Bush ready to murder more US troops in Iraqi Civil War
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U.S. president faces calls to flood Iraq with forces
May be chance to claim he brought stability to nation
Nov. 18, 2006. 04:34 AM
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON—In a country convulsed with the search for a way out of
Iraq, a new buzzword is suddenly competing with the clamour for phased
withdrawals, strategic redeployments and drawdowns.
Surge.
It may seem counterintuitive, but there are calls — including one from
the man who could be the next U.S. president — to flood Iraq with
thousands more American troops, a so-called surge, in one last bid to
win a war that looks more and more unwinnable.
Such a short-term surge of troops could be the last gasp for U.S.
President George W. Bush to claim he at least brought stability to
Iraq, enough stability to declare victory, get out of the country with
some honour and close the history books on a mission which fell far
short of his lofty goal of exporting democracy to the Middle East.
Days after mid-term elections brought Democrats to power in Congress,
propelled by anger at the course of the war in Iraq, the future of the
war is now being shaped by the burgeoning 2008 presidential campaign.
All sides are now waiting for a report, expected next month, from the
Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee headed by James Baker, the
secretary of state during the one-term presidency of Bush's father,
and Lee Hamilton, a onetime Democratic Indiana congressman who most
recently co-chaired the Sept. 11 commission which probed the 2001
terrorist attacks.
The report has been raised to Holy Grail status, with both sides of
the debate now hoping they can find something to embrace.
According to one report this week in the London-based Guardian —
published shortly after British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with the
study group by videoconference — the report will recommend a surge of
20,000 American troops to secure Baghdad and allow troop deployments
to other unstable areas of Iraq.
Notably, White House spokesman Tony Snow did not deny the newspaper
report when given the chance yesterday.
The Guardian also reported the study group would call for a regional
conference to search for solutions, involving Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,
but also possibly American enemies in the area, Syria and Iran, two
countries with which Bush will not talk.
The study group is also expected to call for a new effort at
conciliation talks between warring factions in Iraq and more money
from Congress to speed training of Iraqi forces.
Democrats believe they have a mandate to push for a phased withdrawal,
but their position lacks specifics — withdraw to where? Withdraw how
many? Withdraw subsequent troops based on what?
And short of cutting off funding for U.S. soldiers in Iraq — an option
already rejected by the party leadership — Democrats have no easy way
of countering Bush and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, neither of
whom has shown any indication they are seriously looking at a troop
drawdown.
"We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush said yesterday in Vietnam, a
venue which drew the inevitable comparisons between Iraq and the war
the Americans lost more than 30 years ago. More and more Americans are
quitting.
An IPSOS-Reid poll released yesterday showed only 31 per cent of
Americans approved of the course of the Iraq war, a historic low.
Cheney, in a Washington speech, also hit on familiar White House
themes.
"Some in our country may believe in good faith that retreating from
Iraq would make America safer," Cheney said.
"Recent experience teaches the opposite lesson.
"Time and time again over the last generation, terrorists have
targeted nations whose behaviour they believe they can change through
violence," he added.
"To get out before the job is done would convince the terrorists, once
again, that free nations will change our policies, forsake our
friends, and abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with
violence and blackmail."
Realpolitick — even though it appears cynical — may also stop the
Democratic charge to get the troops home because the party would be
much happier to campaign one more time against an unpopular war in
their 2008 White House bid, rather than take on a Republican in a
post-war period.
There were other signs of business as usual yesterday.
The Pentagon is reportedly prepared to seek as much as $160 billion
(U.S.) more for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the next fiscal year
which, if approved, would put the total price tag for the "war on
terror" at more than $600 billion, making it more expensive than the
Vietnam War.
The Pentagon also announced yesterday that deployment orders have been
delivered to 57,000 troops who will head to Iraq early in 2007,
replacing departing troops and keeping the troop strength at about
141,000.
The leading voice calling for a troop surge has been Arizona Senator
John McCain, considered the early frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2008.
On Wednesday, he pressed Gen. John Abizaid, the top military commander
in the Middle East, to send more troops to Iraq to stabilize Baghdad
and Anbar province, but Abizaid said more Americans would be a
disincentive to Iraqis taking more responsibility for their own
security.
McCain, speaking to a conservative group Thursday, reiterated his
call, saying "without additional combat forces, we will not win this
war."
He is gaining allies.
"I've resisted the call by Senator McCain and some others that we
needed to surge troops on a temporary basis, but, you know, I'm
beginning to think that he's got a point," Texas Republican Senator
John Cornyn told Fox News.
Democratic leaders say Americans have no business getting caught in
the crossfire of a civil war and many leading analysts believe that is
already happening.
Anthony Cordesman, a leading analyst at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies based in Washington, D.C., estimates that 2 to 5
per cent of Iraq's 27 million people have been killed, wounded or
uprooted since the American invasion.
"This is civil war," he concludes in a recent online study.
The International Organization for Migration reports 236,358 Iraqis
have been displaced since the February attack on the Al-Askari shrine
in Samarra and the United Nations reports 1.6 million Iraqis have
sought refuge in neighbouring countries since the U.S. invasion in
2003.
Those figures as well, are markers of a civil war, analysts agree.
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