Broder on Bush’s gamble

I don’t know when the WaPo started putting thier Sunday columns up on their website on Saturday. But today I just saw this column by the generally very wise Washington insider David Broder.
It’s worth reading. Broder starts:

    With his new Iraq policy, President Bush essentially has written off any prospect of regaining broad support at home for his course of action, in the slender hope of finding the key to military success and political agreements in Baghdad.
    It is a huge personal gamble, one that has triggered a debate that may well dominate the final two years of Bush’s tenure.

Later, this:

    Bush said that he has Maliki’s word that all this will happen — and that there will be an end to the unspoken policy of targeting Sunnis while protecting Shiite militias. When I asked a National Security Council official why the promise should be taken seriously, after so many disappointments in the past year, he said that the prime minister faces not just external pressure from the United States but also the urgings of “other moderate elements” in his own coalition who are weary of the fighting.
    A skeptic would say that Bush has sacrificed the support of moderates at home — the Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers voicing skepticism about his plan — for some supposed “moderates” in Baghdad.
    For this gamble to work, a lot of implausible things have to happen. Maliki’s governing coalition, which includes the party of Moqtada al-Sadr, will have to steel itself to send troops into the neighborhoods controlled by Sadr’s own Mahdi Army. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says this will happen, but the promise remains to be tested.
    Also unproved is the capacity of the Iraqi army and police force, which are supposed to be “in the lead,” with American troops in support, in clearing out Baghdad…

I gotta run. I’m expecting Laila el-Haddad and her family here any moment…

8 thoughts on “Broder on Bush’s gamble”

  1. Regarding Washington Post pundit David Broder, I quite clearly remember him exulting at the “Top-Gun/GI-Joe” apparition of Deputy Dubya Bush on an aircraft carrier flight deck:
    “This president has just learned to move in such a way as to inspire confidence!”
    The Vietnam Veteran in me never discovered what sort of preternatural “movements” by an AWOL Texas Air National Guardsman could trigger the type of glandular secretions that so easily sent Mr. Broder into his senile swoon. At any rate, I had long since lost confidence in Mr. Broder for other reasons, but surely anyone who could derive “confidence” from the scripted, clownish gags cooked up for George W. Bush to perform before a gullible and impressionable America has never read “some Shakespeares” wherein, germanely, Isabella said:
    “But man, proud man
    Dressed in a little brief authority,
    So ignorant of what he’s most assured;
    His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
    Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
    As make the angels weep — who with our spleens
    Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
    David Broder may derive much solace and confidence from watching the angry little ape performing his fantastic tricks while strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage, but I’ve only heard the world and angels alike weeping at the transparent, glassy essence of this poor player from whom we all — with the possible exception of the movement-smitten David Broder — will soon hear no more.

  3. bush didn’t even know there was a difference between sunni and shiite muslims. being able to name something doesn’t mean you know any thing about it. hell, five bucks says he couldn’t tell you the difference today.

  4. bush didn’t even know there was a difference between sunni and shiite muslims. being able to name something doesn’t mean you know any thing about it. hell, five bucks says he couldn’t tell you the difference today.

  5. Brooks writes about “Bush’s huge personal gamble.” Also writing in the NY Times, Maureen Dowd mines his past for clues to his attitude about risk:
    W. always acts like he’s upping the ante in a board game where you roll the dice and bet your plastic army divisions on the outcome. This doesn’t surprise some of his old classmates at Yale, who remember Junior as the riskiest Risk player of them all, known for dropping by the rooms of friends, especially when they were trying to study for exams, for extended bouts of “The Game of Global Domination.”
    Junior was known as an extremely aggressive player in the venerable Parker Brothers board game, a brutal contest that requires bluster and bluffing as you invade countries, all the while betraying alliances. Notably, it’s almost impossible to win Risk and conquer the world if you start the game in the Middle East, because you’re surrounded by enemies.
    His gamesmanship extended to sports — he loved going into overtime and demanding that points be played over because he wasn’t quite ready.
    As Graydon Carter recollects in the new Vanity Fair, Gail Sheehy wrote an article for the magazine about W. that made this point: “Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn’t lose. He’ll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him.”
    W.’s best friend when he was a teenager in Houston, Doug Hannah, told Ms. Sheehy: “If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15.”
    Even if it was clear who was winning, W. wanted to go further to see what would happen. It was a technique that worked well in Tallahassee in 2000, but not so well in Tikrit.

  6. “the riskiest Risk player of them all”
    There was a similar but more sophisticated board game popular among college intellectuals at the time. It was called “Diplomacy.” I’m sure W never played it.

  7. John C,
    Thank you for bringing back old memories. I remember Diplomacy very well. Other popular games of those days (late 70s) were “Rise and Decline of the 3rd Reich”, “Squad Leader”, “Stalingrad”, “Pacific Theatre”, … But none of my wargaming buddies in high school ended up invading countries and spilling real blood. Wasted talents perhaps!!

  8. Bush delusional statement: “We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we’ve endured great sacrifice to help them. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.”
    So the real problem is that the Iraqis are simply not grateful enough? These people live in complete misery… not liberated bliss.
    Read from this blog or this Iraqi’s blog or this Iraqi’s blog and this blog

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