Georgie plays with his Christmas toys

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. Dick Cheney George W. Bush is asserting himself as Commander in Chief:

When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline his new strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take action they initially resisted and advised against.

Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and for second-guessing his commanders. "It's important to trust the judgment of the military when they're making military plans," he told The Washington Post in an interview last month. "I'm a strict adherer to the command structure."

I'm fairly certain none of us are surprised that Bush's vaunted "commanders-on-the-ground" schtick was anything but bullshit, given the disdain he'd shown for the professionals within the intelligence bureaucracies during the run-up to the war. But the picture of the petulant dauphin lashing out after being told, in no uncertain terms, that his behavior was unacceptable and must be changed is disturbing:

But over the past two months, as the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated and U.S. public support for the war has dropped, Bush has pushed back against his top military advisers and the commanders in Iraq: He has fashioned a plan to add up to 20,000 troops to the 132,000 U.S. service members already on the ground. As Bush plans it, the military will soon be "surging" in Iraq two months after an election that many Democrats interpreted as a mandate to begin withdrawing troops.

In this context, in what other way are we to interpret Bush's plans for escalating the war than as a giant "Fuck you!" to the American people? And additionally, shouldn't we be more than a little worried about the article's assertion that Bush himself "fashioned a plan?"

Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq.

Why do I get the bad, bad feeling that we're picking sides in Baghdad's civil war?