January 11, 2007 - “Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve”, was the President’s somber assessment of the prospect for the future of the American military occupation in Iraq.  His not quite Churchillian rhetoric was the theme of the peroration to his speech billed as the new way forward in Iraq.  There was precious little new in this “new way forward” other than the 20,000 additional troops deployed in the midst of an Iraqi civil war.

“Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.”  That sound suspiciously like the mission that the American forces were given in September 2006; clear, hold, and rebuild.  The President admitted that the September initiative failed.  It failed, he said, because “there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents and there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have”

What is the difference between the old way and the new way forward? “This time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods, and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.”  It is not a new strategy.  It’s an old one.  The difference is that twenty thousand more will be committed to the task.  It sounds all too familiar to those who were around 35 years ago.  Iraqnification today is the same strategy as was Vietnamization then. There is nothing new under the desert sun.