While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.
The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. "Sustainable security" is to be stablished on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.
The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President George W. Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.
Slate's Fred Kaplan finds this strategy "confusing in concept and highly impractical." Stephen Biddle, one of the team who developed the strategy, suggested that its chances of success might be no more than about ten percent.
What it will do with near one hundred percent certainty is postpone America's day of reckoning in Iraq until a Democrat occupies the White House and the militaristic jingoes, fair-and-balanced commentators and Republican spinmeisters will then be in a position to claim that Democrats, peaceniks and leftists (not to mention feminists, homos, and academics) "lost" the war.
One "stab in the back", coming up.
