The New Way Backward

One thing has become abundantly clear in the debate over what to do in Iraq: None of the options are good.

The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission tried to find some sort of a middle ground, but its recommendations have run into a buzz saw of criticism from hawks and doves alike.

The American public clearly supports a timetable for withdrawal, starting right away. That has the advantage of at least getting our troops out of harm's way, but it would almost inevitably leave behind a country in chaos.

And yet the solution that President Bush seems to be gravitating towards -- sending more troops -- may be the worst of all worlds. It's the last gasp of a strategy that's been tried before and failed, at great human cost.

The "surge," as the troop increase is being called, has its greatest champion in Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, but almost nobody besides McCain, Bush and neoconservative diehards think it'll work: Not the American generals in Iraq; not the Iraqis; not the American public.

The Baker-Hamilton report was, at a minimum, expected to usher in a new era of realism in which everyone acknowledged the grave and deteriorating situation in Iraq and recognized the limits of American power.

But the "surge" is the end product of radical ideology, not realism. It is the act of a desperate president hoping for one last way to salvage his war and prove that he was right, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

The Surge

Yochi J. Dreazen and Greg Jaffe write in the Wall Street Journal: "The Bush administration is leaning toward temporarily sending as many as 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, even as the Democrats taking charge of Congress demand a drawdown of forces.

"U.S. officials say the increase is needed to make a new push to stabilize Baghdad and to bolster efforts to train the Iraqi army."

But consider this: "The idea is . . . running into strong opposition in Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has flatly told Gen. George Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq, that he doesn't want more U.S. personnel deployed to the country, according to U.S. military officials. The U.S. sent thousands of additional combat personnel to Baghdad earlier this year in an attempt to quell the daily violence there, but American officials say Mr. Maliki has made clear that he wants to see those forces -- except for U.S. trainers and advisers -- moved out of the city.

"Senior U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, say they aren't sure additional forces are needed in Iraq."

And, of course: "Deploying more U.S. forces to Iraq would be deeply unpopular in the U.S., where polls show that an increasing majority believes the U.S. is losing in Iraq, disapproves of the administration's handling of the war and wants to see a fixed timetable for a military withdrawal."