I'm sure some advocates of a two-year permanent surge with sufficient troops to make it work are completely sincere. Their position is respectable, if somewhat unpersuasive. Their laudable goal now is simply to prevent a completely failed state in the Middle East. I'm not so sure, however, about the president's motives. I don't believe he's ever been serious about the war in Iraq - because he has never committed sufficient resources to match his rhetoric, and took his eye off the ball in the critical period in 2004 and 2005. In the end, you observe what a man does, not what he says. And everything Bush has actually done (forget the highfalutin rhetoric) is to telegraph a clear message: Iraq is not that big a deal; my ego comes before candor; as president, I can do what I want anyway. We will soon be faced with an excruciating choice between what looks like another half-measure and trying to make the best of a swift exit via Kurdistan. Under both scenarios, we will have the current president, who is obviously incapable of the kind of deft diplomacy and military focus that we desperately need in either case.
The choice, then, is pretty simple. Should we give the president another chance: six months, say, and see where we are? At least then we will not have to endure the taunts from those who'll declare the Democrats lost the Iraq war, or the predictable stab-in-the-back chorus (take it away, Sean Hannity!) At the same time, isn't it basically immoral to send young Americans to die for a piece of political cover that no one seriously believes can work? Isn't it immoral to ask young Americans to perish in brutal street-fighting so that we won't have to endure the crowing of the stab-in-the-back right?
It now looks possible that we could have an even worse mess: the president will declare a surge, and the Democrats will refuse to pay for it, while continuing to fund the troops already enmeshed in a failed policy. Gridlock in Iraq; gridlock in Washington. The worst of all worlds. I guess we'll have to listen carefully to the president this week, and make our minds up when all the data is in.