Bush's Deadly Game: Surge I Win, Withdraw You Lose

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

If there is one thing Bush cares about more than pacifying Iraq (to get oil easier), it's protecting his legacy. With the war doomed to failure, he has used the "surge" plan as a means to defer blame onto others regardless of what the Democrats plan to do about the proposed strategy.

Let's assume Democrats pick Door #1 and revert back to their old habits by not standing up to Bush yet again, and they do not withhold funding for the operation. In the short term, Bush will regain a chunk of his diminished political capital. Winning the first major battle after the Democratic takeover will be a great starting place for his final two years.

But when conditions have failed to improve and our casualties have continued to skyrocket after a year or so, his term will be nearly over and it will be left to his successor to finally withdraw.

What's more, Bush will be able to say at the time that everyone thought the "surge" was a good idea at the time, including the Democratic Congress that funded it. It sounds crazy now, but this is exactly what Bush did for the initial invasion. The resolution he exploited to begin the war was only supposed to give him diplomatic leverage; many Democrats who voted to authorize it were emphatically against Bush's timing and planning of the war at the time.

The passage of time will erase - or at least lessen - the mass objections at this precise moment from the left and middle over escalation... and from the right for not adding enough troops. Bush will still probably be remembered as a failure, but not as much as he rightfully deserves. Even worse, scores more Americans and Iraqis will die needlessly.

That sounds pretty bleak, but the alternative is not much better should Democrats manage to stop the Bush plan. The framing battle has already begun to preemptively defer blame to Democrats in the event of a withdrawal (and, according to Republicans, the resulting "loss").

White House spokesman Tony Snow recently said that "Democrats are going to have to make a choice here and they're going to have to decide where they stand in terms of two issues: Number one, do you want Iraq to succeed, and, if so, what does that mean? And, number two, do you believe in supporting the troops as you say, and how do you express that support?"

The implication, of course, is that should Democrats force a withdrawal they - and not Bush - will be responsible for Iraq's failure, and that they would not be "supporting the troops."

If Tony Snow was not clear enough about their goal of deferring blame, look at what Sen. John McCain said: "I believe that, under the Constitution, Congress has the right to cut off funding. They did that during the Vietnam War. I also believe that if that vote is successful, then those who were the proponents of it then assume the consequences of failure."

There you have it: if they vote to withdraw, Democrats - and not Bush - will "assume the consequences of failure." While it's all total hogwash since it was Bush who unilaterally started the hopeless war, this message is easy to express in sound-bites and short political attack ads. No one is better at misleading the public with prepackaged lies than Republicans.

It's certainly possible that Iraq will fall into chaos if we leave now, but the Republicans' admission of this fact only shows their massive incompetence over the last four years since they themselves planned the whole thing. And now they want another chance to start over?

George Bush is playing a deadly game. Regardless of what Democrats do, Bush hopes to come out ahead. At the expense of everyone but himself.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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