Clearly, Politicians Are Making Military Decisions in Iraq

The situation in Iraq is going from bad to worse. Commanders on the ground are constrained by politicians in the Bush Administration and Iraqi government officials who have been clear their agenda is not the same as Bush's.
Bush says:

"I began to think, well, if failure is not an option and we've got to succeed, how best to do so? And that's how I came up with the plan I did," Bush said.

Failure is not an option he says. If that's the case, why are we not sending 100,000 troops? There are so many conflicting political considerations in US deployment and Iraqi cooperation there is no opportunity to succeed.
New York Times

First among the American concerns is a Shiite-led government that has been so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan. “We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem,” said an American military official in Baghdad involved in talks over the plan. “We are being played like a pawn.”


[...]In face of strong American skepticism, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has selected an officer from the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq who was virtually unknown to the Americans, and whose hard-edged demands for Iraqi primacy in the effort has deepened American anxieties.


The Iraqi commander, Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, will be part of what the Americans have described as a partnership between the two armies, with an American general, Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of the First Cavalry Division, working with General Aboud, and American and Iraqi officers twinned down the operational chain.


For the Americans, accustomed to clear operational control, the partnership concept is troublesome — full of potential, some officers fear, for dispute with the Iraqis over tough issues like applying an equal hand against Shiite and Sunni gunmen.


[...]Still, the new command structure seemed rife with potential for conflict. An American military official said that the arrangements appeared unwieldy, and at odds with military doctrine calling for a clear chain of command. “There’s no military definition for ‘partnered,’ ” he said.


[...]The plan gives a central role to the National Police, viewed as widely infiltrated by Shiite militias and, despite an intensive American retraining program, still suspected of a strongly Shiite sectarian bias. One American officer said that the National Police commanders have been “dragging their feet” over their role in the new plan and that they could seriously compromise the operation.


[...]American officials in Baghdad and Washington have said that they have limited time — perhaps no more than six to nine months — to show gains from the new American push before popular support erodes still further and the onset of the 2008 presidential campaign leads American politicians to push harder for a troop withdrawal. There are also questions of how long the overstretched American military can sustain the stepped-up presence here.


Together, those factors have thrust American military planners into the equivalent of a two-minute drill, trying to develop a plan that will yield rapid gains in regaining control of Baghdad neighborhoods that have slipped into near-anarchy as Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads have run rampant. While American officers are confident the additional troops will make a major impact, they worry about what will happen when the American troop commitment is scaled down again, and Iraqi troops are left facing the main burden of patrolling the city.


That prospect raises the specter of repeating what has happened on several other occasions in Baghdad: Americans clearing neighborhoods house-by-house, only for insurgents and militiamen to reappear when Iraqi security forces take over from the Americans and prove incapable of holding the ground, or compliant with the marauding gunmen. That was the pattern with Operation Together Forward, the last effort to secure Baghdad, which began with an additional 7,000 American troops over the summer, and effectively abandoned within two months when Iraqi troops failed to hold areas the Americans handed over to them.


Another concern is that the target of the new Baghdad plan — Sunni and Shiite extremists — may replicate the pattern American troops have seen before when they have embarked on major offensives — of “melting away” only to return later. Some officers report scattered indications that some Shiite militiamen may already be heading for safer havens in southern Iraq, calculating that they can wait the new offensive out before returning to the capital.

This article will prove prophetic. The believable outcomes from this deployment of our sons and daughters will lead to nothing more than more of the same. Too little, too late, more body bags.