Bush's Iraq Situation Speech

[Fawkes]

Did anyone else watch this? He was basically just saying how we need to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq to help fight alongside the Iraqi security forces and how slowly the Iraqis will take to the front lines and the Americans will fall back.

Discuss....

Edit: Here's a news article about it. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16558652/?GT1=8921)

[Zero]

"Vietnamazation"

[ComradeR]

It just allows Bush to stall it so he can dump it on the next president basically.

[Phalanx]

He's been saying for ages how the US will give fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, but it hasn't happened. This guy is just digging his crater deeper.

[Sumac]

I watched clips of it on the news. Seems like pure propaganda at this point. "More of the same", basically. And I think they don't want to set a withdrawl time because they don't actually plan to leave. Sure, the numbers of soldiers will decrease eventually, but there will always be some there, and they are setting up a permanent military base now. They don't plan to leave. Insane, insane, insane.

[Guerrilla22]

[QUOTE] This is the most important ideological battle of our time[CODE]

:rolleyes: Its all about Bush determined not to lose anymore face than he already has and his stubboness in continuing to pursue an objective that never will be reached.

[Dimentio]

He did not look comfortable.

[LSD]

I don't watch George Bush.

[Keyser]

I did not watch the actual televised speech by the President, but I have read up of all that his new policy entails on the internet news sources and the papers today.

Of course, let us not delude ourselves that the US regime will bend to the will and desire of the people, as democracy and capitalism are mutually exclusive. But from the point of view of the ruling class, they must be themselves confused. All leading military strategists and policy consultants and others from the ruling class have said that to even have a chance at defeating the Iraqi resistance, the US would need to deploy at least 50,000 troops (not 21,500 troops) and would need to stay there for at least 2 years, not 'months' as the President and other White House officials have stated.

The Democrats have always been more hawkish on the war issue than the Republicans, as the Democrats 'opposition' to the war has been based not on the fact that the Iraq war is an act of imperialism, but was carried out with incompetence and not done the 'right way'. This new policy of a troop increase will sastisfy no one. On the one side we have the bourgeois who want the war taken to a new more intense level that would be an all out offensive to wipe out the resistance and on the other hand public opinion that wants out of Iraq.

Bush has failed to please either side.

[Severian]

I read the text of the speech (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011002208_pf.html)

I don't think there's really any "new strategy" there. He says past efforts have failed because there weren't enough troops and the Maliki government put too many limits on what the U.S. government could do and where they could go (implied: not into Sadr City in enough force.) Trying to change that isn't a new strategy.

If there's any sign of any real change in how the war's being fought, it'd be the appointment of Gen. Petraeus as head of U.S. forces in Iraq. His last assignment was to rewrite the Pentagon's counterinsurgency manual. (http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/11/29/iraqs_hard_truths_shape_generals_new_battle_plan/?page=1)

It's a change from the approach the U.S. military's often used - Petraeus emphasizes politics over brute force. For example, Petraeus has disputed the common establishment claim that the U.S. lost in Vietnam because the politicians and antiwar movement put too many restrictions on the military. Rather, he's said, the U.S. military's mistake was to fight a counterinsurgency war as a WWII-like excercise in superior firepower.

But that also evades the big questions of political strategy which the U.S. ruling class faces in Iraq. Intentionally or unintentionally, they've achieved great successes of "divide in rule", setting Sunni against Shi'a not only in Iraq but regionally. But they seem unable to decide or agree on how to exploit this to their benefit; so far they've been able only to get caught between the different forces.

[Ander]

Let's watch Bush push more cattle into the slaughterhouse, shall we?

[Ol' Dirty]

I watched it. It sounded like everything else he says, which is usualy pretty boring. The republicans think he's "unrepresentative" of their party, and the liberals can't stand him. He's just finishing daddies war.

[Janus]

I don't think anyone really bought into it; there was a greater focus on rhetoric rather than giving concrete plans for a solution to this problem.

[Rawthentic]

Yeah, I'm thinking the same. The interesting thing is that he says he wants Iraqis to eventually "run their own country", which is weird because they never asked to be invaded in the first place.

I have a hunch that if the ruling class doesn't pull out in about 2.5-3 years, were gonna have some major social unrest.

Just a prediction. ;)