What Has He Learned?

by Paul on January 10, 2007

This morning the news headlines are carrying the leaked word that President Bush is prepared to do something amazing in tonight’s speech. He’s actually going to acknowledge that it was a mistake to go into Iraq with so few troops.

It will be interesting to see how that happens. Will he say “I made a mistake” in so many plain words? Or will it be that somehow passive-voiced “mistakes were made?” More importantly, what specifically will be identified as the mistakes, and what response will he suggest?

Was the mistake be that the troop number was too low, or was the mistake that Bush, Rumsfeld and others chose to believe they knew more than the many experts who were counseling them to make it higher, or not do it at all? Was the mistake a simple logistical error, or was it really a readiness to ignore the facts on the ground (cultural differences, sectarian and nationalist rivalries, economic deprivation, etc) in order to doggedly follow an ideological agenda?

Being able to admit a mistake is great, but being able to properly identify the mistake is key. Because the most important element of such an admission is the learning that follows.

What has Mr. Bush learned? When we listen to his speech, that is the question to ask. Does this sound like a man who has learned humility, and has learned to be open to contrary opinions in a way he wasn’t in 2002? Has he chosen a path that shows he is aware of anything new, or is he, despite his “mistake”, intent on doing the same thing again, only harder. Bush has ‘admitted mistakes’ in the past, though always in a vague, mealy-mouthed way that barely registered. Will tonight be another case of him ‘admitting a mistake’ to only in the next breath assert the urgency of continuing to follow his unchanging course?

Tonight we may hear not only about more troops, but about jobs programs, and aid with infrastructure. The Washington Post is reporting that the cooperation of the Joint Chiefs has been won with promises of political and economic initiatives:

Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq.

In the abstract, this sounds like a reasonable approach. But how does it differ from what we were supposedly doing in 2003 and 2004? And what signs are there that Bush is aware of the changes on the ground? In what way does the President’s proposal show that he understands that ideas that might have worked in April 2003 won’t play in April 2007?

Paying Iraqis to paint schools sounds great, assuming that they can get to the schools without dying at a checkpoint shootout, from a sniper’s bullet, or in an IED explosion. Painting schools may help, if militias in Iraqi government uniforms don’t capture, torture and kill anyone who picks up a paintbrush. Which naively assumes that the money won’t have been absorbed by multiple levels of US contracting companies before it even gets to the street, like so many billions of dollars that have gone before.

Will we hear Mr. Bush acknowledge the mistakes of our ‘reconstruction’ programs?

Mr. Bush has been so pathologically averse to admitting mistakes that it is indeed news that he may admit one tonight. But there have been so many mistakes involved in our misadventure in Iraq that admitting one is merely a drop in the bucket. Worse, it seems quite likely that tonight’s admission will show that no true insight has been gained, and no learning has taken place. Like so much of the administration’s rhetoric, and past ‘admissions’, it is merely a cynical pose, an attempt to lend credibility to a position that is simply incredible.

What has he learned?

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