Bush's Iraq Strategy is More Than Just Escalation

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

How can so many people--Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), the Boston Globe, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, anti-war senators and on and on--be so ignorant about such a simple concept?

They are acting as if President George W. Bush's "new strategy" in Iraq is just to "escalate the war" by sending in 20,000 more troops. As anyone one notch above simpleminded ought to be able to understand, the core of Bush's new strategy is about how to fight the enemy.

Instead of clearing an area of insurgents and then leaving, as U.S. troops have been doing for too long, they'll now clear and stay, to secure the neighborhood. They'll stay to provide what has been most missing in this war and what poll after poll say that Iraqis want more than anything else: protection and peace.

If ever there is a recipe for defeat, whether in a traditional war or one against insurgency, it has been the previous Bush administration policy to fight to the death to clear out the enemy, and then promptly leave so that the enemy can pour back in virtually on your heals. How can you expect to get commitment and cooperation from civilians that know that the insurgents will return next week with their threats, violence and brutality?

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