{"id":1542,"date":"2007-09-09T12:02:31","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T17:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/09\/and-we-know-it\/"},"modified":"2007-09-09T14:22:58","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T19:22:58","slug":"and-we-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/09\/and-we-know-it\/","title":{"rendered":"and we all know it…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President’s Address to the Nation<\/strong><\/a>
January 10, 2007<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

…<\/div>\n
The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq’s sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.<\/div>\n

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes.\tThey report that it does. They also report that this plan can work. <\/p>\n

Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad’s nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations — conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents. <\/p>\n

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I’ve committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them — five brigades — will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.<\/div>\n
…<\/div>\n
I’ve made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: "The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation."<\/div>\n
…<\/div>\n
To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks. In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq.\tWe will give our commanders and civilians greater flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance. We will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams.\tThese teams bring together military and civilian experts to help local Iraqi communities pursue reconciliation, strengthen the moderates, and speed the transition to Iraqi self-reliance.\tAnd Secretary Rice will soon appoint a reconstruction coordinator in Baghdad to ensure better results for economic assistance being spent in Iraq. <\/div>\n
…<\/div>\n
Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration; it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas, where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
By any criteria, this strategy has been a failure. The centerpiece, the Iraqis picking up the ball, is an especially poignant failure. The theory given in this speech was that  somehow our sending more troops would catapult the Iraqi government into the driver’s seat. The current Iraqi government is no closer to that than they were in January. While one might mount any number of reasons why this strategy has failed, or why the Iraqi government hasn’t stepped up, or why the [largely Shiite] Iraqi Police are unable to keep the peace, it’s probable that all the explanations might be right. A better exercise would be to try to come up with some scenario where the current government and police force could [IN THE FACE OF A MASSIVE FOREIGN INVASIONARY FORCE] become successful. I suspect that there is no such scenario.<\/div>\n

The logic in this speech is flawed on two counts. First, the goals President Bush sets in this speech are presumably our goals, not the goals of the Iraqi people. Second, as I have been raving about recently, they are not even really<\/u> our goals. Our goal is to have a military presence in the Middle East. That means that either we maintain a large occupying force or that the Iraqis are such great pals that we have a strategic ally in the Middle East. Fat chance for either of those things happening if we stand down – so, simply put, Bush has no intention of standing down, period. Ergo, this speech is no more worth refuting than it was on the day it was given eight months ago. It served its purpose, to undermine the Iraq Study Group<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And, oh, by the way, it didn’t work. The [flawed] goals have not been met. Bush’s decision to move forward in spite of that obvious failure is proof positive that the speech was only smoke and mirrors. This is the central organizing lie, "I’ve made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people."<\/strong> Bush’s commitment is more than open-ended. It’s downright obligitory. And the support of the American people is already lost. <\/p>\n

And we all know it…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President’s Address to the Nation January 10, 2007 … The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq’s sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only Iraqis can end the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}