Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Americans, according to new polls, overwhelmingly oppose the idea of escalating our military presence in Iraq.
Barely over one-quarter approve of the job President Bush has done running the war.
The president lost majorities in both houses of Congress, largely because of the public's anguish over the bloody mishmash we've made of Iraq.
Think any of that matters to The Decider? Of course not.
Tonight, the president is expected to tell us that he's going to order tens of thousands of additional American troops into the meatgrinder that is Baghdad.
The president will say that this move will allow military commanders to accomplish what they haven't heretofore: restoring security to a city where car bombs go off around the clock and whose gutters are clogged with the corpses of innocents.
Odds are the president will tie a continuing American military presence to the same kind of timetables and benchmarks that his hand-picked man in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, rejected before.
Bush is sure to say that after careful consultation, he's moving forward with the support of the national security team and the generals on the ground in Iraq. (He won't say that's because he just purged all of the advisers and generals who think escalation is a bad idea.)
He'll use the word "surge," because that has such a nice, temporary connotation. But don't be fooled.
Bush is like a feverish gambler faced with an unending string of bad hands. He's certain he'll recoup his losses with a big score if he can just stay at the table.
Lest there be any confusion about Bush's timetable, it's useful to consider a new law, drafted with U.S. help, that's expected to be taken up by the Iraqi Parliament.
The law would open up Iraq's massive oil reserves to exploration and exploitation by western oil companies like Shell, Exxon and BP. It would grant the companies the right to pump Iraqi crude for 30 years, and keep a tidy 75 percent of the profits until they recoup their costs.
So much for the idea that Iraq's oil wealth should be used to help get a fledgling democratic government on its feet.
Venezuela and the Soviet Union are busy warning Big Oil to stand aside while they reassert control of their nations' mineral wealth. Other Middle Eastern nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia nationalized their oil reserves long ago.
The Bushiite oiligarchy's plan for Iraq's natural resources looks like it was drawn up on a napkin by a petroleum lobbyist.
Does anybody out there still think this was ever about weapons of mass destruction?
More to the point, does anyone think the Iraqi population is going to throw rose petals at this idea?
We can't simply turn our back on Iraq. Almost 23,000 Iraqi civilians died in 2006, 17,000 of them since the summer. Their blood is on our hands.
Cutesy Pottery Barn bromides ("You break it, you own it") seem hideously insufficient to describe our obligation now.
We created a nightmare. We have a responsibility to try to end it in a way that doesn't destroy the country.
If the president acknowledged this fact, if he expressed remorse for the havoc wrought by his administration's abject failure to maintain security during our occupation, it might give us some sense that he at least understands the tragic consequences of his actions.
It's safe to say that the president's "Damn the torpedoes" approach is not what the American people had in mind when they booted the sycophantic GOP majority in November.
The new Congress won't be so compliant. Democratic leaders have already voiced their concerns with the idea of an escalation, as have many Republicans, including Assistant Minority Leader Trent Lott, R- Miss., as well as Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.
Yet for all the post-election talk of bipartisanship, Bush seems just as immune to collaboration as he ever was.
Next week, the Senate intends to begin considering a non-binding resolution opposing Bush's new Iraq policy, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday.
The authorization for the use of military force Bush won from Congress in 2003 was based on a laundry list of falsified or discredited intelligence estimates. As long as it's in place, Bush has wide latitude to do as he sees fit, no matter how little the American people trust his performance or his judgment.
Given everything we've learned since that day, isn't it time for Congress to reconsider the blank check it wrote?
Some pundits are saying this escalation is the last card Bush has to play.
Don't bet on it. He's gambling with house money.
Theo Stein is an editorial writer for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and can be contacted at 791-6481 or:
tstein@pressherald.com
Reader comments
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Give Iraqis "freedom?" Freedom for their oil markets, and for that minority that will benefit from this "free" trade.
It is this hypocrisy that drives so much anti-American sentiment worldwide. If we are not supporting the dictators, like Saddam when it was convenient and in our "interest," we engage in "regime change" in hopes of installing governments that act in our "interest."
Our capacity to affect good in the world is so diminished by the power brokers who have no other agenda than to enrich themselves...report abuse
Every blue moon the Press Herald prints a well thought-out article by, say, an elected Republican, and the leftwingers come trooping out to chastise PPH for allowing "the enemy" to take over their paper, but we have to, day after day, week after bloody week, be subjected to the meandering nonsensical bull-hockey of people like Theo Stein.
Theo Stein makes an ass of himself every time he opens his mouth, which we conservatives should actually thank him for, as he demonstrates well the idiocy, singlemindedness, and lemming-like qualities of the wingnuts on the left fringe.report abuse
OIL FOR US
NONE FOR THEM
KEEP ON KILLING
TILL WE WIN.report abuse
Haiku, anyone?report abuse
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