Bush's Double or Nothing
By Miguel Guanipa (01/20/07)
John McCain, the eternal optimist, must think very highly of his peers in Congress.
When he challenged Democrats who opposed the president’s request for a surge in the Iraq troop level to “tell us what they believe are the consequences of withdrawal ..” he must have assumed that the former had actually thought of way to avoid the catastrophic consequences that would ensue if – God forbid – the president actually heeded their counsel; an “exit strategy” so to speak.
What McCain should know by now is that Democrats traffic in appearances as their primary staple. It is sort of an alternate reality which is sustained with the help of a complicit media.
Like the high-strung marketing novice who just landed a big budget account, newly empowered Democrats will tirelessly float ideas like closing GITMO without offering any suggestions on what to do with the 400 detainees with suspected links to al Qaeda presently housed there; they will voice their opposition to a troop surge in Iraq but will not address the contradiction in their prior resistance to a “small foot print strategy” earlier proposed by their ex-nemesis Ronald Rumsfeld; they will endorse a full withdrawal of the troops from Iraq with no presumptive strategy for dealing with the inevitable collapse of that region following the aftermath; it is the “pay as you go” foreign policy approach in a manner of speaking.
Democrats are not interested in answering McCain’s questions as to what their plans would be when Iraq “descend[s] into chaos” once the American troops are withdrawn. What matters is that, even though they are fully aware of how unrealistic it would be to try to implement such a proposal given the dire conditions under which it has been recommended they give the appearance of resoluteness to their stance.
One wonders if President Bush should actually call the Democrat’s bluff and carry out an order for the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Once the American public gets a taste – not just in the theoretical sense - of what an unmitigated disaster that would be, it will be very hard to flaunt the alleged benefits of what the democrats have insisted is the right course of action.
Yet this self imposed ultimatum of sorts puts the president’s vision very much at a final crossroads.
Firstly, if this surge does not yield some significant improvements within a few months the unthinkable prospect of accepting defeat and withdrawing the troops may have to be seriously considered; not to mention that President Bush will be publicly humiliated not only by the Democrats, but also some Republicans who have hereto felt ambivalent about speaking out against their better instincts.
But if the surge proves even moderately successful, the war will proceed, while Democrats shift focus and find ways to detract from its successes as they have consistently done with previous milestones, by magnifying what some of them have already labeled the worst policy blunder in history, while minimizing what they perceive as a comparative insignificance of scattered accomplishments along the way.
Both scenarios will weigh heavily upon any future decisions that are made with respect to what many Americans feel is a hellish quandary with no easy answers.
Terrorist know this, and will very likely seize the golden opportunity immediately after the surge has taken place to escalate their operations, seeing this as the most propitious time to engage the media’s attention during what could be a pivotal moment for the American occupiers to display their resiliency and commitment or retreat from a cause that appears to be losing many of its staunchest adherents to impatience.
If better fortunes should befall us, an increase in the number of troops may be able to suppress the insurgency more effectively by virtue of a sheer numbers advantage. This would potentially turn the tables from a war managed by the terrorist through the media, to a war of might run by the preponderance of American troops on the ground and their ability to crush a significant number of itinerant bomb strapping aficionados in a matter of months.
The perverse irony behind the Democrats’ half-hearted opposition in the form of a “non-binding resolution” is that if they even had an inkling that the president’s plan was going to succeed they would have moved heaven and earth to ensure that it was summarily taken off the table; for as much as they would like to feign support for the troops, this favorable turn of events could represent their Party’s worst nightmare.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BCBE3A800-8B88-4E23-B45A-126B4673D067%7D)&language=EN
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070118-120919-3726r.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6352091,00.html
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