The only real question about the
planned "surge" in Iraq — which is
better described as a Vietnam-style
escalation — is whether its propo-
nents are cynical or delusional.
   Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee, thinks they're cynical. He re-
cently told The Washington Post that
administration officials are simply
running out the clock, so that the next
president will be "the guy landing
helicopters inside the Green Zone,
taking people off the roof."
  Daniel Kahneman, who won the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Science for his research on irration-
ality in decision-making, thinks
they're delusional. Mr. Kahneman
and Jonathan Renshon recently ar-
gued in Foreign Policy magazine
that the administration's unwilling-
ness to face reality in Iraq reflects a
basic human aversion to cutting
one's losses — the same instinct that
makes gamblers stay at the table,
hoping to break even.
   Of course, such gambling is easier
when the lives at stake are those of
other people's children.
   Well, we don't have to settle the
question. Either way, what's clear is
the enormous price our nation is pay-
ing for President Bush's character
flaws.
   I began writing about the Bush ad-
ministration's infallibility complex,
the president's Captain Queeg-like
inability to own up to mistakes, al-
most a year before the invasion of
Iraq. When you put a man like that in
a position of power — the kind of po-
sition where he can punish people
who tell him what he doesn't want to
hear, and base policy decisions on
the advice of people who play to his
vanity — it's a recipe for disaster.
  Consider, on one side, the case of

the C.I.A's Baghdad station chief
during 2004, who provided accurate
assessments of the deteriorating sit-
uation in Iraq. "What is he, some
kind of defeatist?" asked the presi-
dent — and according to The Wash-
ington Post, at the end of his tour, the
station chief "was punished with a
poor assignment."
  On the other side, consider the men
Mr. Bush has turned to since the mid-
term election. They constitute a re-
markable coalition of the unwilling
— men who have been wrong about
Iraq every step of the way, but aren't
willing to admit it.
   The principal proponents of the
"surge" are William Kristol of The
Weekly Standard and Frederick
Kagan of the American Enterprise
Institute. Now, even if the Joint
Chiefs of Staff hadn't given the surge
a thumbs down, Mr. Kristol's track
record should have been reason
enough to ignore his advice. For ex-
ample, early in the war, Mr. Kristol
dismissed as "pop sociology" warn-
ings that there would be conflict be-
tween Sunnis and Shiites and that the
Shiites might try to create an Is-
lamic fundamentalist state. He as-
sured National Public Radio listen-
ers that "Iraq's always been very
secular."
   But Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan ap-
pealed to Mr. Bush's ego, suggesting
that he might yet be able to rescue
his signature war. And am I the only
person to notice that after all the Oe-
dipal innuendo surrounding the Iraq
Study Group — Daddy's men coming
in to fix Junior's mess, etc. — Mr.
Bush turned for advice to two other
sons of famous and more successful
fathers?
  Not that Mr. Bush rejects all ad-
vice from elder statesmen. We now
know that he has been talking to Hen-
ry Kissinger. But Mr. Kissinger is a
kindred spirit. In remarks published
after his death, Gerald Ford said of
his secretary of state, "Henry in his
mind never made a mistake, so
whatever policies there were that he
implemented, in retrospect he would
defend."
  Oh, and Senator John McCain, the
first major political figure to advo-
cate a surge, is another man Who
can't admit mistakes. Mr. McCain
now says that he always knew that
the  conflict was ``probably going to
be long and hard and tough" — but
back in 2002, before the Senate voted
on the resolution authorizing the use
of force, he declared that a war with
Iraq would be "fairly easy."
  Mr. Bush Is expected to announce
his plan for escalation in the next few
days. According to the BBC, the
theme of his speech will be "sacri-
fice." But sacrifice for what? Not for
the national interest, which would be
best served by withdrawing before
the strain of the war breaks our
ground forces. No, Iraq has become a
quagmire of the vanities — a place
where America is spending blood
and treasure to protect the egos of
men who won't admit that they were
wrong.