President Bush's Secret Plan for Winning the War in Iraq

On the third anniversary of the War in Iraq polls show that a majority of Americans have turned against the war and believe that the President has no plan for winning. I must admit that the continuous stream of bad news from Iraq was even beginning to make me have my doubts. But it turns out that all along President Bush has had a secret plan for winning the War in Iraq. In fact, it may be best secret plan for winning a war since Richard Nixon's secret plan for winning the Vietnam War.

In his radio address this week President Bush acknowledged the waning American support for the war but then hinted at his simple but brilliant strategy for victory. "Amid continued reports about the tense situation in parts of that country, it may seem difficult at times to understand how we can say that progress is being made," Bush said. "But the reaction to the recent violence by Iraq's leaders is a clear sign of Iraq's commitment to democracy…. The violence has created a new sense of urgency among these leaders to form a national unity government as quickly as possible."

The President knew that one of the problems he would have after deposing Saddam Hussein would be preventing civil war from breaking out between the Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds. With Saddam in power the tensions between the three groups were suppressed under his iron fist, but once he was gone the conflict between them threatened to spiral out of control. What could Bush do to unite these factions and get them to work together to form a democratic government instead of fighting each other? The best way to unite people, of course, is to give them a common enemy to fight. But who could step in and play the role of the adversary that would unite the Iraqi people? Well, who better than ourselves?

Everything we have been doing in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad has actually been calculated to further the goal of making them hate us more than they hate each other. The "leak" of the photos of torture and degradation at Abu Ghraib was no accident. The failure to build an infrastructure, the frequent power outages, the "disappearance" of funds earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq were all designed to harass the citizenry until they were driven into each others' arms. Every civilian that was killed or mistreated in Iraq has succeeded in getting ten more to unite against us. Maneuvers like Operation Swarmer may have looked like empty photo ops to some, but they were actually purposefully designed to provide more images that would inflame the Iraqi people. Even Saddam Hussein has unwittingly been recruited to play a part in the plan, recently urging Iraqis to ''unite and resist the invaders and their backers. Don't fight among yourselves." Everything has been going even better than Bush could have hoped in the plan to get Iraqis to despise us in unison.

Of course, President Bush and the members of his Administration could not reveal this plan outright without endangering it's success. So the President has had to bear the humiliation of low poll numbers and accusations of incompetence while knowing full well that everything was going as intended. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has had to endure the jeers of pundits who think he was not adequately prepared for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster because to do otherwise would be to tip the Administration's hand. At the U.N. Ambassador John Bolton feigns defiance, knowing that the more the U.S. seems like a pariah nation, the closer we are in successfully executing the Iraqi Master Plan. Vice President Dick Cheney has perhaps assumed the biggest burden of them all, taking the "blame" for what is happening in Iraq and suffering record low poll numbers all to further the cause. And it's possible that Republicans may suffer at the polls because of the sacrifice the President has made on their behalf.

There is something noble and Christ-like in this sacrifice. In fact, Bush's plan has Biblical antecedents. The ancient Hebrews would conduct a ritual during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in which all of their misfortunes would be transferred to a goat, called a scapegoat, which would then be driven off into the wilderness or pushed over a cliff. By taking on all of the problems of the Middle East, we are the goat.

It was a stroke of genius to realize that our mission will only be accomplished when we have been driven out of Iraq as the foe of a newly united Iraqi people, that the only way that we can win this war is to "lose" it. Perhaps the best way to sum up Bush's ingeniously counterintuitive strategy is with a phrase coined by Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly more than 35 years ago: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Jon Swift, Iraq, War on Terror, Terrorism, Abu Ghraib, Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Operation Swarm, Vietnam, Nixon, Pogo, Walt Kelly, Politics, Foreign Policy, 183rd Edition of Carnival of The Vanities, Carnival of the Liberals #9