The punt

The Washington Post has a story today about just how reluctantly the military commanders were in coming around to the escalation that Bush is going to dictate tonight.

As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton. One senior administration official disputed that, arguing that staff members were attracted to the "surge" option to address long-standing concern that earlier efforts failed because of insufficient security forces.

A troop increase also dovetailed with ideas being championed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

From only a few months after the start of the war in 2003, McCain has argued that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is too light, and he and a handful of allies sought to use the post-election policy review to press their case. For three years, their entreaties had been blocked by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but after Rumsfeld was ousted by Bush the day after the election, they found their message had a more receptive audience at the White House. "There has always been within the armed forces a group of people that believes we never had the right strategy in Iraq, and they have been suppressed," Graham said.

Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute drafted a plan with retired Army Gen. Jack Keane for sending seven more Army brigades and Marine regiments to Iraq to provide greater security. Keane and several other experts met with Bush on Dec. 11.

But from the beginning, the Joint Chiefs resisted. They had doubts that Maliki would really confront the militias controlled by fellow Shiites, notably Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr held 30 seats in Maliki's parliamentary bloc and five ministries in his cabinet.

The Joint Chiefs were also worried that sending more troops would set up the U.S. military for an even bigger failure -- with no backup options. They were concerned that the Iraqis would not deliver the troops to handle their own security efforts, as had happened in the past. They were particularly alarmed about the prospect of U.S. troops fighting in a political vacuum if the administration did not complement the military plan with political and economic changes, according to people familiar with their views.

Pentagon officials cautioned that a modest troop increase could lead to more attacks by al-Qaeda, provide more targets for Sunni insurgents and fuel the jihadist appeal for more foreign fighters to flock to Iraq to attack U.S. troops.

Even the announcement of a time frame and mission -- such as for six to eight months to secure volatile Baghdad -- would play to armed factions by allowing them to game out the new U.S. strategy, the chiefs warned the White House.

We keep reading in the papers and seeing on the teevee that tonight Bush will lay out his "new strategy" for Iraq. This is not a strategy, it is a political ploy by the White House to buoy Bush's poll numbers and to give Bush the illusion that this will save "his legacy." And like most of the political ploys engendered by the Bush White House since the announcement to privatize Social Security, this too will end badly, with poll numbers falling still further.

Apparently that is not the point, though. The point is to kick the can down the road a bit while showing how "decisive" this new and improved commander in chief is, as Fred Kaplan writes in Slate.

One widespread, and plausible, theory is that the surge constitutes a last-ditch effort at success. The thinking goes like this: Maybe this will work; and if it doesn't work, the United States can cut its losses and pull back without making the retreat seem like too disastrous a debacle. "We gave it our all," the president could say; "don't blame us that it fell apart." And, since Kagan and other surge-advocates are saying the plan would take about two years to succeed or fail, the next president—not Bush—would be the one who orders, and takes all the heat for, the retreat.

How many more dead -- on both sides of this conflict -- before that happens?