One Guy's Viewpoint

One Hundred Five Weeks. Or, Why the Surge?

What is President Bush's escalation of the war in Iraq likely to accomplish? According to the bulk of what I'm reading, very little, other that increased casualties, of course. But it will take a while to implement and more time to judge for effectiveness and yet more to back off of. And I'm not the only one who believes that the troop surge's main purpose is to buy time.

A hundred and five weeks from now some other poor bastard will have inherited the presidency and the whole Middle East mess created by our Decider. Yes, a scapegoat will be in the Whitehouse to take the blame as everything collapses around his (or her) shoulders. But in 105 weeks another thousand or so young Americans will have died for nothing.

Princton professor Bernard Chazelle, writing in LewRockwell.com,puts it in sportswriting terminology: Bush is trying to "run out the clock." As well, assuming the clock is successfully run out, he describes an out-of-office Bush and his crowd referring to that successor as "the dope who snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory and handed Iran the victor's crown."

posted by Burt @ 11:17 AM