January 15, 2007

f President Bush was to ask, and genuinely desired a response to the questions, how do you think he would answer to:

1. Since so much has gone wrong in Iraq can you now argue that your plan for the near future is certain of success - or even likely to be successful?
2. You are investing so much hope and expectation in your plan known as "the surge" to secure the mixed Shia-Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, by injecting some 20,000 additional American troops, will you possibly be able to see an island of calm in the capital and thereby be able to arrest the slide into a full civil war (We have, of course, tried before to bring about peace in Baghdad, to no avail)?
3. If the "surge" fails in its planned defeat of the militias and insurgents, will you take a different approach, and is this all "too little, too late"?
4. America has, and is facing, the enormous task of building an Iraqi military; can they be trusted?
5. Doesn't appear likely that American soldiers may not be welcome in Baghdad's neighborhoods now that Iraqis have turned for protection to their local militias?
   
   One survey, taken in September went as far as to state that 61% of Iraqis approve of attacking coalition forces.
   
6. The Baker-Hamilton, truly bi-partisan report, pointed out that a premature departure would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence. Without the American presence, what do you think would occur? On the other hand what is your expectation; will the end of the first term of the next president still see our large and costly presence in Iraq?
   
   If so, isn't there a young generation of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias ready to take over the task of hating us, because they have only known violence and death?
   
7. It isn't all helpless. Nowhere is it written that all attempts to reconcile the differences within that country are doomed. We have built an army. We have organized elections, but, thus far, sadly the politicians won't make the needed compromises across sectarian lines but, at this stage Mr. President, what would you consider "success" and would that be, in your estimation, tantamount to a kind of victory?
   
8. Some state, with conviction, that if we leave, things will get worse. We haven't left and things have deteriorated. So, what do you expect?
   
9. What is the likelihood that violence is in the future... the near future... between the United States and Iran and/or Syria?
   
10. If you had all the knowledge then, when you first determined to preemptively attack Iraq, that you have now, what would you do differently? Would you have attacked?
    

I'll almost certainly never get the chance to ask this president those questions, and dozens more that come to mind, because, I don't think that his spokespeople would want a liberal... (or as I prefer to think of myself) a moderate, to be able to hear the questioning and challenge that I was permitted to put to LBJ, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.