I was away from my desk yesterday, so I missed this
WaPo article from Peter Baker:
At his meeting with his war cabinet yesterday, Bush reviewed the latest developments but reported no new direction. The administration has set up seven interagency groups focused on its main priorities in Iraq.
These are providing security and training Iraqi forces, building national political institutions, restoring energy and other services, tackling economic problems, establishing rule of law, enlisting international help, and improving strategic communications.
In not-for-attribution comments, some administration officials acknowledge the uphill task. One option that will have to be considered eventually, they say, is amnesty that would forgive even insurgents who have participated in violence. Historically, they note, insurgencies end with some form of amnesty.
Leaving aside the fact that you'd think the work of these "seven interagency groups" should have started long before the first shot was fired (as
Ari Berman argues very effectively, that's beside the point), it certainly seems that this last graf means the end of the flypaper strategy. We're now fighting them there so we can offer them amnesty there so we don't have to fight them and ultimately offer them amnesty here.
If we're really planning to offer amnesty to these "deadly killers who don't think anything at all about taking innocent lives," then, hell, let's get on with it. I know, I know, that's a decision that the sovereign Iraqis will have to make for themselves, but they're kind of busy right now pulling Zalmay Kahlilzad's foot out of their asses.
But I suspect it's also taking the administration's PR guys some time to figure out just how to sell the miraculous transformation from godless, bloodthirsty, baby-eating, mad killer, terrorist insurgents to whatever the insurgents would have to become to be worthy of amnesty. Islamic soldiers? Freedom fighters? Noble savages?
This will be a bit of a trick, but you've got to figure morale is high in the PR shop. After all, they've managed to rebrand this war three times already. They inherited the clunky WMD rationale, and they polished that turd up to the Saddam-was-evil-and-the-world-is-a-better-place-without-him campaign; when they found the old boy hiding out in his spider hole and the insurgency only grew, they unveiled freedom and democracy, which was sort of blunt, but effective, and the purple fingers added a nice visual touch; then came the flypaper strategy, which was so inherently stupid it almost seemed to make sense (except for the nasty details like the London bombings and the al-Zawahiri tape).
Now they're dealing with a product that has clearly served out its usefulness to both the administration and the Amurcan people, and it has to be phased out. Amnesty might be the key, and I bet I know how they'll sell it.
First, you've got to soften up the field, what WaPo's "top US military official" from the other day called "calibrating expectations." The pull-out rumblings are part of this, but so are leaked stories about clandestine meetings with insurgents and leaks about amnesty like the one in Baker's story. These stories will continue until it becomes a foregone conclusion that the US is "pulling out" soon, and that "political progress" is being made.
Second, some time in the next couple-three months, I'd expect to see the US (and their Iraqi allies, of course) launch four or five or six well publicized, simultaneous and extraordinarily brutal assaults on "suspected terrorist strongholds"--Operation Doom, Operation Vengeful Monkey, Operation Bloody Ax With Gut Blood And Brain Blood On It That's So Bloody It Will Never Come Clean, that type of thing, keeping very detailed body counts and putting out lots of pictures. These raids will be proactive, as in, "We had good intelligence that the insurgents were planning lots of disruptions to the constitutional process, so we decided to go on the offensive." Much will be made of the bravery and skill of the Iraqi army during these raids, as they are finally, because of our increased emphasis on training, starting to "take the fight to the enemy."
At some point not long after these raids, the US will announce (evidence or not) that the raids have "broken the back" of the insurgency, that most of the "bad apples" were wiped out, and that the insugency's chastened and fearful leadership has decided to sit down with the new Iraqi government and "hammer out" a peace deal. As part of that deal, the Iraqi government has asked us to reduce our troop presence significantly, as a show of good faith. We'll bring home forty- or fifty-thousand troops and most of the reporters, the president will declare that victory is at hand just in time for the summer 2006 midterm campaigns, and the poor bastards left over there will just have to take one for the team for another couple of years until their fate is someone else's problem.
Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan is still waiting outside the gates of Gutless Gulch, still wondering what "noble cause" got her son killed.
The MOQUOL--I Can Save You, America!