I'm Ted Christian, and I wrote this press release.

Inglis: Iraqis must win this phase of the war (link)

Surge in troops appears to offer little advantage
to Republicans

(January 9, 2007)
(as translated from the Bob, January 15)

Americans won the first two phases of the war in Iraq, U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) said today, but the third phase will not be aided significantly by an American surge and can be won only by the Iraqi people.

          The only two phases the war was ever going to have were getting in and getting out.
          We're now officially in phase two.

"In phase one, we overran the country and took out a national security threat to the United States and the world," Inglis said. "We won."

          This is transparently absurd historical revisionism (i.e., a lie) that Bob engages in I suppose on the assumption that nobody will point it out. Iraq was in reality a prostrate third world country which presented no appreciable threat to anyone. Its invasion was, and is, a prima facie war crime. Period.

"In the second phase we took on the insurgents and disrupted terrorist networks. We bought some time and prevented attacks on our homeland. That’s a win.

          No. The only thing that's been disrupted is world peace. The threat of international terrorism has grown substantially, as the Spanish and British can attest. There is no reason to suppose the war has prevented a single terrorist attack on the Fatherland, and it is absurd to claim otherwise. The war has certainly created more enemies than it has killed, if it has killed any it didn't create, and has if anything made our borders more porous. And besides which, "we bought some time" ... what does that even mean? Time for what?

"Now we’re in phase three, a civil war that will end only when the Iraqi people decide they want to live in a unified, pluralistic and peaceful Iraq. No amount of American military might can make them choose to build a nation for themselves. Nation building is not and should not be made the business of the American military."

          Give the man a cookie.
          Bob conjures a happy, unified, democratic Iraq. This is far from the necessary case, and in fact whatever shards eventually come to rest will very likely be authoritarian in nature. Like I wrote beforehand.

The United States can coax the Iraqis to build a nation for themselves by laying out a timetable for key decisions. One of those decisions is the fair division of oil money among the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Another key decision is the re-inclusion of Sunnis in government, thereby overcoming our mistake in de-Baathification, Inglis said.

          The word "coax" here kind of says it all.
          Those gosh darn Iraqis!

"It is our right as the Iraqi protectors and our obligation to our service men and women to insist on a timetable for these decisions," he said. "If the Iraqis make progress, we should continue to protect them. If they fail to reach these milestones, we should leave.

          Yeah, it's our "right" as their "protectors" (Jesus) to bugger out of Iraq when the political heat has started melting everybody's chance of reelection. We owe it to The Troops.

"We have given Iraqis the conditions under which freedom can take root. They must nurture the seed and water it with their own sweat and blood. Political freedom is not free. It cannot be given; it can only be earned."

          Bob appears to be channeling Jefferson here.
          What we've "given" Iraqis, quite uninvited, is a war ravaged, strife ridden hell on Earth. And something approaching a million corpses. That's what Jefferson would have written, only better.

"In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Jefferson wrote that when a people are subjected to despotism, ‘[I]t is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.’ I would emphasize the phrase, ‘It is their duty,’" Inglis said.

          So that previous bit actually was Jefferson inspired. And, OK, most Iraqis would interpret Bob's Jefferson quote as an endorsement to kill US soldiers. Bob has to get that on some level.

Inglis noted the significant difference between the circumstances in Iraq and the circumstances in Afghanistan. "If the Taliban thinks it can reorganize in Afghanistan, they will discover again the strength of American fire power delivered by America’s best. The Taliban and the terrorists they breed constitute a threat to the United States and to the world, and we are prepared to destroy that threat."

          In other words, we may have lost in Iraq, but we'll get 'em in Afghanistan!
          Well, no we won't. We'll eventually pull out of there too. Like everybody else has, after they've lost enough soldiers. And life will go on.

          So to summarize, and like I wrote before the war, the party line is now basically "... we just need to get the hell out of a really messy, bloody, stupid situation that we never should have gotten into in the first place, but we're certainly not getting out because we have to or because we aren't prepared to lose and take life, and lots of it, for some ill defined, abstract, or maybe even just plain stupid reason." Of course, I wrote those words four years, 3000+ dead soldiers, half a trillion dollars, two houses of Congress, and a great many dead Iraqis ago. But who's counting.

          Bob's press release illustrates a central problem of contemporary American politics- the blunt substitution of absurdity for reality, done with little if any concern for consequence. There will always be differences of opinion, but we need to draw the line at ridiculous, particularly when such disingenuous spinning for political life is done at the cost of real ones. Indeed the very format of Bob's release, a fictitious interview with a nonexistent interviewer, bespeaks its false, theatrical essence. Such open contempt for reality, counterproductive in domestic politics, has absolutely no place in war. We permit such charlatanism to our detriment, and the detriment of future generations. And it's about time we stopped.

addendum:
OK, I know Bob's a lawyer/politician, but would the truth stone cold kill him? Would the fingers fly off the ends of his hands to type it? So they screwed up massively in Iraq. There's no shame in that- they're elected government officials. They can't balance a budget with three trillion dollars. War is obviously way over their heads, we know that. If they can't come up with anything credible, why don't they just admit the truth? I'd like to take this opportunity to coin the phrase "Pinocchio paradox". Make that "Christian's Pinocchio paradox". Which I'll perhaps figure out and expound upon in a future press release.

And here's a tip, Bob- If you want to off somebody important, and you need to do it discreetly, don't hand the job to a couple of dip**its in ski masks. You think you can remember that, Mr. Third Phase of the Alleged War Plan? You got enough Blackberries to keep track of that concept? Should I put it on a spreadsheet for you? And here's another thought you could maybe share with your boss- when you're in a room full of microphones, some of them might be on. In the same vein, when you're in somebody else's country representing 300 million citizens of an industrialized nation, and you're being filmed by the world press, chew with your mouth shut. Are these things hard to figure out? I mean, you guys ban nail clippers on jets and yet you're OK with a guy like Bush having ten thousand hydrogen bombs. Do you not see a problem with that? If we're all incinerated in a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, given that Bush couldn't even pronounce it are we supposed to be surprised? Do you think about these things?