The Horror, The Horror

Everyone is following Atrios' lead and getting all outraged that the president thinks our troops are campaign workers and that military strategy should be a sub-set of the Bush-Cheney re-election strategy. And, well, it's outrageous, so by all means get outraged. But I'm a self-promoter, so let's note that this was the subject of my column several weeks ago:

Bush has adopted policies designed to keep the death count low, primarily by avoiding ground combat in the Sunni triangle. Good campaign tactics, needless to say, but, as ever, the Bush team seems better at winning elections than winning wars. . . .An important point comes next, so it gets a paragraph of its own: This plan will get people killed. If an assault is to be mounted, it should be done as soon as possible, before the adversary has been given months to prepare for it. The Marines and soldiers serving in Iraq volunteered for the military, but they've been conscripted into the Bush campaign. Decisions, as Lieutenant General James Conway recently stated, are being made on the basis of narrow political considerations rather than military ones. It's appropriate for generals to be subordinate to civilian politicians, but not to civilian campaign strategists. We're waging war as an extension of an electoral campaign, exposing our soldiers to harassing attacks right now and to a more difficult fight later on in order to help secure the president's re-election.

It was a bit shrill and, I'm sad to say, entirely accurate. In the column, though, I portray this as of a piece with Bush's lack of principle and general mendacity. Having gotten a better glimpse at his persona through the debates, however, it seems more likely to me that these despicable actions are undertaken in perfectly good faith. The president genuinely believes that his own re-election is a vital, strategic military goal that should take precedence over narrower tactical considerations. He is, in other words, in the grips of a fairly demented world view, one that will take on a different form if he's granted another four years in office, but not one that will abate. It's an extraordinarily dangerous situation.