Those heading for the exits now include the Administration

In recent weeks and months the focus in Iraq has been on the increasing sectarian violence between Shi’a militias and Sunnis. Administration supporters, including those who have been heading for the exits such as Ralph Peters and John Podhoretz, admitted the grave seriousness of the reciprocal sectarian murders and mass murders. They said this is a problem that America does not have the power to solve, while adding that the terror insurgency against the U.S. forces has been diminished and even defeated. When I heard the latter point I wondered … was that true? What was the basis for saying that, other than the death of Zarqawi?

Now read this from the front page of today’s New York Times. It’s the worst bad-news story about Iraq ever. Based on the U.S. government’s own figures, the insurgency has greatly increased its roadside bomb attacks and other attacks in recent months, with the number of U.S. personnel wounded and maimed virtually doubling since January. The U.S. military says the violence in Iraq is at its highest level yet. Yet just two days ago our president stood there on television telling us in his folksy yet firm, his unsophisticated yet so-convinced manner (that manner that makes his fans swoon) that his Iraq policy was succeeding. So I guess the increased roadside bomb attacks are just a sign that this time the insurgency is really, really desperate.

Or maybe not. At the end of the story there comes this stunner:

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 17, 2006 03:45 PM | Send