Seymour Hersh Lays Out The Alternate Scenario

by Steve

Of course, there is an alternate hypothesis out there, far apart from the "political necessity" scenario I laid out in previous posts. In my post below, and in several posts I have written over the last week or so, I speculate that Bush will in fact declare victory in Iraq close to the midterm elections next year, and withdraw troops in time to save his party from losing one if not both houses of Congress so that they don't have the albatross of the war hanging around the necks of GOP incumbents.

Yet there is an alternate scenario put forward by people far smarter than me, that is based on the notion that Bush won't care about what happens to his own party next year, because he is ultimately convinced of his own righteousness. This scenario, encapsulated by the venerable Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker and summarized in a Wolf Blitzer interview over the weekend on CNN, pulls together several threads we are all too familiar with regarding Bush and his behavior. In short, Bush will withdraw some troops next year, but will substitute an increased Vietnam-type Air Force commitment in support of the failing Iraqi troops, a policy with huge risks that the military itself is against. Bush will refuse to disengage totally from Iraq because he is convinced of the wisdom of his war and only really cares about how he is judged decades from now. Hersh paints a portrait of a Bush who is almost totally detached from the real world, detached from alternate viewpoints, and only caring about messages and advice that comports to his own view of the world. You can read about the Hersh interview from this Daily Kos diary.

The alternate hypothesis tracks with what we already know about Bush, but in order to believe it, you would also have to believe that Bush would continue to portray this detachment and in-your-face arrogance all the way to the 2006 midterms, thereby forcing vulnerable GOP incumbents to stick with him and willingly walking over the cliff with him next year.

Yes, it is fun to think the worst of Bush, but I think of him as being politically smarter than many of us give him credit for. And as I have said in previous posts, above all else Bush will want to maintain some legacy, and losing one or both houses of Congress will squash any such legacy, especially if his war of choice and his arrogance about that war costs his party the alignment that he and his corporate checkwriters are banking on.

So the questions are these: which hypothesis do you believe? And if you believe the scenario laid out by Hersh, rather than the "head for the door" scenario, then at what point do you think the GOP incumbents throw Bush overboard?