A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

OK, the latest "major speech."  Let me get the atmospherics out of the way first.

There is nothing to admire in President Bush's preference for making campaign-style addresses -- complete with introductions of local Republican officeholders, cheer lines and replies to his critics -- in front of military audiences.  I understand his wish to be shielded from negative audience reaction, and also to have whatever he says be as closely associated with the popular armed forces as possible.  It is still inappropriate.  A speech on this important a subject should have been delivered to the public on evening television anyway.

As to the speech itself, a couple of observations.  It did not include anything resembling a timetable for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq; I did not expect one, and would not have approved had one been announced.  I do expect, and approve, senior American military commanders and civilian officials preparing to begin withdrawing forces from Iraq once the December Iraqi elections are held and a new Iraqi government gets established (I'm guessing this will take until sometime in March).  It would have been a mistake in my view to announce anything specific on this subject before the elections, however.

The other observation is that the thrust of Bush's speech today was remarkably faithful to the speeches he gave two years ago about Iraq.  The objectives are still described in the same language geared to American audiences, and are no more clearly defined than they were before; the details of policy are plainly and explicitly delegated to military commanders in Iraq, as they were previously.  No mistakes are acknowledged, no explanation offered for our still proceeding "according to plan" two and a half years after the "Mission Accomplished" speech on the Lincoln.  Bush, or whoever wrote his speech, obviously drew heavily on briefings by people like Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, whose talk in early October at Princeton (summarized ably by blogger TigerHawk) went over much of the same ground Bush covered today with respect to the training and equipment of Iraqi government forces.  For the rest, it's hard to argue with blogger Kris Alexander at Intel Dump -- who liked the speech -- that much of it was boilerplate rhetoric.

The White House also released a lengthy document detailing a strategy for victory in Iraq, which has been received as a statement of what anyone paying attention knew all along by Instapundit.  Having read it, I'm pretty dubious about that; if you were paying attention and sitting in on meetings with Gen. Casey and Zalmay Khalilzad over the last couple of months, maybe.  It's kind of a Word version of a "Death by Powerpoint" presentation, more of an agenda than a strategy.  In fairness many of the items on the agenda are things I agree need to be done; the objectives are worthy ones.

A question I have about both the speech and the strategy is how seriously -- to be precise, how literally -- to take them.  It isn't hard to see that the President left a major hostage to fortune this morning, by insisting that American troops will leave Iraq based on the conditions there.  If the insurgency intensifies next year and American casualties go up, the administration will be committed to maintaining force levels in Iraq at the very time Americans are likely to demand they be reduced.  On the other hand, my reading of American tactics on the battlefield and in Iraqi politics suggest to me that conditions aside, most US officials are committed to getting the withdrawal process underway by winter's end.  This doesn't mean an honest effort won't be made to reach the goals in the strategy; it just won't be made over an indefinite period of time.

This implies that our Iraq policy is essentially being made in the military and at lower levels of the civilian leadership, with some sign-off required from senior civilian officials but little hands-on involvement from them.  The White House has taken on itself the job of maintaining its approved spin, and the President's speech today was part of that. 

It's not an ideal way to operate by any means, but at this point I can live with it.  With the "hostage to fortune" caveat noted above, the single most important thing about Bush's speech today may have been that it said nothing that would preclude a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq starting in the early part of next year.  For all the President's talk of "victory," final attainment of his strategy's objectives -- the conditions for victory -- depends on the Iraqis, as it always has.  The point at which the officials making policy will start leaving this up to them is in sight.