Apologize To Petraeus?

Captain Ed notes that the Times has a front-page acknowledgment that General Petraeus was eerily prescient when he testified that the security situation in Baghdad is improving.

The Captain links to this "Empty Calories" editorial denouncing the General's testimony:

The general claimed a significant and steady decline in killings and deaths in the past three months, but even he admitted that the number of attacks is still too high. Recent independent studies are much more skeptical about the decrease in violence. The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

That said, the Times had a still-defensible point about the lack of progress towards political reconciliation in Iraq:

The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and make decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted. But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqué in which Iraqi leaders promised to talk more.

SILLY QUESTIONS:  Any chance anyone at the Times revisits this?

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

...

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

That is an old Krugman column that we mocked at the time; the Times reported the next day that

...the trend is similar: both the American and the Iraqi reports note a roughly 50 percent drop in the number of civilians who have been killed since the end of 2006.

The good news - when Krugman discusses a lack of credibility he speaks from personal experience.

Comments

[Other Tom]

Look, there is simply no way the American Left, best exemplified by the New York Times, is going to acknowledge success in Iraq. The Left is wholly and irretrievably invested in despair and defeat, and they've gone way too far to backtrack now.

If it's true that "all politics is local," then the political reconciliation that is now evident at the grassroots will, before long, manifest itself at the national level. In the meantime, to carp about whether or not this or that congressional benchmark has been met is so picayune that they ought to be embarrassed to do it. But what else can they do?

Don't hold your breath waiting for an apology of any kind. And don't hold your breath waiting for any acknowledgment that we are very close to having won this thing.

[LK]

Reprise the disguise:

Pakistan is Afghanistan II

The 'volunteers(there is no such thing, they are paid to go where they are told)' at the State Department are now a response, not a crisis. Japan? New PM. Bullying out of control. Get out of NATO quietly and wonder why Rice wouldn't fire those 'non-volunteers.' Accept that State Department employees run US foreign policy. Get out of NATO.

Patreus Greek? Romulus, Remus and the wolf den where they grew up. Founder?

[Neo]

It's too much for Copperheads like Reid and Pelosi to apologize for their "Valladigham platform". One hundred and forty years ago, they would have been just as happy to leave the Negroes in slavery in exchange for "peace" as they are today to leave anyone not as white or privileged as themselves in tyranny.

[JohnnyT]

Let's face it, the Dems WANT us to lose. It makes Bush and the GOP look bad, and they can always armchair-quarterback that this would NEVER have happened on THEIR watch, so vote for them early and often.

Even today, as we are winning militarily, John Murtha says we are not. Can Harry Reid be far behind with another 'War Is Lost' declaration?

What would they have called Republicans if
they had tried these political stunts on Roosevelt or Truman during World War II, another desperate battle against an intractable foe bent on world conquest?

HINT: the word begins with a T.

[grumpy realist]

Anyone who wants to call anyone a "traitor", please re-read the definition in the Constitution.

There's a reason why it's defined there and not left up to silly political commentators to say what they think a "traitor" is.

[bgates]

Actually, the Constitution has been amended to reflect that we may indeed say what we think. Even Republicans.

Perhaps that's what's making you grumpy.

[MarkJ]

LK,

I didn't quite grasp your stream-of-consciousness post, but, for your information "Petraeus" is actually a Dutch, not Greek, family name despite its appearance. The first name of General Petraeus's father was--are you ready?--"Sixtus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus

Last words of a Democratic lemming:

"Don't listen to those wingnut liars, we're definitely going in the right direction!"

[Soylent Red]

The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

Bottom line up front: After six years, the Leftmedia don't have enough knowledge about the forces at work in Iraq or the fundamentals of what an "insurgency" really is, to fill a thimble. Much less comment on strategy.

Used to be that before you wrote something that went out before the eyes and intellects of thousands of people you did the research and knew what you were talking about. Guess that's not the way the Times works.

Takfeereen terrorists and insurgents may look similar, and carry guns and look scary to journos lounging by the pool, but analyzing the driving forces behind each group (and by extension, how best to impose our National will on them) require a bit more critical thinking skill.

In Iraq there are at least three competing factions, each contributing a little piece to the overall problem.

One is a non-indigenous international terror organization bent on building a pan-Middle East religious caliphate, and killing Israelis and Americans.

Another is a group of Sunni sheiks and local burgermeisters interested in reinstalling a neo-tribal dictatorship that kept them farting in silk for almost 40 years.

Finally, there's a group of easily wound up Shi'ites who throw their support behind the Al Gore of Iraqi politics, Mookie al-Sadr, because he's the one who is currently the best a winding them up with semi-mystic populist crappola. And because his daddy was an influential cultural hero.

Three separate groups, each with their own political aims, and only two that could legitimately be called "insurgents". The other group are "terrorists".

So while the events in al-Anbar (turning the local Sunni leadership on A-Q) are not directly related to the surge (counterterrorism rather than counterinsurgency), they serve to reduce the overall instability and increase the strength and legitimacy of the Iraqi government and Iraqi army and police. Which at the end of the day is what counterinsurgency is really all about.

Thus, while strictly true, the writers at the NYT once again prove themselves to be cheerleaders for defeat, willfully ignorant, or just plain mouthbreathing retards.

Other:

Don't hold your breath waiting for an apology of any kind. And don't hold your breath waiting for any acknowledgment that we are very close to having won this thing.

As I write this I am sitting less than two feet from FM 3-24/MCWP 3-35.5 "The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual". Written and forewarded by General David Petraeus.

General Petraeus, quite literally, wrote the book on counterinsurgency.

And yet we are to put our faith in the military wisdom of a bunch of people who became journalists because their SATs weren't high enough to be philosophy majors.

Make no mistake: we'll be in Iraq for a while making sure everything progresses smoothly. But the Fat Lady is clearing her throat.

On to Tehran!

[hit and run]

IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT:

Got this from the Tank on NRO:

Thanking The Troops [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]

The Defense Department today has kicked off a "Giving Thanks" initiative wherein Americans can text message U.S. troops between now and midnight (PST), Nov. 22, and thank them for their service.

Simply send a brief text-message to 89279, and you will receive a response from an active-duty servicemember.

Details here. Tell others.

Be fruitful and multiply.

[Rick Ballard]

Today is really your last chance to Vote Jmax. She has a decent lead - help make it a landslide.

[kim]

Nobody is giving enough credit to Canon Andrew White, and the Iraqi clerics who promulgated a fatwah against violence in late August. This marginalized Sadr, and now may be having the effect of diminishing Iranian involvement.
========================

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

...when Krugman discusses a lack of credibility he speaks from personal experience.

Ruth Marcus being the latest to enjoy piling on:

One prominent practitioner of this misguided approach is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security -- declaring that the program as we know it can't survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers -- is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are," Krugman wrote last week. "In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided."

Somebody should introduce Paul Krugman to . . . Paul Krugman.

"[A] decade from now the population served by those programs [Social Security and Medicare] will explode. . . . Because of those facts, merely balancing the federal budget would be a deeply irresponsible policy -- because that would leave us unprepared for the demographic deluge, with no alternative once it arrives except to raise taxes and slash benefits." (July 11, 2001)

"Broadly speaking, the next administration . . . will face two big economic tests. One . . . is whether it can stick to a fiscal policy, including a policy toward Social Security, that prepares this country for the demographic deluge." (Nov. 12, 2000)

"The reason Social Security is in trouble is that the system has a large 'hole' -- basically a hidden debt -- because previous generations of retirees were paid benefits out of the contributions of younger workers . . . a multitrillion-dollar debt that somebody has to pay." (Oct. 1, 2000)

"[B]ecause the baby boomers' contributions were used to provide generous benefits to earlier generations, there isn't enough money in the system to pay the benefits promised to the boomers themselves." (June 21, 2000)

[SDN]

I've read that definition; Copperheads like you and Pelosi fit it to a "T". But one never expects realism from someone who has to call themselves a realist because it certainly isn't intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

[sophy]

Welcome to our game world, my friend asks me to buy some knight noah .