes, Dem opposition to an escalation would be a cleaner break, that would make it easier for Dems to get out from under any residual responsibility for Iraq left over from the AUMF. But the 2006 election by itself, because the Dems won by opposing the war, is already a pretty good break from a failed policy that the Republicans cannot extricate themselves from at all. And a pretty good break from Iraq responsibility may be all the break that the Dems need to win even more decisively in 2008. Perhaps the administration calculates that a strategy that merely stops the political bleeding as much as possible, by at least not doing anything even more stupid in Iraq, will still fall well short of what they will need in 2008, and that their only hope is to do something that will make Iraq fade into the background. What better way to drive out memory of a war than with a bigger war, that will also hopefully get Dems to buy into this wider war that subsumes the Iraq occupation?
Iran is much more suitable a bogeyman with which to be at war, than Iraq could ever be. Unlike Iraq, it has connections with terrorists who might strike the US, which would make it impossible, even in retrospect, to be opposed to war with Iran. And Iran might be goaded into such a terrorist strike by the indiscriminate nature of any bombing the US engages in. This goading effect is probably the only reason use of nukes on Iran is being contemplated. Unlike Iraq, Iran actually has a nuclear program, and, in the wake of any terrorist strike they might launch against us, conflation of an actual conventional terrorist strike with an imagined intention for one using nukes they don't even have yet, will prove politically impossible to disentangle. Even if the Iranians are restrained enough not to retaliate in kind for the Iranian civilians any US airstrikes would certainly murder, their likely counter-force responses will be much more threatening to us than Iraq ever could be. They probably would be able to sink at least some of our warships in the Gulf, and don't we all remember the Maine? (And why else would we be sending a carrier task force actually into the Gulf just now, if not to serve as a set of sitting duck targets?) Even if they didn't try to close the Gulf to all oil traffic, loss just of their production would cause the electorate considerable pain at the pump. The Iraq occupation is ineffective at rallying the electorate because Iraq never could do anything to keep the electorate in fear, so there has been nothing to counteract the slow erosion of support for the relatively low price the professional military has to pay to continue that occupation. But Iran could cause the electorate real, direct, pain and fear, and what's the likelihood that the electorate will blame the administration, no matter how deserving of such blame, for the consequences, rather than the enemy that has done us such harm, and will have us in such continued fear?
But blaming the enemy for disastrous consequences only works after they've started hitting us back. If we are going to start this foolish and unnecessary fight, it is absolutely imperative that it not become an issue before any blows have landed, when people would still be free to oppose the unnecessary war because the other side are not yet the obligatory inhuman killers that anybody who fights us, no matter how just their cause, becomes the instant hostilities commence. So the administration will not seek an AUMF for Iran, will not announce an intention to start a war with them. Instead, more planes and ships and troops will be sent to the region under the cover of a bogus "surge" in Iraq. These, especially ships in the Gulf, might be sufficient provocation, along with our stupid and arrogant non-diplomacy, to get the Iranians to do something rash. Perhaps the initial air strikes will not be provoked by any new specific action the Iranians have done, but will simply be presented as an attempt to pre-empt an Iranian nuclear capability. Perhaps there will be an issue made forcefully for the first time of real or imagined Iranian support for the Iraqi insurgency, more likely to be real if we do indeed use a surge in ground troops in Iraq to bear down on any of the Shia militias supported by Iran. A staged incident of supposed actual incursion by Iranian forces is not out of the question. The administration wouldn't even have to rely on our military, whose loylaty to the administration is at least somewhat clouded by its loyalty to the Constitution, to get this done, there being no shortage of proxy and mercenary forces at hand in the region. At least one such proxy, Israel, wouldn't even have to do anything covert, but could provoke the necessary Iranian retaliation against our forces merely by staging their own attack on Iran. Of course, we would have to allow them to overfly Iraq to do this, but after the Iranian retaliation against us kills Americans, there will be no question of raising with the US electorate the issue of that retaliation being in any way justified.
Yes, such an expanded war could concevivably go horribly wrong in ways that would only worsen and deepen the Administration's political liability. Iranian forces, using RPVs and SSMs, could do well enough at neutralizing our air and naval forces that their ground troops would be able to stage a surge of their own into Iraq and get at our ground forces. But even a pessismist such as I am on this matter would say that such a decisive main force defeat is unlikely, at least in the short run, before they have time to create a force capable of taking us on at that level. And a stalemated situation, because Iran would maintain so much more of a real threat to our forces, and even to the US itself, would keep the electorate on board, if only out of fear, much longer than the struggle against an Iraq insurgency that is so patently only a threat to whatever forces we leave in Iraq as targets and bait for them. Perhaps the ultimate intention of the admninistration is for the electorate to grow impatient with a stalemated struggle with Iraq, but, because the threat and actual damage to us would be so much greater from Iran than from Iraq, that the electorate comes down, not on the side of extricating from the nuisance that Iraq represents, but on the side of a full-scale effort against the perceived existential threat of Iran.
The only effective counter-strategy for the Democrats is anticipation and publicity. Such a mad scheme is opposable only before the Iranian response starts killing Americans, however provoked the Iranians might have been, however justified the scope of their retaliation. Question the preparations, point out where they seem designed to lead, and perhaps a weakened and discredited administration will not be able to carry through. Casey and Abizaid have resigned already, in what seems an oddly disproportionate gesture if the only thing at stake really were a brief surge in troop strength in Iraq. It would not take much breaking bad from the military, much insistence that things be done strictly by the book, to nip this project in the bud. But this resistance is much more likely if the military knows that the Congressional majority understands the danger, and will do what it can to support those who seek to frustrate it.