In American policy 101, Bush gets a bi fat 'F' - Protecting the troops from the Commander in Chief

President Bush is dead to me. Mostly because he insults my intelligence.

In the next few days, he has to provide an assessment of the Iraqi government’s “progress” toward meeting their agreed-upon economic, security, and political benchmarks - and he’s going to attempt to convince me and my fellow Americans that there is some actual “progress” to report. He’s going to tell us that in places where American troop levels have increased, violence has been reduced – as though that’s some kind of revelation. He’s going to refer to Sunni tribes fighting Al Qaeda as “bottom-up” reconciliation – as though they’re cooperating with the central government and as though they aren’t the same “Sunni insurgents” who have killed American soldiers. And he’s going to try to convince us it’s in America’s best interest for over 100,000 troops in a largely Christian army to occupy a Muslim country in perpetuity. For me, all of this begs one very important question: does the President think we’re stupid? I think he does.

Let’s go back to last summer when the mission was to train Iraqi forces to provide their own security. Baghdad was a cauldron in which there were about two car bombs going off every day. The central government elected in December of 2005 had been unable to come to any kind of understanding on passing reconciliation legislation through most of 2006. Knowing that the violence in Baghdad was carried out by Shiite militias associated with the central government as well as by terrorists, my fellow Americans and I had had enough of their excuses by November, and we sent a message to the President and his Republican enablers in Congress: it’s time for a change of direction in Iraq. So he created the “Baghdad Security Plan” with the objective of giving the central government “breathing room” to do their work by sending about 25,000 more troops. It wasn’t what we wanted, but it was a step in the right direction because it was a move toward holding the Iraqi government accountable.

The key was that it would get us one step closer to being able get our troops to the one place we know they are safe: back home. That’s what my fellow Americans want and that should be the President’s focus. But since George W. Bush thinks we’re stupid, he’s going to try and make a big deal about the fact that he’s planning to maybe pull the additional troops he sent to Iraq this year out by this time next year – essentially leaving troop levels in the fall of 2008 right where they were in the fall of 2006 and making his “troop surge” two years long. Despite the fact that my fellow Americans and I “thumped” his party out of power over this issue, he’s going to ignore us and focus on how to keep as many troops in Iraq as long as possible so that the eventual, inevitable withdrawal doesn’t happen while he’s still in office.

Since President Bush is dead to me, I’m not waiting for his official assessment, I’m going to grade him on his Iraq policy now. I’ve seen the Government Accountability Office’s report (no political progress), I’ve seen the reporting from Marine General James Jones’ Commission (no political progress), and I’ve heard from General David Petraeus (some military progress) and Ambassador Ryan Crocker (no political progress), so I’ve got all the information I need. Though I usually grade on a curve, it’s “pass/fail” at this point. That’s because the metric is incredibly simple: military progress + a lack of political progress = failure. On his Iraq policy, President Bush receives a big, fat “F”.

Now it’s up to Congress to find a way to protect our men and women serving in Iraq from a Commander in Chief totally divorced from reality, determined to keep them in harm’s way, but without a compelling reason for doing it. When asked directly by Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia whether or not military operations in Iraq are making America safer, General David Petraeus said he didn’t know. Well I know. I know that if you don’t answer that question with an immediate and unequivocal “yes”, then the answer is “no”.

I blame President Bush for our problems in Iraq. I blame him for misleading the country into an invasion and occupation we would have never gone along with had we known the actual plan. But now they’re aware of what’s really going on in Iraq, the blood of any US service personnel killed in that country will be on the hands of Congressional Republicans who could provide a veto-proof majority and force the President to change his obviously failed policy, but don’t have the guts to cross party lines.