Living in a Bizzaro World at War

War has a way of coming up with its own bizarre logic that makes it truly frightening if not unintentionally hilarious. This is what made Stanley Kubrick's movie Dr. Strangelove so successful because it took that logic, parodied it, and made a hilarious comedy about the dark subject of nuclear war. Other such movies like MASH and Catch 22 and TV shows like MASH and Black Adder did the same with conventional warfare.

The current war in Iraq is no different. In fact, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com and Etherzone theorizes that the explosion of 9-11 ripped a role in the space-time continuum and created a "Bizzaro World" where all logic is turned upside down on its head and reversed just like the Bizzaro planet in D.C. Comics.

Such is the Bizzaro World that Raimondo, in a recent column, actually called for mass
protests and sit-ins in Washington D.C. itself to bring the operation of the federal government to a halt.

Yeah, it's that strange.

And the latest cause of turbulent weirdness is the so-called "surge" option being introduced by the Bush II Administration as its latest strategy to pacify turbulent Iraq.

Forget for a moment the arguments of whether this option will work, whether it's just the same planned dressed up in new clothing, or whether it will make a bad situation already worse. Instead, let us just revel in the illogic of it all and see if we can get a good chuckle.

This "surge" of 21,500 troops only brings the numbers U.S. military forces up to 153,000. Even when U.S. forces were this large in Iraq in the past the insurgency still raged on regardless and the difficulty of policing a nation of 18 million people the size of California remain. The Army's own counter-insurgency manual calls for ratios of numbers of troops to the population that would require between 200,000-250,000 troops in Iraq, but we're quite content with 153,000. Of course while we're surging, our erstwhile allies in the "Coalition of the Willing" are contracting their already limited forces as Great Britain recently announced it was cutting its force in Iraq by 3,000 troops and many other nations plan to remove their contingents out by the end of the year. The "surge" itself is not a redeployment of U.S. forces from around the globe to provide fresh reinforcements, but merely simply extends tours of duty for several units and speeds up the deployment of others.

Let's continue with the bizzaro logic shall we? We’ve spent $18 billion on reconstruction of Iraq already which hasn't dampened the insurgency's will to fight so we'll give them another $10 billion for New Deal-style jobs program. The Iraq Study Group report recommends talking with Syria and Iran to try and deal with the region's problems, but in Bush II's latest speech, he talks about going to war with both nations. We're targeting not just the Sunni insurgents by Shiite militias as well, many of which were created in response to the insurgency and who back the same government the U.S backs as well. The "surge" plan itself was supposedly drawn up or promoted, if you believe administration officials, by Iraqi PM Maliki himself, the same person Bush II's own NSC Advisor Stephen Hadley called incompetent.

Incompetent people are drawing up U.S. strategy?

Well I suppose better an incompetent Iraqi rather than the incompetents Americans that already left the situation such a mess that need a "surge" in the first place. But here's the truly bizarre situation. This "surge" is coming just a few months after the President's party lost control of Congress in the recent elections and is supported by and indeed promoted by the very neoconservatives whose screw ups have left over 3,000 U.S. soldiers dead and Iraq in a state of internal war. Why would the President listen to such people, especially when many of them like Richard Perle, Ken Adleman, Michael Ledeen and David Frum stabbed the Administration in the back in pre-election interviews in Vanity Fair?

You have to give the neocons credit for one thing: Like the vermin that they are, they figure out ways to survive and still be able to project influence even from a disadvantageous position. Very few are left in government now and one their views before the voters. They prefer to operate in the shadows or the back rooms where policy is made. They know how to stroke people. Know how to take care of them and call in chits when they need to. Why is Irving Kristol considered the "godfather" of the neocons? Well, as Chronicles editor Dr. Thomas Fleming says, because like a godfather he takes care of people. Cheney is a good example. While he was out of government from 1993-2001, the neoconservatives cozied up to him, made his wife Lynne a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and took interest in what he was saying. The end result was that Cheney staffed the Administration with lots of neocons when it took power in gratitude. So as long as Cheney is still vice-president, the neocons will have some influence on policy. They also know the best way to influence someone is to parallel their thinking and with George Bush II, they have the perfect person upon which to whisper in the ear.

Bush II may not know anything about neoconservatism, but he does know himself. And what he knows is that he's on a mission from God. Ever since 9-11, Bush II has said to anyone who will listen that God has chosen him and him alone to lead the country in the Global War on Terrorism. And when you're on a mission from God, you just don't turn it down. That would be like Moses leading the Israelites through the desert and just deciding one day "Ahh, the heck with it. Let's go back to Egypt." It just doesn't work that way. One fellow from the Bible who did try to escape a mission from God, Jonah, spent a good chunk of time in a whale's belly because of it.

Because Bush II sincerely believes this, he will see the Iraq disaster through to the end of his term regardless what happens. That's why he's ignored the election results. That's why he's ignored the Iraq Study Group recommendations (along with his contemptuous view of his father's former advisors) even thought it could have been a bi-partisan platform to construct a plan for Iraq. That's why the "surge" option is so appealing to him. Every other plan smacks to him of defeat and withdrawal, a turning back on the mission from God. But the "surge" is a plan of action, a plan of victory and that's why he's chosen this course. All that was needed was for the neocons to draw up the blueprints. They make perfect team. And that's why everyone within the Administration that wasn't on the same page was let go whether it was Don Rumsfeld or Gen. John Abizaid.

You may call it stubbornness and you may call it pig-headedness, but Bush II calls it faith and so long as he maintains this faith, the neocons' hidden hand will steer the President's course and more U.S. troops will die needlessly in their stupid endeavor. But even if the disaster deepens, don't worry about the fate of the neocons. They will still have their foundations, their newspaper columns, their magazines and think tanks, their talk shows and TV gigs, their university chairs along with their connections to high places. They can wash their hands of this mess even if the average soldier who lost a leg or a buddy in Iraq cannot. For you see, even in disaster they will still be around and still referred to as foreign policy experts.

Now that's bizarre.

--Sean Scallon