Quiet, Please

David Ignatius assures us that the real question in Iraq is "How to extricate ourselves in a way that minimizes the damage to the United States, its allies and Iraq?" That is a good question. Ignatius' not-so-good answer is that "A good start would be for Washington partisans to take deep breaths and lower the volume, so that the process of talking and fighting that must accompany a gradual U.S. withdrawal can work."

In short, we're supposed to believe that the Bush administration is eager to commence a sensible withdrawal plan but the main obstacle standing in their way is congressional Democrats' stubborn insistance that Bush . . . commence a withdrawal plan from Iraq. Brilliant. Sure. Have we really not yet figured out that George W. Bush wants to stay in Iraq in full force through the end of his term and is also a kinda stubborn guy?

Comments

[Has the Washington Press Corps] really not yet figured out that George W. Bush wants to stay in Iraq in full force through the end of his term and is also a kinda stubborn guy?

Yes. This has been another edition of....

Posted by Roberto | July 29, 2007 9:23 AM

Another absurd column in the Post -- it must be a day with a "y" in it.

Also see Hoagland's absurd segue from doping at the Tour de France to vicious bloggers who hate everything. And the connection is . . . ?

Posted by Klein's tiny left nut | July 29, 2007 9:24 AM

Ignatius: Obama Is Bush Cheney Lite on Iraq Withdrawal

The most sensible comment I heard on Iraq in the past week came from one of the Democratic presidential candidates -- indeed, from the one with the strongest antiwar credentials, Sen. Barack Obama: "I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in."

Obama is right, and so, for that matter, is President Bush when he says much the same thing.

I think a reaction from Sen. Obama is in order here.

Posted by Armando | July 29, 2007 9:37 AM

David Ignatius: could such a tool possibly survive in the real world. what planet does he live on? he has written a novel in the past. perhaps fiction and reality blend in his addled mind .

Posted by della Rovere | July 29, 2007 9:38 AM

He is not stubborn. He regularly caves whenever the political winds dictate. He simply refuses to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, legal risks sometimes prevent the caving, or, in the case of Iraq, the rhetorical corner is painted in on 4 sides and a mile high. He considers the 18 months remaining in his stall a brief and easily doable period relative to the legacy fallout associated with "failure".

Posted by david | July 29, 2007 9:57 AM

To play the devil's advocate, it's true that the more emotionally invested in a position a person is, the less likely he or she is to back down from that position, and ratcheting up the temperature is not going to help matters. This is after all the reasoning behind diplomacy.

So there's a good reason to offer olive branches and keep offering them, and this may be part of the elite pundit class' approach when it comes to Bush.

However, that defence ignores the difference in the way they treated Clinton, not to mention the way Bush rebuffed the ISG. Oh, well.

Posted by da ref | July 29, 2007 9:57 AM

Ignatius is living in a non-parallel universe. Bush and the PLAN call for endless occupation, Korean style, with huge permanent military bases in Iraq and much of the Iraqi infrastructure supported by U.S. contractors ad infinitum. Iraq is to be an economic and military colony of the U.S. and a sovereign republic in name only. Bush, to my knowledge, has never disavowed this, has stated it quite outright, and has never made any credible gesture implying that withdrawal is possible in a 1-3 year period no matter how peaceful Iraq might become.

Am I screwing up something here ?

Posted by Douglas Watts | July 29, 2007 10:04 AM

Have we really not yet figured out that George W. Bush wants to stay in Iraq in full force through the end of his term and is also a kinda stubborn guy?

I have trouble accepting this, as well, however well-supported it may be. If you're inclined towards faith in a technocracy, I think you end up assuming that people do make the decision that the majority of the technocrats in their orbit suggest. And increasingly it appears, if only in the media, that even the Republican technocrats have changed their mind on Iraq as well.

I think that's what motivates positions like Ignatius's.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 29, 2007 10:08 AM

To play the devil's advocate, it's true that the more emotionally invested in a position a person is, the less likely he or she is to back down from that position, and ratcheting up the temperature is not going to help matters. This is after all the reasoning behind diplomacy.

How by olive branches does one have Bush climb down from the position that God asked him to do all this?

Posted by Arun | July 29, 2007 10:26 AM

I have trouble accepting this, as well, however well-supported it may be. If you're inclined towards faith in a technocracy, I think you end up assuming that people do make the decision that the majority of the technocrats in their orbit suggest.

You do realize, though, that your reaction is a projection of your own response and has been shown repeatedly not to be an accurate reflection of this president's attitude? Because it's precisely that reaction on the part of reasoned moderates that greased the skids for this war in the first place, and I really think we should have learned something from that.

Posted by julia | July 29, 2007 10:29 AM

I don't think we can overlook the rationalization factor going on here among the former elite opinionators, who having botched the conclusion of pre war evidence because they didn't particularly like the presenters and the presentations, are having to adjust to the fact that those of us whom they despised then were right, and they were wrong.

They weren't drunk when they smashed the car into the pole, although they had been drinking, but they were answering the cell phone at the time, and hence it's the callers fault, who happened to hang up before I could answer and the phone was lost when the car was towed so we'll never know who is really to blame for the wreck, but it wasn't me.

In the old days we used to tell people to grow up and take responsibility for their actions, which is nice rhetoric when applied to others and ill fitting shoe when they apply it to their own ugly stepsistered feet.

Posted by ezsmirkzz | July 29, 2007 10:31 AM

And increasingly it appears, if only in the media, that even the Republican technocrats have changed their mind on Iraq as well.

And I would assert that "only in the media" counts for just about zero. Any changing of minds has yet to manifest itself in Congressional Republicans, w/the exception of Collins and Coleman who correctly realize their seats are in grave jeopardy.

Ignatius and "serious" folk keep ignoring that the Army is broken. Guys are going on their FIFTH tour of duty now. Recruitment is falling and not meeting monthly targets. Ignatius et al. apparently think that this is no problem. It's a crisis both to the military itself and all of the Army families. Families cannot endure this crap over years and years. They fall apart.

Posted by Douglas Watts | July 29, 2007 10:39 AM

I have trouble accepting this, as well, however well-supported it may be. If you're inclined towards faith in a technocracy, I think you end up assuming that people do make the decision that the majority of the technocrats in their orbit suggest.

This is the mistake that the 'centrists' make. The objectives of the Bush administration are at variance with the interests of our country. So no matter how wise and informed and 'technocratic' and optimal the decision making process for achieving those objectives is, we are still stuck with a set of policies and stratagies which, even if implemented correctly by very competent people, would lead us to an abysss.

Posted by gregor | July 29, 2007 10:52 AM

Families cannot endure this crap over years and years. They fall apart.

well, to quote a right-wing radio host...

‘you know what, they should have thought about that before they enlisted, before they signed up.’ He said ‘it’s their fault.’

Posted by r€nato | July 29, 2007 10:54 AM

Contra SCMT, I just don't see what advantage there is for Bush in acknowledging defeat in Iraq. His apologists, of whom the Powerline blog is typical, would be disillusioned and bewildered, yet he probably wouldn't gain back enough lost supporters to compensate.

The Republicans, not just their presidential nominee but their 22 senators facing re-election battles in '08, would probably welcome a drawdown in Iraq. But Bush has shown that he doesn't care much about them, otherwise he would have fired Rumsfeld before the '06 election rather than the day after.

Bush is governing for the history books now, specifically history books written by wingnut idealists of succeeding generations. And which portrait do you think appeals more to his vanity: prophet without honor, or political failure who liquidated the defining principles of his presidency in the last year of his term to climb back to a 40% approval rating?

Posted by kth | July 29, 2007 11:32 AM

Ignatius argues that various important groups and individuals inside and outside of Iraq can perceive the US domestic political situation, and that their tactical plans and decisions are informed by what they perceive. Granted.

He also seems to suggest that what they currently perceive, and the tactics they have adopted in response, are hurting us. Dubious.

But the basic rationale for his piece is manifestly silly. He is indulging the fantasy that one might get 300 million Americans and their congressional representatives to "lower the volume", so that our friends, adversaries and potential adversaries in Iraq will no longer know what America is likely to do, and how committed we are to doing it. Absurd.

What are we all supposed to do? When pollsters call us randomly for our opinions, are we supposed to give "no comment" answers about Iraq? Are we supposed to pretend we don't care about Iraq as much as we do? When the ask us to rank the Iraq withdrawal issue on a 1-10 scale of importance, do we give them a few lame "1's and '2's to throw them off the scent? How is this grand pretense to be organized? By a few Washington pundits like Ignatius?

And should we keep our own representatives in the dark about our wishes regarding Iraq? Or are we instead to slip them secret messages through their websites, or make clandestine phone calls to their office in the coffin of night, in which we furtively whisper what we really want, all the while buttoning up our loose lips in public? Or is Congress just supposed to pretend to ignore or downplay the wishes of their constituents, and pretend that they don't care about getting re-elected? Ah yes. That will fool those wily Iraqis.

Ignatius makes an approach at good sense when he says:

But we go to war with the democracy we've got, with all its intrinsic impatience.

He later continues:

Future military planners will have to recognize that American democracy, in which political mandates must be renewed in two-year increments, makes us uniquely unsuited to fight protracted counterinsurgency wars.

But I don't think what we are really talking about is intrinsic impatience. The underlying problem is that Washington frequently acts in ways whose motives are quite different from the publicly announced ones, and in the pursuit of interests other than the broad public interest. These motives and interests are often not ones that a commanding majority of the public could be expected to accept as their own. Thus, the policies must be sold to the public through lies. But it is difficult to sustain the misinformation and disinformation campaigns for a long time, especially when there is a lot at stake. The campaigns eventually unravel, and public support crumbles. This isn't public impatience; it's a rational change of course based on fuller information.

Suppose an armed insurgency were to arise in Pakistan, for example. Suppose the leaders of that insurgency made it plain that their purpose was to topple and replace the government, get their hands on its nuclear weapons, and then use them against the United States. In the case of a truly dire existential threat like this, I don't think Americans would have the slightest difficulty in sustaining a long counterinsurgency campaign for as long as it took.

The issue with Iraq is that a substantial majority of Americans no longer believe that the Iraq War is such a campaign, and that it was, or is, a necessary response to a grave threat. Initial supporters of the war who have revised their opinions have done so in the light of much information that has come out, or been more widely disseminated, since the war began. The minority of true believers who do think Iraq is a campaign against a grave threat still, of course, want to fight.

It seems clear to me now that the Washington Post's editorial strategy is to keep the Post as the paper of record among DC's power elite by pandering to them with frequent anti-democratic opinion pieces. We have people like Broder, Slaughter and Ignatius essentially arguing that the partisan rabble is dangerously out of control, and that the wise ones need to reimpose some discipline.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 29, 2007 12:03 PM

Ignatius is not arguing that Bush, or the Republicans as a whole, are in the process of withdrawing from Iraq, and that the reason we should "take deep breaths and lower the volume" is so that Bush has the negotiating space to deal us out of Iraq with minimal damage.

With his ingratiating flattery of Obama, and his allusions to forthcoming Democratic responsibility for manging the withdrawal from Iraq, it's clear Ignatius's target audience is Democrats, particularly Obama supporters, particularly Obama supporters in Congress. His message is this: "It looks like you guys are going to be handed this mess in January, 2009. So pipe down, because any commitments you make or extract now will constrict a future President Obama's freedom of action and range of options. Keep your options open and your cards close to the vest."

To which, I imagine a lot of Democrats would respond that forcing commitments on Iraq from Democratic candidates, and limiting their range of future options, is precisely the reason that we need to keep pressing the Iraq issue - loudly. Having been fooled before, and victimized by the party's failure in 2002, we can no longer afford to rely on mere hope and trust. Our nominee needs to be locked in to a policy we want.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 29, 2007 12:29 PM

Bush is always associated with failure no matter how Google "fixes" their results to protect him from that moniker.

Posted by George Johnston | July 29, 2007 12:30 PM

Bush has not failed, he is succeeding in keeping the world in a perpetual state of war and fear.

Posted by * | July 29, 2007 12:39 PM

What these guys are really saying is that Democrats, after getting bashed over the head with this stuff for five years, cannot get any kind of popular boost from their position on the war. As long as our president thinks that democrats will benefit politically from withdrawal, then he won't allow it. So stop leading, Dems, and start allowing Uncle Junior to think he's running the show, otherwise the troops will be on the front lines forever.

Posted by Cody | July 29, 2007 1:06 PM

"A good start would be for Washington partisans to take deep breaths and lower the volume, so that the process of talking and fighting that must accompany a gradual U.S. withdrawal can work."

Oh -- you mean Bush Jr. just can't hear all these concerns, it's like being in a room with 12 TV's on loud and his tiny brain is unable to focus on any one, and he just ends up confused and turning around in the same spot and shouting at the TV's to shut up, just shut up, I'm the President, me, me, me, I'm the Decider!!!

Posted by El Cid | July 29, 2007 1:10 PM

first of all, what the f*ck does Ignatius mean by asking that Congress "lower the volume" so that they can "fight" properly? how can a person even write that sentence?

the rest of this drivel is what you end up with when you've backed yourself so far into a rhetorical corner that there is simply nothing logical left to say in your own defense or in defense of the cause you espouse. Ignaitius lives in a disconnected world where the left's hatred of Bush simply generates itself spontaneously for the sake of it and has no relation to policy, rhetoric, criminal activity, the fact that he's an idiot, etc. the Dems' insistence on the inclusion of timetables in a funding bill is simply done to embarrass and harass Bush, not as a "serious" attempt to begin fixing what is really an un-fixable problem. Bush would be super duper busy doing the right thing if only Congress would stop preventing him from doing so.

the left has spent enough time addressing and dissecting these arguments. its really time to stop. Ignatius doesn't even come close to making an actual cohesive point here, he just has column space to fill and essentially nothing to say but gibberish defending Bush because he likes him, and that's what we have here. its filler, and not really worthy of serious discussion.

Posted by onceler | July 29, 2007 1:39 PM

"George W. Bush wants to stay in Iraq in full force through the end of his term" and his feelings are being echoed by Hillary Rodham Clinton who, according to Ted Koppel, also expects troops to be in Iraq at the end of her second term, nearly a decade from now.

Posted by Don Bacon | July 29, 2007 2:24 PM

Bush will stay in Iraq until the bitter end (of his reign) because he needs a war to be a war president. If he's not a war president, the whole rationale of the unitary executive collapses. If he's an ordinary president and not a unitary executive, his buddies on the Supreme Court will find it very difficult to sign off on his preposterous claims that executive privilege and national security allow him to stiff-arm any accountability.

Posted by Stuart Eugene Thiel | July 29, 2007 2:24 PM

I see a pattern here.

A couple of months ago Fred Hiatt wrote a column arguing that Romney and Obama had pretty much the same foreign policy.

Just last week WP editorial page argued that Bush, Clinton, most senators, Iraq study group were all on the same side but Harry Reid was sabotaging their efforts.

And now we have David Ignatius arguing that Obama and Bush are pretty much saying the same thing.

Looks like the WP crowd has adopted the meme that all sensible, serious, responsible people are on the same side except the dirty fucking hippies who are trying to derail consensus.

Posted by DonB | July 29, 2007 2:35 PM

It's a tough call, but this is my favorite line in the Ignatius piece, an imagined thought of the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad:

"It's hard for anyone to take American power seriously when prominent members of Congress are declaring the war already lost."

I think that it's quite obvious to the dimmest observer (Ignatius excepted) that Iran is a long way from taking American power seriously. With a significant US military presence on both sides of them, a powerful US naval fleet off their shores and being subjected to sanctions, bombing threats, propaganda campaigns, and no doubt internal terrorist attacks, Iran is still thumbing their nose at "American power".

Does the Iran government believe something that isn't conventional wisdom and politically correct, that "American power" as being demonstrated currently is nothing but fakery and bluster? That America's being hamstrung by a guy in a cave is an indicator of impotence? That the American military with all its expensive gizmos is incapable of countering crude land mines, and is still unsuccessful in securing a country's capital city more than four years after an invasion?

I submit that the Iranians aren't stupid, and they don't depend on the US Congress to tell them the obvious: that America is 'way in over its head in a situation that is benefiting Iran in a big way so, why should they take American power seriously? (Except something seriously in Iran's favor, that is.)

Posted by Don Bacon | July 29, 2007 2:51 PM

Is Ignatius telling the President and the Vice President to shut up too?

as usual, these Vichy centrists elevate bipartisanship, civility and calm and ask only one side to be quiet.

Posted by pbg | July 29, 2007 3:10 PM

The warmongers have been consistent since 2003 in making arguments based not on facts but on what they wish the facts were. This, of course, is what Ignatius does here. He presents a real problem for the Bush administration: people in Iraq know that people in America are tired of the war and pushing to end it. Now, that is a fact. The solution is: wishing it wasn't a fact. This is disguised as the wish that the Americans would all pipe down, and the congresspeople would all, suddenly, decide not to pursue any of the legislation the Democrats have been pushing since January. One leaps from an observation to a policy based on a neo-con wet dream. And, of course, this avoids the fact that Ignatius starts out with: how can Bush continue to maintain an aggressive, surge based policy with no domestic support. It is exactly the same kind of logic the pro-war side uses when they make a false distinction between military and political victory, as though war was not between states, but between armies that emerge ex nihilo.

It is not a policy suggestion to wish that a fact was different. Rather, it is the conceptual equivalent of falling off the ledge.

Posted by roger | July 29, 2007 5:18 PM

Thank you for speaking for the people Roger. Don't let the fact they have not chosen you to represent them stop you from speaking for them anyway.

The overly political, and by defnition partial(sometimes scarily so) try to do it all the time, without putting any effort into earning the right.

Speak for yourself please.

Posted by Jim R | August 1, 2007 6:53 AM

In fact, it is the overly political partisans like youself that disrupt agreement between reasonable people making reasonable compromise to solve reasonably hard problems.

Posted by Jim R | August 1, 2007 6:57 AM