by Richard Stern

Last night, standing in front of bookcases (History), wearing a dark blue suit (Seriousness) and a light blue tie (Hope), a handkerchief barely visible in a breast pocket (Limited Hope), President Bush spoke soberly, without a single one of his tragic, self-betraying smirks, for twenty minutes about his "new" strategy for "winning" the war in Iraq. The central proposal was to bring in five brigades (16,000) American soldiers to join 18 brigades (74,000) Iraqi soldiers plus an unspecified number of Iraqi police to bring order and security to the nine districts of Baghdad, the center of the 30 mile zone in which 90 percent of the country's violence erupts. U.S. soldiers will be "embedded" with Iraqi units and one Coalition Brigade will be affixed to every Iraqi Division. Soldiers will remain in the areas they've tranquillized, murderering insurgents will be hunted down, the Iraqi government will use the ten billion dollars it has pledged to reconstruction projects to employ its idled citizens and increase the security and confidence indispensable to the burgeoning, if imperfect, democracy whose birth was perhaps over-optimistically celebrated a year ago. The Iraqi government will work out such difficulties as the equitable sharing of oil revenues and the reintegration of those Sunnis deprived of civic roles in the de-Baathification program. Americans must steel themselves to the bloody slaughter with which the enemies of peace and democracy will counter these efforts in this coming year. The Iraqi government must know that if it does not fulfill its responsibilities during this same year, the American people will lose confidence in and withdraw support from it. Iran and Syria are put on notice that their efforts to reinforce the insurgents and terrorists will be interdicted. (A naval strike force has been assigned to the region.) Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States will be reminded what dangers a defeated Iraq will bring to them. Secretary Rice, the reminder, leaves for the region Friday. She will appoint a reconstruction chief to work alongside a new Iraqi reconstruction chief and two deputies. May the Author of Liberty bless us all. Speaking for the new Democratic majority, Senator Durbin of Illinois said that the Iraqi horse had already left the barn, and the new lock-up system was expensive and deadly. Republican senators (Smith, Hagel, Collins), editorial writers and other commentators described the inadequacies of the presidential plan, complained of presidential "fog" (the NY Times), and said that it was time for the U.S. to begin withdrawing its troops. Implied was denial of the presidential depiction of the "unimaginable" horrors which would follow such withdrawal: the exposure of a wimpish America betraying its allies; the galvanized recruitment of more murderers; the creation of a taliban-like, oil-rich haven-state from which attacks on the U.S. and other lovers of liberty could be planned in security and leisure. Shaken and uncertain, although enduring no personal sacrifice, physically secure, indeed comfortable, I reached for my copy of Yeats' poems and read

Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream... Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart...