As things went from bad to worse the president became increasingly defensive and kept taking advice from people who never wore combat boots or had an inkling about how to win the peace after an unpopular invasion. And mistake after mistake was been seen by Mr. Bush as simply hiccups along the way to eventual victory and glory. One example will serve to demonstrate Mr. Bush’s “my way or the highway” attitude that has only helped to further bog down the United States in an unpopular war.
After much arm-twisting and public chiding Mr. Bush finally had the Iraq Study Group set up to look at what happened, why it happened, and to offer non-binding recommendations to the Administration. About seven months ago the group recommended that the military start withdrawing troops, accelerate the training of Iraqi soldiers and police and engage Syria and Iran in diplomatic moves aimed at stabilizing the internal political situation in Iraq among other things. The ISG concluded that a military victory as envisioned by Mr. Bush was not possible and that the best course of action was a combined political and diplomatic solution.
What did Mr. Bush do?
Snubbing the report as he did the 9-11 Commission’s report he angrily did the opposite of what the ISG recommended. So instead of a gradual troop reduction he proposed a troop surge boosting the US “boots on the ground” from approximately 140,000 to over 160,000 today.
“In pursuing such a strategy, military force in the form of surges cannot deliver the critical political accommodation,” a May 2007 Chatham House report said, adding that: “Iraqi solutions will need to be found to Iraqi problems. … Devising U.S. or regional solutions according to the players’ own interests, and imposing them upon Iraq, has been tried and has only served to destabilize the situation further.” Amen to that.
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