The Matrix (1999):

Neo looks at a cat as it walks past the doorway. He turns around again, and an identical looking cat.

Neo: Woah, deja vu.

Trinity: What did you just say?

Neo: Nothing, uh, just had a little..deja vu.

Trinity: What did you see?

Cypher: What happened?

Neo: A black cat went past us…and then another that looked just like it.

Trinity: How much like it, was it the same cat?

Neo: Might have been, I’m not sure.

Morpheus: Switch, Apoc!

Neo: What is it?

Trinity: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix…it happens when they change something.

Deja vu happens outside the Matrix as well, and recently it’s been manifesting as renewed attacks from the right on Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for saying the same things he’s been saying for months. Apropos of nothing current, Ann Coulter got the glitch rolling by writing “I dedicate this column to John Murtha, the reason soldiers invented fragging,” quickly followed up by a meta-deja vu of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth trying to swiftboat Murtha. Then the glitch permeated even this formerly-resistant corner of the internet when Murtha did say something new that resulted in this comment on a post from November 2005 by you-know-who. Glitches, apparently, take a few days to filter from the mainframe to the broken down transistor radios at the bottom of the Matrix.

But for life to truly imitate the Wachowskis, the glitches had to foreshadow a change in the Matrix, and as if on cue, change is upon us. Murtha’s original call to redeploy U.S. forces was met with full-throated howling from Murtha’s Congressional colleagues, the Bush administration, and the pundit class. “Cut and Run” became the new “Up or Down Vote,” applied to anyone not fully in line with whatever the President’s plan was.

“Congresswoman” Jean Schmidt (R-OH): “Please tell Murtha, cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”
Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX) “They need to have full faith that a few naysayers in Washington won’t cut and run and leave them high and dry.”

And so on. Until:

The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007.

Cut and Run is applicable only to Democrats apparently, when Republicans do it, it’s called…who knows, the Democrats haven’t figured out a banal catch phrase for it yet. But it is worth noting what has changed in Iraq in the last six months: not a whole lot from a stability perspective. But to an administration only concerned with politics, Presidential approval ratings pegged in the 30s for months and double digit Congressional generic ballot deficits, going all-in against the medium-term memory of the American public and the job performance of the media probably doesn’t seem like a bad bet.

Is any of this surprising? Not if you’ve been reading 1115. Here’s what I said about it in September 2005:

I’m convinced that the Bush administration is looking to use a draw-down of forces in Iraq to influence next year’s election. How will any Democratic national security strategy play in the face of yellow-ribbon parades in every red district across the country?

Well, Casey’s plan, surely not written on the basis of a long line of military successes, would certainly produce that result. But hey, this is just a blog, what are Republican politicians saying?

The withdrawal of 20,000-40,000 U.S. troops from Iraq this fall would greatly help Republican chances in the November election, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) said at a fundraiser Thursday at the National Rifle Association.

Souder acknowledged in his remarks that the war in Iraq has dampened support for Republican candidates but added that withdrawing 30,000 troops could have a big impact, said Martin Green, Souder’s spokesman.

The congressman said it would amount to an “‘October Surprise’ in its effect, although he dismissed the idea that a U.S. troop withdrawal would begin for domestic political reasons.

Of course not, the Iraq war has never been about domestic politics, why on earth would that change now. Well, the Matrix didn’t get to be the Matrix by giving up power to any ole hacker, and with the deja vu glitch smearing Murtha once again, get ready for a new program, the old one is destroying itself.

Of course only time will tell if there will be a troop drawdown, but in the interim, there are plenty of administration officials going to Orwellian lengths to explain why a rose named Casey smells less like bullshit than the same one named Murtha. In his press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow turned the whole thing into a cocked hat:

Question: Tony, you had Democrats over the weekend — Sen. Kerry, Sen. Boxer — saying that even the framework of a plan would kind of fly in the face of Republican [claims that] the Democrats want to cut and run. Do you have any response to that? I mean, the president, himself, has implied it, Rove has said it outright.

Snow: There’s still a pretty significant difference between what Sen. Kerry or even Sen. Levin had proposed and what Gen. Casey is talking about, simply because one is driven by a calendar and the other is driven by events on the ground. So there is a significant difference.

Snow must have missed the part about troop withdrawals starting in September and finishing at the end of 2007. Otherwise, he would have been able to recognize how Casey’s plan corresponds even to the particular brand of calendars used at the White House. But for now, the race is on to see which will come first: troop withdrawals or the Matrix’s new program to fully propagate. I’m not sure of the answer, but thinking about November’s election gives me some pretty serious deja vu. Rather than black cats or Murtha smears, the glitch I see looks just like the elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004.