We can't have a bunch of dead Marines on T.V. just before a presidential election, can we?
The Battle of Fallujah, in which hundreds of Marines and soldiers died and was the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history since Khe Sanh, was deliberately held off and timed to be launched just AFTER the presidential elections of 2004. In fact, the invasion of the city took place just a few days after the election.
Marines, soldiers, and support troops had been massed for weeks just outside the city, while civilians had been warned to leave and air strikes "softened" the target. But the battle did not begin until a couple days after George W. Bush pronounced that 50-plus-one percent equalled a mandate.
Deliberately timing a bloody battle to wait until you get yourself re-elected is good old-fashioned Republican politics, and they are doing it again.
Here's how you "win" a war in time for a presidential election.
Just when the country is imploding and falling completely to pieces in vicious tribal and sectarian warfare--which makes for very poor B-roll on the evening news and leads to a Democratic takeover in Congress--here is what you do. When the entire nation is BEGGING you to pull out the troops and leave that miserable country to its own devices, you instead ESCALATE the troops, putting an intense, almost unbearable strain on the U.S. military.
You do this by forcing soldiers to return for fourth and fifth deployments, forcing them to remain in the army when they want to leave, forcing reserve troops and national guard troops who were not scheduled for war to mobilize with insufficient equipment and protection, and holding over deployed troops, forcing them to remain in-country long past their return-home dates.
You flood the country with exhausted, burnt-out combat troops, and then you build big concrete walls around neighborhoods that have already been ethnically cleansed by the tribal wars, forcing sects to remain in their own neighborhoods.
You fill the streets with armed Americans, even as the army is groaning under the strain.
The violence abates.
The army begs you to let their troops pull out in a couple months in order to recuperate and repair equipment, but you ignore this because you need to leave those troops there in force THROUGH THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS OF SUMMER OF '08.
Even though American troop deaths soar to the highest rates since the Battle of Fallujah, you send out your demonic minions to soak the airwaves and op-ed pages and say, "SEE? IT WORKED! WE'RE WINNING! VICTORY IS AT HAND! YOU LOUSY DEMOCRATS ARE DEFEATEST QUITTERS! YOU WANTED TO QUIT BUT WE HAD THE GUTS TO FIGHT IT OUT YOU LOSERS!"
And you cram the stage with more flags than can be sewn in a year and you rave and cheer the brave and heroic troops who have won this war for democracy and freedom and God and mom and apple pie!
You pick only those neighborhoods that are already ethnically cleansed and so less likely to be violent, and bring home just enough troops to be able to say, "SEE? WE ARE BRINGING HOME THE TROOPS! YAY! VOTE REPUBLICAN!"
This message gets repeated like a hynotic mantra over and over and over again and the media dutifully reports it because you are the White House, you have the bully pulpit, and it is your war.
Democrats start to waffle. Violence IS down; things DO look better...they start backtracking and looking duplicitous.
In the meantime, we have nominated a polarizing candidate who is vehemently hated by the Republican base, who pour out in re-energized numbers to fight AGAINST her, even though they hate their own candidate. They just hate him less.
People get confused. They see on the news that things are going so very well in Iraq...maybe the Republicans WERE right...
The voting is sharply divided, viciously fought, and the Republicans pull their usual dirty tricks to steal votes in key states they can't win on their own, like California and Florida.
They win by 50-plus-one percent.
The American military, strained to the absolute breaking point, has no choice but to come home in large numbers. There are parades and much basking in the glow of victory and of being winners and kicking Saddam's butt and putting a democracy in place and all the people are happy.
But of course, the dark and demonic elements of the Iraqi culture, who knew that we would be pulling out anyway and have waited for their blood-revenge against each other FOR CENTURIES, come out then, in full mass.
Without Americans on every single street corner, the Mahdi Army comes out in full force, fighting viciously against the Badr Brigade, al Qaeda comes creeping back from its hiding place in the desert, rival Sunni warlords fight one another and the Shi'ites, and Iraq turns into a holocaust.
It's okay though.
The election's over.
That's all this war has ever been, anyway, a photo-op backdrop for Republican elections.
Put your flag away. The party's over.
