Bush sure to repeat fallacies in speech

Published 3:21 pm Wednesday, January 23, 2008

In a few days President Bush will give his last State of the Union address. If he holds true to form, he will again tell us that we are winning the war in Iraq. This time he will point out that his “surge” strategy is leading us to victory.

But we cannot achieve a military victory in Iraq. There are only two ways to achieve a military victory in any war. One way is to force your enemy to surrender. The other way is to eliminate your enemy’s ability to wage war. In Iraq, the insurgents are not led by a central command, so they cannot surrender. To eliminate the insurgent’s ability to wage war would require that our military secure all of Iraq’s borders and take full control of the Iraqi police and army functions. This would take at least half a million U.S. troops, which would necessitate the re-instatement of the draft plus a major tax increase. This won’t happen, either.

The only way to achieve victory in Iraq is for the various factions of the Iraqi government to work out a political solution. Unfortunately, very little progress has been made in this area. What we are currently doing in Iraq is buying time for the Iraqi government. As long as President Bush continues to assure Iraqi politicians that we will stay there as long as it takes, there is little incentive for Iraqi politicians to put their differences aside and create a stable, peaceful Iraq.

We don’t have a viable plan to win in Iraq because the path to victory is in their hands, not ours. Any talk of winning with our current strategy is just wishful thinking, which tends to describe this administration’s strategy in Iraq since the invasion nearly five years ago.

Eric Selby