Chris Floyd: Escalation and Expansion: Bush's "Great Leap Forward" Into Hell

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Escalation and Expansion: Bush's "Great Leap Forward" Into Hell
Written by Chris Floyd

Monday, 25 December 2006

The outlines of Bush's "New Way Forward" or "Great Leap Forward" or "Long Walk Off a Short Pier" in Iraq is now fairly clear. It has three general thrusts: a large increase in troop numbers; a direct assault on the forces of Motqada al-Sadr; and, if possible, an expansion of the war beyond Iraq's borders through a military strike on Iran.

The troop increase is now certain (if indeed it had ever been in doubt). In the past few days, with the nation distracted by the Christmas holidays (and by the ever-phony and genuinely idiotic "Christmas Wars" eating up media airtime), the Bush Faction has carried out a quiet coup – or perhaps a counterrevolutionary purge – in the military ranks. Top generals who openly opposed increasing the U.S. occupation force in Iraq have either announced their retirements or else have been compelled to crawl and eat their words in public recantations. (This moral cowardice is even more remarkable when you consider how weak, stupid – and deeply unpopular – is the "commander-in-chief" who has somehow overawed these stalwart soldiers. One can only imagine that some sort of blackmail must be involved.)

The generals were the last possible obstacle to the war's precipitous escalation; the national Democrats have already signaled their willingness to countenance a "surge" (the Orwellian propaganda term that has been adopted wholesale by the corporate media to describe the vast expansion of the war). Even those Democrats who have appeared to speak out against it have, almost invariably, couched their objections in weasel-wording terms devoid of any actual oppositional content. "I won't support a surge unless it's part of an overall plan to bring our troops home sooner," is the standard formulation, although the "boldest" among them will sometimes tack on a specific date: "bring our troops home by 2008" or some such. But of course, any escalation of the war will be presented precisely as a strategy to bring the conflict to a speedier end; thus most Democrats will latch onto that spin and – grudgingly or enthusiastically – go along. In any case, it's certain that the Congressional Democrats will not put up a concerted, united effort against an escalation.

And so in the coming weeks, we will see anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 more troops sent to Iraq – despite the overwhelming public sentiment against such a policy: only 11 percent of Americans support the idea of escalation, as a new CNN poll reports. This is an astounding level of public opposition to any government policy; I can't recall anything like it in almost 40 years of observing American politics and studying American history. The fact that the Bush Regime is willing to undertake an action that 89 percent of the American people oppose – and what's more, an action that is guaranteed to cost the lives of many Americans and many billions from the public treasury – is a glaring indication of how completely anti-democratic the Bush Faction is, and how utterly dysfunctional the U.S. political system has become.

So the "surge" will come. It will be used to support an all-out assault on the militia of Iraqi nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr. A brief attempt by the Bush Faction to isolate Sadr politically -- by creating a bloc of so-called "moderates" in alliance with the death squad leaders of the violent extremist Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq – has, as usual, failed miserably. And it has foundered on the same stone that has wrecked most of the Administration's political boats in Iraq: the refusal of the leading Shiite cleric in the country, the Iranian-born Ayatollah Sistani, to cooperate with American wishes. Sistani refused to bless any attempt to ease out Sadr and thus split the Shiite alliance.

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