Liberal Talk Radio

Michael Hirsh has a must-read Newsweek article on the Petraeus plan for Iraq. The upshot? It’s going to be a long haul. But it’s not just about the troop increase:

To a degree little understood by the U.S. public, Petraeus is engaged in a giant “do-over.” It is a near-reversal of the approach taken by Petraeus’s predecessor as commander of multinational forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, until the latter was relieved in early February, and most other top U.S. commanders going back to Rick Sanchez and Tommy Franks.

I’m not sure the “surge” of 21,000 troops into Baghdad will fix anything, but to me it seems that the troop increase is just a small part of the strategy. What’s actually happening right now is a complete do-over: Bush is revisitng each and every one of the original, neocon fantasy decision for Iraq and, in most cases, reversing them. For example, the new Iraq strategy involves:

• re-evaluating “De-Baathification,” letting ex-Baathists serve in government again
• moving U.S. forces out of the Green Zone and into the neighborhoods
• finally getting around to staffing up the State Department presence in Iraq
• hiring back reconstruction experts that were canned in 2003 because they hadn’t made enough campaign donations to the Republican Party.

In short, Bush is now trying, at the 11th hour, to do all the things that post-war reconstruction experts had been suggesting from the very beginning. It’s taken four grueling, bloody years, but the Neocons have finally been pushed aside and — to the extent that it’s possible — the adults have been put in charge of Iraq.

Personally, I think it’s too late for a do-over. Four years of chaos have damaged the Iraqi psyche and fragmented the society so badly that the job of stitching the country back together is far harder than it was in 2003. As good as the new plan may be, it may not be enough at this late date.

Nonetheless, the White House did a piss-poor job of selling the new strategy. The “surge” was a small part. Troop levels have been fluctuating up and down for four years. The real news here is that Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rummy have been sidelined and the grownups (Gates, Petraeus, etc. ) are now in charge of Iraq. It would be hard for Bush to frame it that way, but it would have been a much more compelling sell.