Back in September, 2006, I bemoaned the lack of a real plan by any Democratic leaders regarding Iraq. Things have not changed since September. It has not been easy to find any leader stepping up with anything other than a symbolic plan or a wish. That is the context of Feingold’s recent post at Huffpo:
For the first time in the four-plus years since Congress authorized the Iraq war, Congress is having a serious debate about how we can fix the President’s failed Iraq policy. Unfortunately, while there have been plenty of members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, voicing opposition to the President’s plans for escalation, most of the plans being pushed will do nothing to end the catastrophe in Iraq.
Fuss Feingold claims that he is about to present a real plan that will:
not cut funding for the troops. Our troops will continue to receive the salaries, equipment, training and protection they need. What I am proposing is ending funds for the continued deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after the enactment of the bill. This will require the President to safely redeploy troops from Iraq by that date.
Feingold has my attention. I’ll be watching for the details of his plan.
One reason there has never been a coherent "plan" for Iraq is because there has never been any coherent *goal*. Planning comes *only after goals are defined*; otherwise, plans are just potential solutions in search of a problem. Before two or more people can "plan" a vacation, a dinner party, a busness meeting, etc., they need to have some mutual idea in mind of what they want it to accomplish. They can't "plan" a vacation if one person thinks "vacation" means "skiing and partying" while another person thinks it means "relaxing on a beach." This is the problem with America, or Congress, the Bush Administration, or even Russ Feingold "planning" an end to American military involvement in Iraq: they don't seemt o know where they want to be at the end of the process. Or, at least, no one has said and, certainly, none has agreed. Bush has, finally (nearly four years later) begun to draw some lines on the map, but they're just wishful thinking. Little that he has said about Iraq has had any connection to reality.
Why has Bush never mentioned coherent goals or endpoints for his Iraq invasion? Here are a couple of reasons:
1) he is incapable of creating coherent goals or endpoings (e.g., he is an incompetent leader, he has incompetent advisors, he is merely a puppet of the neo-cons, etc.); or
2) his objectives are politically unpopular or untenable (e.g., helping American oil companies steal Iraq's oil, shoveling truckloads of no-bid contracts into the pockets of Halliburton and other friends (see also http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=884), believing his is on a mission from God, avenging his father's embarrassing re-election loss while Saddam remained in power, trying to prove to his parents that he's not a loser, etc.).
The danger with people like Bush is that they can suck others into their backward thinking. For years now, Members of Congress and other concerned Americans have been calling for a "plan" for Iraq. All of us have fallen into Bush's backward thinking whenever we ask, "What's the plan for Iraq?" We need to stop asking about a "plan" and start talking about the *desired endpoint*, because that's the only way we will ever get to the planning stage in the process. Successfully managing a project means doing certain things in a certain sequence: planning comes *after* goal-setting, not before. Unfortunately, Bush either doesn't understand this fact, or choses to set it aside for political reasons.
That's the reason there is no plan, and why there won't be until we have identified and agreed on an endpoint. A realistic endpoint.