Shall We Dance? (Digby on the Iraq narrative to buy more time)

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Shall We Dance?

by digby

I love the smell of kabuki in the morning. Smells like ... bs

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The troops (well 5,000 of them anyway) could be coming home for Christmas! Oh happy day.

The press is portraying this as a "tectonic shift," which is what they've been saying about Warner's every utterance for the last three years. It's ridiculous. I don't know if the Great God Petraeus will say that the surge is working so well that we can redeploy 5,000 troops, but I wouldn't be surprised, would you? (Particularly since it's highly likely that 5,000 troops are scheduled to be redeployed anyway.)

The administration is mounting a multi-pronged public relations campaign to show "the surge" is working to shore up any wobbly congressmen. The NIE today reinforces the idea of surging progress. But that isn't the whole story. The NIE also says the political situation is a mess, which it is. Today we find out that Bush's lobbyist allies are now working to depose Maliki and install their favorit puppet Ilyad Allawi. And John "tectonic shift" Warner, (who said that he would not vote with the Democratic withdrawal proposals) also said in his little speech that Prime Minister Maliki is not doing a heckuva job and we need to pressure him to knock some Iraqi heads together (or "somebody" finds someone who will.) And he even admits that is the reason he's calling for withdrawing a few thousand troops. Conventional wisdom seems to be gelling that the problem is Maliki.

Except, of course, it isn't.

Sadly, it appears that more than a few Democrats are going to help the administration buy more time by first agreeing that the surge is working and then actually leading the charge for Bush's next delaying tactic by jumping on the "Maliki is failing our troops" bandwagon.

So, here's how I see the narrative: The surge is working so well that we can bring home 5,000 troops to fight the war on Christmas. But we mustn't set forth any timetables beyond that because things are really starting to move politically over there. Haven't you heard? Everybody's saying that the Prime Minister is on the rocks. That signals political change --- just what we've been waiting for! Hallalujah. All we need to do is hang on just a bit longer to see how that all pans out. (And those troops coming home for Christmas amidst a media blitz not seen since 9/11 no doubt will make the Iraqis believe we are really serious about leaving. Neat huh?)

And then once Maliki is gone, the new PM will need more time, of course, to set in motion his new pony plan. I'd say it's bound to take at least until January 2009.

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Update: Poor Lieberman is completely out of the loop. How embarrassing.

UPDATE III: Brad Woodhouse, President of Americans United for Change: “His call for withdrawing a mere 5,000 troops by Christmas just to send a message to the Iraqi’s just doesn’t cut it — it doesn’t meet the standard of safely ending the war or responsibly redeploying our troops out of harm’s way. The time for ’sending messages’ has passed. The time for folks like Senator Warner, who criticize the conduct of the war and the failure of the surge, to take a stand and vote to safely end the war has arrived.”

It sounds like pretty weak tea. We’d all like “decisive action,” but unless Warner is planning to challenge Bush directly, and bring some of his Senate friends with him, all of this comes across as “Pretty please, Mr. President, we’d really love it if you adopted a sensible policy. But don’t worry, we won’t force you.”

It’s within Warner’s power to spur real change here. He shouldn’t let the moment pass him by.