The theory and practice of failure in Iraq

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Surge is bad enough in theory, but it may be even worse in practice -- if it ever even comes to be. As John Burns et al. are reporting in the Times, Bush's "new way forward in Iraq" is "[facing] some of its fiercest resistance from the very people it depends on for success: Iraqi government officials."Whatever they say publicly, the Iraqi government -- essentially Iraq's Shiite government -- doesn't much care for Bush's "new" strategy. And, what's more, there's the not-so-little matter of actually implementing the plan. It's not going well:

American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan that will work on the ground in Baghdad. With the first American and Iraqi units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of the war.

But the signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who have described a web of problems — ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad’s most dangerous districts — that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins.

First among the American concerns is a Shiite-led government that has been so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan.

All predictable problems, of course, but Bush and the warmongers are so far removed from reality in Iraq that it should come as no surprise that those who are actually on the ground in Iraq, embedded in its reality, tasked with putting theory into practice, are encountering them.

Bush and the warmongers didn't know what they were getting themselves and their country into back in 2003. Nothing has changed.

Failure, once again, is imminent.