Bush Not Budging on Iraq
Bush has laid out his Iraq policy from now through the summer. Surprising no one, it doesn’t involve actually addressing very many of the problems the conflict has. He will be suspending troop withdrawals, though tours will shorten from 15 to 12 months.
Essentially Bush is making clear that he has no plan to actually fix anything from here till the end of his term, just maintain the situation until someone else is in office, and then lay the whole mess on their lap.
The lack of troop withdrawals again begs the question of the meaning of the word “surge”. A surge, to my understanding is a temporary increase. The surge began in Febuary 2007. It has already lasted over a year, and though some of those troops will be withdrawing, many will also stay, which only serves to stretch the meaning of the word “surge” more than it already has been in the past year.
Cutting back the tours to 12 months sounds good, though I don’t know that it really addresses the issues that soldiers have, and I think the issue of how much time they get between tours is very relevant, including what kind of medical and especially mental health care they are getting during and between missions.
