New US direction on Iraq

De-democrify, re-Baathify

We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out. We are in Iraq to achieve a result: A country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors, and able to defend itself. And when that result is achieved, our men and women serving in Iraq will return home with the honor they have earned.

President George W. Bush

State of the Union Address
February 2, 2005

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Does the departure of Don Rumsfeld signal a new direction in Iraq? A solid majority of Americans said yesterday that they wanted some American troops, if not all, withdrawn from Iraq. Did you hear that call, and will you heed it?

THE PRESIDENT: Terry, I'd like our troops to come home, too, but I want them to come home with victory, and that is a country that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And I can understand Americans saying, come home. But I don't know if they said come home and leave behind an Iraq that could end up being a safe haven for al Qaeda. I don't believe they said that. And so, I'm committed to victory. I'm committed to helping this country so that we can come home.

President George W. Bush

Press Conference
November 8, 2006

Maureen Dowd has it about right:

W. has stopped talking about democracy as a standard of success in Iraq; yesterday, he said that Iraq had to ``govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.''

Joe Klein generally is pretty moronic. Still, an interview with Klein on the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 program Thursday night amplified Dowd's point and peaked my interest. He claimed good sources were giving him the jist of the ``new'' post-Rumsfeld, Democrat-Congress-era Iraq policy:

COOPER: Yes, Joe, what are you hearing? Is there room for compromise on Iraq?

KLEIN: Well, there are big changes coming down the pike on Iraq.

I think that naming Bob Gates is -- is just the -- the tip of the iceberg. What I am hearing from military and intelligence people is that there is -- that there is a desire to move away from democracy, from emphasizing democracy, to emphasizing stability.

One very high-ranking Bush administration official in the national security area said to me today, it's a Mick Jagger moment. You can't always get what you want. The question is whether we can get what we need.

Now, we don't -- we don't need...

COOPER: Did he actually put it in those terms?

KLEIN: Absolutely.

(LAUGHTER)

...

COOPER: But what does it mean, move away from democracy, move towards stability?

KLEIN: Well, I think that, you know, the -- the current government in -- in Iraq is next thing to a joke.

I mean, right now, Maliki's main source of support is the radical cleric...

COOPER: Right, Muqtada al-Sadr.

KLEIN: ... Muqtada al-Sadr.

And the big question our government has to face now in Iraq is whether we want Muqtada al-Sadr to be the de facto leader of Arab Iraq, non-Kurdish Iraq, or do we want to have someone more amenable to our point of view, someone who might unite the -- the -- the Iraqi military? There is some talk of bringing back a lot of the Baathists who we dispersed -- you know, who we dispersed, when we dispersed the army. That was the...

COOPER: Sort of re-Baathify the country.

KLEIN: Right. Right.

Thomas Friedman said some years ago (just after the first Glf War) that what was needed in Iraq was a dictator who ruled just like Saddam but was not Saddam. With the old daddy-Bush era people coming back, looks like that policy preference may be coming back too. Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to hate the notion that anti-war sentiment had anything to do with putting them back in control of Congress, so they won't be much of a brake on what the President wants to do.

We may soon witness the end of the purple finger project in Iraq.