It's not Plan B. It's more like Plan A. Only now can we can a chance to look at it.
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 established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.
Put together by the command in Baghdad in January at a time when the surge was getting started, Petraeus' and Crocker's plan comes to light now when the American public are looking for a September 2007 end date, the time when withdrawal will effectively begin.
The latest plan, which covers a two-year period, does not explicitly address troop levels or withdrawal schedules. It anticipates a decline in American forces as the “surge” in troops runs its course later this year or in early 2008. But it nonetheless assumes continued American involvement to train soldiers, act as partners with Iraqi forces and fight terrorist groups in Iraq, American officials said.
In fact, the plan itself isn't the edge of a lie or a subversion. But the timing of its publication coincides with increasing anxiety that no one in government is listening to the public's demand for a withdrawal. It's described as "ambitious" by the New York Times; and it's certainly oddly naive.
...The hope is that sufficient progress might be made at the local level to encourage accommodation at the national level, and vice versa.
And that's the problem. We're far too deep into disillusionment with the planning and execution of the Iraq invasion for any further plans -- particularly one which the public is only now learning about -- to change many minds. The administration should have made all its plans clearer years ago.
At a time when critics at home are defining patience in terms of weeks, the strategy may run into the expectations of many lawmakers for an early end to the American mission here.
There's a lesson here: running a war while trying to keep its relevant planning secret and out of sight of voters is bad enough. Doing it ineptly and with enormous human costs -- and frequent bursts of barbaric cruelty -- is further proof that we need to withdraw from an imperial presidency in 2008 if not well before. The key to an acceptable withdrawal is that it be managed by a different, more effective and trustworthy leadership.
Withdraw Bush, Cheney, and Rice first.
