Score One For David Brooks

In the course of finding something good to say about George Bush, David Brooks said this about opponents of the surge in Iraq:

And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

Well, intellectual denial includes denial;as if on cue, here is Ezra Klein:

"the argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence."

John McCormack of the Weekly Standard finds Barack Obama making exactly this argument.  Ooops.

How does that go?  Those who control the past control the present, and the future is now!  Or some such.  But with Web 2.0 control of the past ain't what it used to be.

POKING AROUND:  Barack Obama was speaking with Olbermann and Matthews (transcript).  Here is Dick Durbin:

Twenty thousand American soldiers are too few to end this civil war in Iraq and too many American lives to risk on top of those we‘ve already lost.

From which a casual listener might infer that Durbin thinks that 20,000 additional troops won't reduce the violence.  Here is Obama, from the top:

OLBERMANN:  Were you convinced at all by that speech?  And if not, what are you going to do about it? 

OBAMA: Well, the one thing I share with the president‘s assessment is the belief that the American people and American troops have done everything imaginable that has been asked of them.  And they‘ve done a great job in difficult circumstances. 

I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there.  In fact, I think it will do the reverse:  I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. 

So I am going to actively oppose the president‘s proposal.  I don‘t doubt his sincerity when he says that he thinks this is the best approach, but I think he is wrong.  And I think the American people believe he‘s wrong.

And we are looking at a variety of options here in Congress to place some sort of conditions, some sort of meaningful consequences to the failure of the Iraqi government to meet the benchmarks that the president mentioned in his own speech.

Well, that analysis did not work out.  Just for starters, some Sunnis were already unhappy with Al Qaeda in Iraq and were happy to work with the US to subdue them.  It's harder to imagine that turnaround gaining momentum if US troops had been headed towards the exits.

The RNC provided a second example of Obama's prescience on the surge from Jan 23, 2007:

Obama Said “I Don’t Think The President’s Strategy Is Going To Work.”

Obama: “But right now what we have is, I think by all accounts, a disaster unfolding in Iraq. We all have a responsibility, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the White House, to make sure that we can come up with the  best strategy. I don’t think the president’s strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum -- military and civilian, conservative and liberal -- expressed great skepticism about it.” (MSNBC’s “Reaction To The State Of The Union Address,” 1/23/07)

That is not a specific comment about US troops reducing violence, so today, Obama's apologists will want to claim that he was focusing on political reconciliation, which has occurred slowly but not up to Bush's benchmarks.

Comments

[Martin]

"Web 2.0 control of the past ain't what it used to be."

So use the web 2.0, asshat. Are you denying Howard Dean called for more troops in Iraq in 2003 and Rumsfeld and all his fellow Bushbuttlickers ridiculed him?

Let's go. I got links waiting for you, candyass.

[Thomas Collins]

Unfortunately, MSM is going to continue to play down our Iraq successes. Thus, the benefit for McCain of success in Iraq will be limited. What is happening with MSM's coverage of Iraq is a perfect example of how MSM won't need phony documents (a la Rathergate) to help B57O. Playing down Iraq success could make the difference in battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

[Martin]

Never mind. I just read the Ezra Klein piece you linked. Wow. That's a nice thoughtful post that would make any of your babbling superfluous.

I'll leave now and let your comment section get back to the regularly scheduled repetitive dolts and grandmas kvetching.

[Wilson'a a Liar]

And which Republican was most vocal about the need for more troops from the beginning of the war, and most critical of Rumsfeld?

John McCain. And he's the one on the ballot this year, not Bush or Rumsfeld.

[Rick Ballard]

On the June 22, 2003, edition of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked Dean: "[H]ow many men and women do we now have on active duty?" After Dean responded, "I can't tell you the answer to that," Russert said, "But as commander-in-chief, you should know that." Dean responded: "As someone who's running in the Democratic Party primary, I know that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million people, but I don't know the exact number, and I don't think I need to know that to run in the Democratic Party primary."

I think Howard Dean has a lot more military experience and a deep and substantive understanding of the troop levels necessary for any task at any given time. In comparison to Obama, of course. Or to a doorstop.

[steve sturm]

SOME of those opposed to the surge weren't arguing that American troops wouldn't reduce the level of violence but rather that (1) the Iraqis wouldn't get their political and military act together and (2) the reduction in violence would only last as long as American troops stayed engaged (American troops were the finger in a leaking dike, with no hope of ever extracting said finger).

While the final pages haven't yet been written, the Iraqis have done precious little with the opportunity they've been given over the past number of months, with no reasonable expectation that they're ever going to step up to the extent needed, and even surge supporters concede the Iraqis can't handle much of anything without American troops.

But go ahead and call the surge a great success.

[ganjala]

How many times are you tools gonna declare victory in this war before we can leave?

[Cecil Turner]

Ahh, the "surge" is nothing more than the old "more troops" argument. Klein makes it:

Pretending that Iraqi violence and instability is an output with one input -- in this case, the number of American troops -- is foolish.

What's foolish is thinking the counterinsurgency plan constructed by Petraeus is nothing more than adding a few troops . . . or that Moqtada al Sadr decided to declare a cease fire entirely out of the goodness of his heart (as opposed to losing a critical percentage of his fighters). If this represents the sum total of strategy expertise on the left (and sadly, it apparently does) then they are still unserious on national defense.

While the final pages haven't yet been written, the Iraqis have done precious little with the opportunity . . .

Right. Maybe you haven't been keeping up with current events, but the latest efforts (particularly ops in Basrah, Sadr City, and Mosul) have all been Iraqi-led affairs. Tom Friedman said it well:

What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.

That looks like a bit more than "precious little" to me. And this cheerleading for defeat thing is getting more than a little old.

[PWT]

All this is nonsense. All doubts about Obama will be washed away when he travels to Davos in order to mount his filibuster against the evil FISA legislation. Obama's sense of entitlement makes Kerry look bush league.

[Soylent Red]

the Iraqis have done precious little with the opportunity

My guess is that this informed citizen, in between bong hits, isn't reading Bill Roggio, or any of the various and sundry other independent journalists who are reporting the exact opposite. And who are where the deal is going down, rather than a comfy WDC office.

Uh, here's one from last Saturday, just for starters ganj:

On Saturday, Iraqi forces detained Sayyid Tahseen, a senior member of Muqtada al Sadr's political movement, in Al Kut in Wasit province. Iraqi police described Tahseen as "one of the most important individual wanted by security forces" who is "wanted for more than 45 cases, including armed operations against security forces, in addition to killing and abduction of innocent people."

[Sweetie]

By the leftie response you've apparently left a mark, Tom.

[MarkO]

"Candyass?" What's next? "A-hole?" I love a real intellectual. Obama lacks experience and his "judgment" is poor. So, call me some schoolyard name. Try "Master."

[PeterUK]

Interesting,
al Qaeda wants you to leave Iraq,so does Iran, as do half wits like Martin and ganjala. The Democrats ooze retreat from every pore.Barack Hussein Obama is in good company.
Anything to get those helicopters taking off from the embassy roof.

[Ranger]

By the leftie response you've apparently left a mark, Tom.

Posted by: Sweetie | June 25, 2008 at 04:15 PM

Well, victory, or anything even beginning to resemble victory, is a bitter pill for the left to swallow. Thus the anger, and even rage, they feel at the success of the surge.

It is hard to see though why the elected left was so quick to abandon victory in 04 yet so slow to abandon defeat in 08. Did they feel they could only turn about once on this issue? I suspect that they realize they went so overboard in their declarations of defeat last summer that there is no way to walk back from it. So now they are stuck in a "see no victory, hear no victory, speak no victory" mode and will be way too late getting on the victory band wagon.

[steve sturm]

For all of the so-called successes you point to, if things are going so well, then why ain't our troops home yet? That's right, it's because they can't leave. Things are going so well (sarcasm for Tom's special readers) that even talking out loud about bringing them home makes you all freak out.

Pre-surge, Bush wouldn't commit (or even speculate, dream out loud, or wish upon a star) to a timetable for bringing home the troops. Post-surge, more of the same mind-numbing chant of 'staying the course'.

It's a heckava success, Brownie, when the date our troops come home is only closer in an abstract 'uh, it's just as not as far off as it used to be' sort of way.

[Neo]

What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.

The many voices that rose in favor of the invasion, that have now claimed some sort of buyer’s remorse or insanity in the aftermath, have learned nothing. It’s easy to be a wimp.

When Bush started the adventure into Afghanistan (before Iraq), the first thing that the local partners in the region asked was whether America was in this for the duration, or would they be left with an American mess to clean up. Clearly, Bush said what he meant and meant what he said.

Friedman’s column can be read to say that finally, in the last year or so, the Iraqis believe Bush meant it too. Beleived it enough to take on UBL’s al Qaeda that planned to make Fallujah the capital of the caliphate. Believed it enough to take on their Shia brothers from Iran. Believed it when the Democratic leadership in the Congress showed none.

[Soylent Red]

For all of the so-called successes you point to, if things are going so well, then why ain't our troops home yet? That's right, it's because they can't leave.

The ignorance of this statement is simply breathtaking.

And goes right back to Brooks' point.

[Rick Ballard]

SR,

Ixnay - don't let these dolts figure out this year's October Surprise so early. Next thing you know they'll be guessing why DoD is booking ships for Basra/Norfolk and Basra/Houston voyages.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Under the bus for Scar Jo:

....speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane, Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. "She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me," Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. "I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,' and suddenly we have this email relationship"

[nom]

@Soylent Red :My guess is that this informed citizen, in between bong hits, isn't reading Bill Roggio, or any of the various and sundry other independent journalists who are reporting the exact opposite.

I hear a variation of this slur from people on the right all the time.. people who apparently aren't aware that there are conservative pot smokers. Not only are there pot smokers who are "right of center" but many of them are quite high-functioning and successful people, just like the many other people who use mild intoxicants for social or recreational purposes. Many of these dread pot smokers even read Bill Roggio!

I conclude from this that the number of beers you drink or bong hits you take is unlikely to be a good predictor of how politically informed you are. Lazy stereotype based slur.

#$#

[PeterUK]

"I hear a variation of this slur from people on the right all the time.. people who apparently aren't aware that there are conservative pot smokers."

You lot sound more "Class A" than pot,though skunk does induce schizophrenia.

[GMax]

Martin does a throw down and then quicker than Snagglepuss exits stage left? Too too funny.

I dont think it was the blog posting, which of course will leave a mark, but rather the factor that their messiah dropped into a tie today in the Gallup poll and since its a three day rolling average, may fall out of the lead tomorrow, that has them in a near panic.

If the drilling focus of the Republicans and all of the anti drilling rhetoric coming out of the Democrats does not have a huge impact I will be shocked. I think the Hansen ( of NASA ) harrangue is a similar response.

The left thought it was going to be a waltz to a Stalinist takeover. The death of Republicans, to paraphrase Samuel Clemens, has been greatly exaggerated. And the damage Democrats have done with their policies and will do in the future given any opportunity, is just now starting to spread to the muddle.

[qrstuv]

SS: "While the final pages haven't yet been written, the Iraqis have done precious little with the opportunity they've been given over the past number of months, ... "

Excuse me, but how the frak would you know?

There are 25 million people in Iraq. If all you listen to is their political opponents, and/or people who regard those 25 million as so many chess pieces*, how the frak would you know what they can or will do?!

*Name me a lefty who has expressed respect for the Iraqi majority, the ones who voted instead of bombing.

[Patton]

The only surge Obama supports is the gas price surge.....

[bad]

from Byron York at thehill.com

In Chicago, Obama’s talent was for convincing people to believe in change, not in actually changing things.

I remember dating guys like Obama back in the day; big talk, no susbstance. They were amusing and fun for the short term but not someone with whom to plan a future.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I'll leave now...

Good.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

For all of the so-called successes you point to, if things are going so well, then why ain't our troops home yet?

Yep. Damn German quagmire.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I hear a variation of this slur from people on the right all the time.

It's not a slur, Nom. It's charity: we figure if you weren't chemically enhanced, you couldn't manage to be quite such a collection of halfwitted clowns.

If you'd rather we not grant you that excuse, and figure you really *are* either completely ignorant of the situation or completely mendacious, I suppose we can.

[Porchlight]

Sure there are conservatives who smoke pot, but anyone who thinks the pot-smoking population doesn't generally skew left is, uh, high.

[Elliott]

Porchlight,

Have you received House of Cards from NetFlix? Ian Richardson's character has a line in the first episode that is rather apt.

[kim]

nom, maybe so....but lefties bogart more than righties.
==================================

[Cecil Turner]

The ignorance of this statement is simply breathtaking.

Yep. And I'd go back to my earlier statement and claim that's about par for lefty strategists. They ain't gonna study war . . . (ever), and it shows.

[kim]

Martin in comment #1; did you mean licks instead of links? I'm trying to put 'candy ass' in context.
====================================

[kim]

Hey Rick, Dean hasn't the spine for combat.
==========================

[kim]

I hope the Left and Obama keep pushing the 'Iraq is a quagmire' theme. It is a surefire way to lose the muddle, who aren't that muddled about it at all.

Sorry to say, lefties, Blood for Oil is beginning to sound almost reasonable.
================================

[MikeS]

My own opinion is that the surge tactics would not have been as successful early in the conflict.
I think the U.S. would have been accused of being unnecessarily brutal.

After witnessing a couple years of barbaric savagery by al Qaeda and Shia militias, our tactics are acceptable by comparison. Most importantly, it seems that the Iraqis are fed up with the violence and are willing to do what's necessary to end it.

There was never any question that we could lose the war on the ground. The only question was would we stay until we achieved victory.

[king]

If you have different figures let me know:

- between 100,000 and 600,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and many more wounded

- Over 4 million Iraqis displaced

- over 4,000 American soldiers killed

- over 30,000 American soldiers wounded

- over $600 billion from American taxpayers by the end of 2008

[Porchlight]

Elliott,

Not yet. My kids don't want me to return Kiki's Delivery Service and Escape to Witch Mountain. But you know what, too bad - the red envelopes are going in the mail tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder - I'll watch for that line.

[Terry Gain]

It's not just Obama''s conclusions that ought to concern us but the way he reached them.

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse: I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there".

Sending more troops to kill the killers was somehow going to result in more killing? And yes, he really did buy into the Dem/MSM idiocy that Iraqis were engaged in wholesale killing because their legitimate political ambitions weren't being addressed.

"So I am going to actively oppose the president‘s proposal. I don‘t doubt his sincerity when he says that he thinks this is the best approach, but I think he is wrong. And I think the American people believe he‘s wrong".

He thought the President was wrong but he was too arrogant to consider that his own uninformed views conflicted with those of the one American -Petraeus- who knew more about the subject than anyone.

Someone worthy of the job as CIC would have studied the proposal for a Surge rather than dismiss it based on Democratic talking points.

Someone who understood what's at stake if we (the country) lost Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran wouldn't have dismissed the Surge out of hand.

Someone who understood the impact on the fortunes of the Democratic party of Bush being defeated in Iraq would have approached the issue of the Surge exactly as Obama did.

[kim]

King, here's a figure for you. One dead American soldier = 2,500 enfranchised Iraqi voters, a stiff, but fair price.
===================================

[kim]

TG, it's simple; Obama simply doesn't understand. He's been reared in a hothouse, and he won't understand why his support steadily erodes. Americans know a lot about used car salesmen. Hey wait a minute, I've just insulted used car salesmen. Most of them have a real product to sell.
=================================

[narciso]

It's as much as concession as the Dhimmi Times will allow; now Harper's is so far on the BDS cycle that Lapham's stewardship of the editorial cycle is Olympian by comparison; Among the highlights, that I glanced at, so you don't have to. The editorial had some extended metaphor of the Sean Bell case to Guantanamo & Iraq. A piece by Jon Hulsman comparing styles of foreign policy strategy to the Godfather; with Bush being the Sonny Corleone;seeing how he ended up at the crossfire of the Jersey Turnpike. A more wise strategy is Michael Corleone, and his attack onSolozzo and the Captain played by Sterling Hayden. I guess that's the Obama strategy. Their cover piece is about the 'lame horse
status of the GOP" and how it needs to be put down; in the event they win, there is
always a coup d'etat to be considered! This was not an original thought, sometime novelist Kevin Baker, made this suggestion five years ago.

[Cecil Turner]

between 100,000 and 600,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and many more wounded

Surely you recognize that figure is ludicrously wide? And if you're exceeding the IBC number, odds are pretty good you're overcounting. So I'd put the upper bound on the dead at about 93,000.

And who's to blame for these? Seems to me blaming Bush for Al Qaeda's car bombs is more than a little bit of a stretch.

[MikeS]

Someone who understood what's at stake...

I think you nailed it Terry. At every turn Obama underestimates the gravity of the situation.

He underestimates the gravity of a situation if we should leave Iraq at the mercy of al Qaeda and Iran.

He underestimates the gravity of our current energy crisis.

He underestimates the gravity of the global jihad movement.

In 2002 he underestimated the gravity of the risk imposed by Saddam Husein with the capacity to produce chem/bio weapons.

[Soylent Red]

Easy nom. No one is coming to get your weed. Chill dude. Have another cheetoh.

(Jeez, I thought hippies were peaceful...)

[Jane]

Obama is currently underestimating how much he is pissing off Canada via Glenn. LUN

[MikeS]

Obama is currently underestimating how much he is pissing off Canada

How about Pakistan?
And those Europeans who have been trying to get Iran to stop enriching uranium.
And Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.

[Soylent Red]

Hey MikeS...

How about all Iraqi politicians who aren't conducting democracy fast enough for the Obamessiah.

And Mexico with the NAFTA thing.

And Columbia.

But have no fear. Brahman Bhama likes Obama

[Tina]

President Bush met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani this morning in the Oval Office. (Transcript)

President Talabani: I am proud to have the honor of meeting President George Bush, whom we consider the liberator of Iraq from the worst kind of dictatorship, as a great friend of the Iraqi people.

[MikeS]

How about all Iraqi pols...

As Hit would say, "Double Yup."

[Aaron]

I took a class in counter-insurgency at UCSD in the late 80's early 90's taught by Sam Popkin (not a conservative BTW) We read Bing West's the village and pretty much got the idea that we should have small units living with the populace. I assumed the military had learned this lesson, too.

In 2004-2006, instead we went with the "Antibody" theory and sweep and destroy. And the MSM reporting was so lackluster and so uninformed that I didn't even realize we were NOT implementing COIN but the weird antibody theory.

So, I was pretty shocked when I learned that the surge was going to finally implement the small neighborhood bases, etc. I worried it was too little too late, but it should have been the strategy from 2004 on. (Though, it may have only been after giving AQI the room to alienate their own supporters that the Surge could work.)

[kim]

Omigod, wait until the Muslims find out their candidate is worshipping a graven Hindu image. Fatwahs will fly.
=========================================

[Terry Gain]

Aaron

The Surge is succeeding because it occurred at the same time as the Anbar Awakening reached its peak and the number of IA and IP forces were sufficient to play a key role in the counter-insurgency strategy.

If the Surge had been attempted before it could be sustained by suuport from a sufficient number of Iraqi forces it may not have succeeded. There would have been many more American casualties and that much more DEM/MSM pressure to concede Iraq to the fates (which they would have pretended did not mean conceding Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran).

[dick]

Steve Sturm,

When are we going to pull all our troops out of Kosovo. That was a victory 10 years ago and we are still there. How about Korea or Germany. That has been over for over 50 years and we are still there as well.

Why are the Democrats so quick to pull totally out of Iraq as they were to pull out of Vietnam but so slow to pull out of the places we have been for years after the battles were over. Must be that they want to show the enemy that they can attack in safety now since the Big Dog is out of the picture. Or maybe it is because those are the places we attacked under the Republican administration. After all if you go back to the last century almost all the wars we were involved in were started by Democrats while the Republicans got us safely out of them. The only one that we did not get safely out of was because of the Democrats in Congress doing all they could to rescue defeat from victory.

[YT]

Brooks has praise for Bush because he put in surge troops, but he fails to cite the Bush administration's ridiculing of General Shinseki's advice about necessary troop levels.

The larger point still is that Bush shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place. Now we will never know how Iraq would have evolved had we not had such a bonehead as president. Would Afghanistan have been more stable? Would Bin Ladin been caught a long time ago? Abu Ghraib? Gigtmo? We will someday have all the information about where Bush's war has led the world. But we can never recover what could have been. What great people could have been born from those thousands slaughtered, American and Iraqi?

Tell me, whatever happened to the story of the disappearance of the 400 tons of highly explosive material that the Bush administration failed to secure despite pre war warnings by the International Atomic Energy Agency?

[narciso]

It took the backlash from the Salafi/Wahhabi
attempted domination in Anbar to make Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy.There were attempts, notably by Capt. Mirabile of the 124th NG dealing with the sheiks in Ramadi; followed by more conventional tactics by Marine Lt.Col. Kennedy, which yielded lesser results. Other examples were
those shown at Tell a Far by Lt. Col, and future General H.R. McMaster. The chaos which came after the fall of the Saddam regime, made such an approach untenable at the start. Contrary to 'conventional wisdom' keeping the Sunni tribe dominant (Ubeydi, Jibbur & Dulaimi) Baathist Army and Mukharabat, would not have won us points with the majority Shia and Kurdish populations. We knew that the Finance and Oil Ministries, along with the security services, were the heart of the regime. We didn't know that the Baghdad Museum, had already been looted by the likes ofBaathist apparatchik Donny George, long before we ever arrived in Baghdad, and Col. Bogdanos efforts to apprise us of these facts, were never properly integrated into the fact set. In fact, thanks to the likes of William Polk,the Kennedy administration's Planning chief at the outset of the Baathist onslaught, this distortion has made it into print, along with clear falsehoods, like the Shia were responsible for the post- Rashid Kailani 'farhud' pogrum, of Baghdad's Jewish community; as the late Elie Kedourie would point out.A surprising error, since his C.V, shows his stay at Oxford at that time, he should have found out the truth. Not surprisingly, he has staked his ground at Buchanan; the last Chamberlain fan and Taki's the Greekjunta's McClellan's tip sheet, who's recent issue floated the old 'Jewish spy ring' explanation for 9/11.A surprising error,

The reality was practically none of Iraq's political establishment, including perennial P.M. Nuri Al Said, showed any courage in this episode. Interestingly, the 'farhud' was a close parallel for what happened in the weeks after Baghdad fell; but on a much larger scale. Interesting, because that period,and the immediate antecedent three weeks, are the subject of HBO's new series Generation Kill, that seeks to conflate that time span of the rapid drive to Baghdad, with subsequent events in order to make the 'quagmire label, stick more closely.

[Neo]

The one pickel that Speaker Pelosi got herself into was saying that it was the Iranians that allowed the situation to get better, that the surge had nothing to do with it.

With that set of assumptions in place, Bush couldn't have made things better any earlier, and the mismanagement of 2005/2006 didn't make it any longer, as that was out of his hands (i.e. the Iranians fault).

Anyone with half a brain would see this as patently false, but so is the assumption that the Iranians made it better, thus the "Pelosi dilemma."

A 2 by 4 between the eyes would do this idiot of a Speaker some good.

[boris]

The larger point still is that Bush shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place

R i i i i i i g h t ...

So that's why we have to lose. Wouldn't want to reward a bad decision.

IMO we win and let the history books sort it out.

[sbw]

One never hears a cogent explanation from Democrats of what external forces threaten society, how to recognize those forces, and how to defeat them. It is not clear they recognize anything as a threat execpt a strawman Amerika created in their rich imagination.

If they can't cogently explain such things, supporting their candidate would come too close to committing suicide.

[Neo]

The Baghdad Museum is an interesting story, that like so many, was distorted.

It seems that 97% of all the museum contents were either in the museum, locked away in a vault offsite or hidden by the museum staff offsite. The remaining 3%, that actually went missing, were objects so small the all of them could fit in a single backpack.

[Soylent Red]

Aaron and Terry:

The COIN strategy currently in favor is the old MAAG model from Vietnam, with some Iraq-specific nuances.

The idea revolves around living and working with indigenous forces, in a training and advisory capacity, until they become a competent force unto themselves. At which point the US forces simply fade back into a support role (logistics and air support primarily).

The T.E. Lawrence statement about letting the Arab do it imperfectly rather than doing it perfectly for him comes into play here.

The hitch in the current gitalong is that this is what used to be(and still is in a different context) referred to as Foreign Internal Defense Operations (FIDO) and was the domain of Green Berets. Now, everybody is expected to contribute (I, myself, am on a waiting list to go on a MiTT team, and I don't know jack). Thus, you need to develop, disseminate and train a new field manual. And thus, FM 3-24 and some additional joint pubs were born.

So, like all things American, we have had a sharp learning curve to relearn something we knew and then promptly forgot.

If you haven't already, you should read LTC Nagl's book, as well as "Counterinsurgency Warfare" by Galula. These give over the basic theory. From there, FM 3-24 gives the application. There is also a couple of occasional papers from the Combined Arms Research Library (I'm sorry, I don't have the numbers at hand) on the history and application of military advisors.

I'd be willing to bet that I could count the number of Senators and Congressmen who have read all of these publications on both hands. Democrats on one.

[Barry]

"Now we will never know how Iraq would have evolved had we not had such a bonehead as president."

True YT, we will never know. Good reason to support loosing, ya think?

Of course, we'll never know how many more would have been chemically "treated" to death, shredded in those industrial shredders, wives and daughters raped, men and women and children tortured (real torture, no panties on the head for this bunch). We'll never know how many more terrorists would be rewarded by Saddam for suicide bombings in Israel. We'll never know what Saddam would have done with those WMD plans. Would he have helped the islamist jihadis commit more mass murder? We'll never know.

We'll just never know YT.

[Barry]

"Democrats on one."

I'm sorry to hear you had all your fingers amputated Soylent.

[Soylent Red]

Heh Barry. Still have the only one I need when it comes to Congress...

[Thomas Jackson]

Barry:
Its obvious that you are a veteran of vast experience. Care to tell us what you did during the war, I mean besides wearing high heels and putting on lipstick?

[Barry]

"Care to tell us what you did during the war"

Killed Jacksons.

[Neo]

Today marked a new low for the way congressional Democrats deal with national security. This morning, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a joint hearing on a "National Intelligence Assessment" on global climate change. This analysis was ordered by the Democratic Congress last year and was issued a few weeks ago. Some highlights (or low-lights) from the hearing:

1) In response to a question by Global Warming Committee member Greg Walden (R-OR), the Intelligence Community admitted they had "low to medium confidence" in the accuracy of this estimate because intelligence officers lack the expertise to write such an estimate (it was mostly contracted out to other organizations) and climate change science is so uncertain. As Walden started to ask about why an analysis of such low reliability was issued, Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), the Global Warming Committee Chairman, cut him off and told him he was out of time even though Markey let all the previous Democrats speak substantially past their time limits.

2) Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Peter asked what intelligence was used for this estimate and whether intelligence collection requirements were prepared. National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar said no clandestine intelligence was used and that intelligence officers extrapolated what would happen if the "mid-level estimates" by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were correct. When Hoekstra asked why the U.S. Intelligence Community would write an major analysis of low to medium confidence that contained no intelligence, Fingar answered, "because you [Congress] told us to."

3) Hoekstra noted that intelligence assessments of high confidence have proven to be wrong and he wondered why an intelligence assessment of low to medium confidence would even be published. In an attempt to dispel the debate over confidence, Intelligence Committee member Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) responded by noting that the 2002 Iraq WMD NIE had high confidence in its findings. Some Republicans thought Rep. Eshoo's statement actually made their case about the futility of issuing an intelligence assessment that intelligence officers cannot fully back.

[Barry]

Thomas, you think I'm a woman or a crossdresser?

[Ann]

"Care to tell us what you did during the war"

"Killed Jacksons."

LOL Barry!!

[Ann]

Soylent,

Is this the book you recommended?:

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Paperback)
by John A. Nagl (Author), Peter J. Schoomaker (Foreword) "There is substantial disagreement over what spurs military innovation..." (more)

[Soylent Red]

That's the one Ann.

It's not about COIN per se. What it's really about is how organizations learn or don't learn from mistakes.

It takes that concept and examines the British COIN experience in Malaya (successful) vs the US COIN experience in Vietnam (started out successful, then we botched it).

Easy read and can be done in a couple of days.

[Cecil Turner]

Brooks has praise for Bush because he put in surge troops, but he fails to cite the Bush administration's ridiculing of General Shinseki's advice about necessary troop levels.

Shinseki never had any "advice" about necessary troop levels. And again, this points up the unlettered "analysis" on the left.

The larger point still is that Bush shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place.

Democrat strategy: a "do over" on the AUMF vote.

Tell me, whatever happened to the story of the disappearance of the 400 tons of highly explosive material . . .

Let me guess: high explosive is important, but Iranian enriched uranium isn't? Seriously, you can't approach national defense with political blinders on, without even bothering to look into the subject matter. Because you'll look like an idiot in every discussion, and merely reinforce the perception that liberals are incompetent on defense.

[GMax]

That not a perception that a bald faced reality.

[JM Hanes]

"Brooks has praise for Bush because he put in surge troops, but he fails to cite the Bush administration's ridiculing of General Shinseki's advice about necessary troop levels."

I doubt the author of this gem will return, but I can't believe we're going to have to listen to the Shinseki business all over again -- like Shinseki boots (and Howard Dean boots!) had anything to do with Petraeus boots. Sheesh. It sure would be nice if someone could straighten them out all at once, because as soon as you do one, another one shows up. It's even worse when you read some boy wonder like Ezra Klein suggesting that "phased withdrawal" would have sped up reconciliation (the Lazy Iraqi Theory) or opining that al Sadr is "arguably the most popular Shia leader in the country" with a straight face -- all to plaudits from his peanut gallery for sage analysis. Argh.....

[JT007]

"For all of the so-called successes you point to, if things are going so well, then why ain't our troops home yet?"

Sturm, you ignorant douchebag, are our troops home from Kosovo? The answer is no (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/
camp-bondsteel.htm). Clinton and his idiot supporters told us that Kosovo was a success despite the fact that the bombing accomplished nothing except speeding up the ethnic cleansing and permanently driving 750,000 Serbian Kosovars from their homes. On July 15, 1999, Reuters reported that

“The former commander of United Nations troops in Bosnia has dismissed NATO’s Kosovo bombing campaign as a tragic failure. Britain’s General Sir Michael Rose said NATO and British politicians were running a propaganda campaign to persuade people that the air war met its objectives….Rose said NATO had defined its initial objective as the prevention of more suffering, repression and violence against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians….. [yet] ’thousands of people were brutally murdered and more than a million people were driven from their homes by the Serbs,’ said Rose, who has retired from the British army.” [http://agitprop.org.au/stopnato/
19990715natocockup.php]

We had troops in Saudi Arabia during the entire eight years that Clinton was president and liberals didn't care at all. 16 of them were killed in the Khobar Towers bombing. After the violence subsides even further, we should keep our troops in Iraq just like they are in South Korea, Japan and Germany.

[kim]

Ding, ding, ding. And we have a winner! Anna Eshoo (D-Cal), wrong on facts, wrong on logic. Let's put her on the Intelligence committee.
==============================

[boris]

Italiacto!

[BumperStickerist]

Martin -

to paraphrase General Napier,

You post your links according to your custom. I shall post mine.

Mine happen to accord with reality. But, hey, you can post all the Howard Dean stuff you want.

Cheers.

[BumperStickerist]

Remember, king et al.

*Each* UN inspector in Iraq in 2002 had a carrying cost to the US of about 1,000 troops deployed in Kuwait, plus a carrier naval group stationed off-shore.

Drop 100,000 troops in Kuwait so that up to a 100 UN Inspectors can traipse around a Saddam-controlled Iraq *until the job is done* and you're looking at an ongoing US military presence in the Middle East until -at least - the year 2019.

Paradoxically, the Iraq War turns out to be cheaper, in terms of money, time, and in all likelihood lives, and more effective, than UN inspections.

Go figure.

-

Unless you argue for half-assed UN inspections that only kinda-sorta look for "stuff" until we get tired or bored.

To which the counterargument is that the Iraq war was a better investment than simply shoving money at Hans Blix.

[sbw]

I get tired of saying that all it took was ONE UN INSPECTOR to determine that Saddam Hussein obstructed the WMD investigation, breaking his agreement.

I also get tired of the willful way Pharleftistan minions work to ignore evidence readily available to them. It's a luxury we can no longer afford.

[BumperStickerist]

The lesson to be learned from the current Iraq war is simple - if never, ever, ever talked about in the Media. It's this:

If you've just lost a war of aggression and are under a UN order to destroy your documented stores of banned munitions - after shipping said munitions to the destruction facility, save the receipts.

Failure to do so can have ... consequences.

[bad]

From David Von Drehle at time.com The article is titled:

Obama's "Presidential" Press Event

The Obama style occupies the zone where gravitas meets somnambulance.

The dude just called Obama a boring poser.

[Rich]

If we had all these lefties around during the War of Northern Aggression, the South would be FREE!

[Soylent Red]

Tangentially...

Thanks for nothing SCOTUS

[Sue]

I can't believe we're going to have to listen to the Shinseki business all over again

Nothing like a dog with a bone.

[Abadman]

"Now we will never know how Iraq would have evolved had we not had such a bonehead as president."

yeah, we could all have had some popcorn and watched the nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran.

We also could have watched the left call Bush a bonehead for NOT invading Iraq.

[GMax]

f we had all these lefties around during the War of Northern Aggression, the South would be FREE!

Oh we had them around in the time period of Lincoln. They were called Democrats even then. They ran McClellan the incompetent general that Lincoln had to replace and several Newsweek poll prior to the race showed McClellan, who ran on a platform to end the war, running ahead of the sitting President.

[centralcal]

Ha Ha. Gmax. Newsweek polls are a real joke!

[Clazy]

"Posit" is a word that should not be used outside academia, and it's overused there.

[Sue]

Does anyone remember right before the 2004 presidential election (or maybe it was the 2006 mid-terms) the NYTs ran a front page story on how the Bush administration was putting Iraq's nuclear weapons design on a blog for any and all to see? The day after the election, the story was forgotten.

[Sue]

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/Scotusblog is live blogging the SC decisions, if anyone is interested.

[Sue]

Carp!

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/>Scotusblog

[Sue]

How odd will it be if the SC, in the same session, finds a right for terrorists that doesn't exist and can't find the right that is clearly defined in the 2nd amendment?

[Sue]

Heller affirmed.

[Jane]

Heller affirmed

[Sue]

5-4. So the same 4 justices who could clearly see a terrorist's right to habeas corpus in our constitution that isn't there can't find the plainly worded right in the 2nd amendment?

[royf]

 YT

 

Tell me, whatever happened to the story of the disappearance of the 400 tons of highly explosive material that the Bush administration failed to secure despite pre war warnings by the International Atomic Energy Agency?

Tell me YT why did that story (which came out just a couple of weeks before the election) vanish from the MSM/Dem talking points? Because it was debunked almost as soon as it was published, although the debunking was never reported because the explosives were never the important issue. After all it was never a story which mattered in the big picture, unless your big picture ends at providing a  bit of propaganda to hopefully sway a election.

And YT why is it that no Dems have ever shown any interest in determining what was aboard all the trucks and airplanes which crossed into Syria right before the Iraq War? We have satellite pictures of caravans going from Iraq to Syria, we also have Iraq witnesses which say weapons were aboard those vehicles. Yet it is of no interest to the Dems why would that be YT?

[GMax]

Scalia writes the opinion for the majority. There are two separate dissents. Lawyers seem to find it amazing that on such a momentus cases that there are not a plethora of opinions.

But make no mistake that the Supreme Court is now on record that the clear wording of the second amendment is clear wording. It has nothing to do with military service and is an individual right. And it even talks about the right to protect your family and property.

[sbw]

Gateway Pundit via Instapundit -- Obama Throws Maoist Hardliner and Weatherman Pal Under the Bus

Another one thrown under the bus.
Ba-thump! Thump!
Another one thrown under the bus!