Surge in Iraq
President Bush will deliver one of the most important speeches of his presidency on Wednesday when he presents his strategy for a new way forward in Iraq. White House officials are not discussing specifics of the plan, but Republican members of Congress say it will include a temporary surge of more U.S. troops into Iraq to help quell sectarian violence there. But as VOA National correspondent Jim Malone reports, Mr. Bush may face an uphill battle in winning public support for his strategy.Among those supporting the idea of a troop surge to secure Baghdad and other areas of unrest is Senator John McCain of Arizona, who is expected to be a Republican presidential contender in 2008.
“The presence of additional coalition forces would give the Iraqi government the ability to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own, impose its rule throughout the country,” he said. “In bringing security to Iraq and chiefly to Baghdad, our forces would give the government a fighting change to pursue reconciliation.”
I am skeptical of the utility of a surge in the present environment. While I think it might well be useful to facilitate some short term goals, the long term message of the surge (and unfortunately the message of not-surging) is that we are getting out soon. The message of ‘one last push’ and ‘get out now’ both have the same conotations, if those who oppose the Iraqi Government can hold on for just a bit longer, they can win.
The message we should be sending is that we will continue until the job is done. Of course we have to make sure that this message is cordinated with moving toward Iraqi self-sufficiency, and that can certainly be tricky, but even with that difficulty it is the only way to be successful.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem that this particular strategy is availible to us. On of the great weaknesses of Democratic governments is that they can be very fickle. Our enemies are aware of this, and have and will continue to try to exploit it. I suspect that if we don’t come up with some strategy to overcome this tendency we will have a very difficult time in the future.
