Shorter U.S. Strategy in Iraq (pdf): “Kill all of the terrorists and other bad people.”
I wasn’t going to read it. I really, really wasn’t. I didn’t want to slog through the bureaucratese and to learn what I could just as easily find summarised on any number of news sites. But I read it anyway.
What I found was surprising, actually. The conventional wisdom yesterday, at least what I saw of it, was that the White House was going to announce a timetable this morning. Instead, we get: “VICTORY WILL TAKE TIME – Our strategy is working. Much has been accomplised in Iraq, including the removal of Saddam’s tyranny, negotiation of an interim constitution, blah de blah blah blaarrrrr.”
And on and on et cetera. I can’t get too worked up over the actual content of the piece – it’s the same Pollyanna-tinted lies we’ve been hearing about Iraq for three years. Democracy will flourish, they will love us, stay the course, bad apples, terrorists hate freedom and kittens, and hey, how ’bout those elections, huh? Nothing new. Sadly.
What I can’t get over is the layout of the thing. It’s like the Power Point slideshow that neurotic grad students write for their first-ever lecture. You can’t go three sentences without hitting a bullet point, there are subheadings nested in headings inside main topics, and their names! Good God! “Our Enemies and Their Goals,” “Strategic Logic for the Economic Track,” “Why Our Strategy Is (and Must Be) Conditions-Based.” Pages and pages of that dry-ass junior executive shtick.
After the downhome appeals to sentiment stop working, dressing the same shit up in a business suits doesn’t make it stink any less, Mr. President.