Black Box Report

Less than two years ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki said they would be able to take over all security concerns in Iraq by...well...now. Clearly, that hasn't happened. President Bush, while being careful to avoid any specific timelines, has long claimed that we would be in Iraq until Iraqi security forces "stood up," a somewhat nebulous goal. Fortunately, Iraq's defense minister clarified all that this week. We're no longer measuring Iraqi security readiness in terms of years, but of decades.

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.

Those comments from the minister, Abdul Qadir, were among the most specific public projections of a timeline for the American commitment in Iraq by officials in either Washington or Baghdad. And they suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated.

Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

2018. That's the earliest Iraqi security forces will be able to take the training wheels off the bike and ride around on their own. Until then, US troops will bogged down in the deadliest babysitting job ever**. The Marine Corps Times says that's fine, as long as nothing else happens between now and then:

If the U.S. were to face a new conventional threat, its military could not respond effectively without turning to air power, officials and analysts say.

That is the ultimate upshot of the war in Iraq: a response elsewhere would consist largely of U.S. fighters and bombers — even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear strike — because so many ground troops are tied up in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

An increased chance of nuclear war? Why do I get the feeling this administration would consider that a feature, not a bug?

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Qadir's projections - and the Pentagon's response - leads to a couple of more immediate questions:

One, if the surge is working so well, why is it that Mr. Qadir's projections are getting less optimistic? Answer -- maybe the surge isn't working so well and maybe this Upright Citizens Brigade strategy doesn't contain the seeds of any kind of stable equilibrium for Iraq. Two, why is it that officials "expressed no surprise" at projections that "suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated"? Answer -- both governments have not been indicating things accurately. They've been misleading.

Well, of course they have. The plan all along was for a permanent American presence in Iraq. This is no mere foreign policy misadventure, it's a way of life:

We're not just stuck in Iraq, we're creating a culture of Iraq, a living history of how this occupation is impacting our lives and our decisions. The politics of the conflict are shattered, with nobody even willing to offer a critique. We are living in a time when children born during the Bush-Gore recount in 2000 may be putting on the uniform and going off to fight in Bush's war in 2018.

By which time, Iraq security may still have not gotten its act together. Yet we will continue to give them money, resources and training. You know, the kind of welfare Bush and Republicans don't like to give to Americans:

Bush didn't create a democracy, he created a failed state…Thank you, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the rest of the Bush crew. You created the world's largest welfare program in 5 years and our young men and women are dying from it.

Apparently "personal responsibility" doesn't apply to Iraqis fighting their own civil war.

**As for the idea that we're "stuck" in Iraq due to Bush and Maliki's "enduring" agreement - in the form of a Status of Forces Agreement - it's unclear to me just how binding that agreement would be to the next president. To my decidedly non-legal eye, it appears to be an agreement between Bush and Maliki - no one else. A SOFA is not a capital-T "treaty," it doesn't require Congressional approval. However, as an executive agreement, it appears there is no legal obligation for the next president to honor it. There is an historical precedence for them doing so, but that's it. And as we've seen from our current chief executive, there's no agreement or even capital-T "Treaty" that the president can't break if he/she damn well feels like it.

And even if that weren't enough, there's a pair of bills making their way through both houses of congress to prevent just this sort of end-around when it comes to establishing a permanent military presence in Iraq - or anywhere else.