I support structured troop redeployment in Iraq.  But I take the 'sign of weakness' problem seriously.  Withdrawal of our troops is necessary, but the President's extreme incompetence has provided a propaganda windfall to al Queada.  When we inevitably withdraw, they will claim that they drove the 'Great Satan' out of Iraq.  That is a fait accompli:  we have to redeploy, and we can't stop them from claiming victory.  But we can mitigate that windfall if we impeach President Bush first, and then begin troop withdrawal.  If the Iraq War carries over into a new presidency, withdrawal will be seen throughout the world as a defeat for America.  But if we withdraw pursuant to impeachment, then the defeat belongs to Bush alone.  It is vital to the national security that the President be removed from office and that redeployment begin before the end of his term.

Of all the disastrous consequences of the President's failure in Iraq, outlined by Bush himself in his escalation speech--chaos, civil war, regional war--the bonanza of propaganda for al Queada is the most disastrous.  Even the availability of a failed state as a new logistical safe harbor for terrorism pales in its deadliness to the global false perception that al Queada has defeated America in head-to-head combat (they have not).  The political gains reaped by the Hizbal after the Lebanon invasion is just a tidbit by comparison.  From what I can tell, Jihadism is an altered mental state, a malevolent rapture; by subjecting this nation to strategic defeat (not military defeat!), the President will fuel that killing rapture with glory and exhilaration beyond bin Laden's most perverted dreams.  That is the Bush legacy of failure.

But the dynamics of withdrawal change if done in tandem with impeachment--don't they?  Withdrawal after impeachment doesn't feel like defeat to me.  It feels like a cleansing.  It feels like a cure, a purging, a renewal.  It feels truly like a 'New Way Forward'.  And our enemies will be warned:  America is no longer crippled by a tactically incompetent President.   This is Bush's strategic failure, not ours, and for national security reasons, we must make that official.  al Queada has to get the message in high profile fashion:  Beating Bush is not the same as beating America.

For opponents of escalation in Congress, the opportunity is right now.  Immediately, they should seize on Bush's 'Caligula Moment'--his delusional escalation plan, the very plan for freestyle urban warfare rejected by his superior father, rooted in his deeply neurotic 'daddy conflict'.  Words like 'insane' and 'detached from reality' are swirling about the Capital.  Unflattering observations on the President's mental state are common.

Nixon's Callgula Moment

Looking back at Watergate, it was Nixon's 'Caligula Moment' that brought down his otherwise brilliant Presidency.  Nixon wanted to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor.  But the SP was technically employed by the Attorney General; only the AG could fire him.  Nixon ordered his AG to fire the SP.  The AG refused, so Nixon fired the AG.  The Deputy AG then became acting AG; Nixon ordered the acting AG to fire the SP.  The acting AG refused, so Nixon fired him.  Finally, the Solicitor General (Robert Bork) became acting AG and fired the Special Prosecutor.  All this happened in one evening, the 'Saturday Night Massacre.'  From that night on, the nation believed that President Nixon had lost his mind.  Nothing the Special Prosecutor found would have brought down Nixon by itself.  All the lying, dirty tricks and rat-f**king, so what?   The nation knew who 'Tricky Dick' was when they elected him.  It was the 'Caligula Moment'.

Senator Joe Lieberman fearmongers in Bush's defense: "We undermine the credibility of a Commander-in-Chief during wartime at our peril."  But we removed Nixon at the height of the Cold War, when the Soviets posed a greater threat than radical Islam does today.  Unlike Bush, Nixon was up to the job of C-in-C in dealing with our deadliest enemies.  For all his mistakes in Watergate, 'Tricky Dick' was uniquely gifted at negotiating on the brink of war 'from a position of strength'.  Like his successor Gerald Ford, he was the right President at a dangerous time.  I credit him with averting war with the Soviets during the years when that war was most likely.  Taking down the highly competent Nixon was far more problematic, in national security terms, than impeaching the dangerously incompetent Bush.  Yet we did it, and we survived.  We lost FDR during wartime, we lost Kennedy and savaged LBJ during the Cold War.  We're a democracy.  Our government is designed to tolerate succession.

Lieberman is playing the bogus 'Churchill' card, the 'resolute leader in wartime' spin.  This isn't WWII.  It's a 'new kind of war'.  We don't need some fake Messianic Churchill wannabe.  We are at war with diabolical masterminds, and we need a mastermind of our own as President, someone who won't get suckered again and again by Ahmanidejad, Chalabi, Zarqawi, Maliki.  If there was ever a president we could afford to get rid of in wartime, it's George Bush.

The nation can't afford to let the opportunity pass.  We have to take this one chance to mitigate the Jihadist wet dream and self-define our troop redeployment.  Bush has never played the odds in his Iraq policy, but we have to play the odds now.  Long odds say his 'Hail Mary' escalation strategy will fail.  (It's more like entering a lottery to win a raffle ticket where first price is a chance to throw up a Hail Mary Pass.)  The most likely future outcome is American withdrawal.  That withdrawal can either represent national defeat after 2008, or, before 2008, a dramatic disavowal of the Bush Presidency.