Mister Senator, I acknowledge that progress in Iraq…
Hey, look – Iran!
by Tim F| 123 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, War
Mister Senator, I acknowledge that progress in Iraq…
Hey, look – Iran!
by John Cole| 62 Comments
I guess the new metric for our “progress” in Iraq is American troop casualties:
American combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the three months since the buildup of 28,000 additional U.S. troops reached full strength, surprising analysts and dividing them as to why.
U.S. officials had predicted that the increase would lead to higher American casualties as the troops “took the fight to the enemy.” But that hasn’t happened, even though U.S. forces have launched major offensives involving thousands of troops north and south of Baghdad.
American combat casualties have dropped to their lowest levels this year, even as violence involving Iraqis remains high.
This is like a trip down memory lane for me. In the past, I, too, looked at our casualty rates as they seemed to decline, and hoped things were getting better. Here I was in February of 2005:
This month, there have been 18 coalition casualties, meaning that the Coalition of the Willing has suffered an average of 1.38 casualties a day. This is the lowest average since March of last year, and dramatically lower than the casualty rate from the previous six month. For some perspective, last month we lost an average of 4.1 soldiers per day, in December 2004 we lost 2.48, and in November we were averaging 4.7 fatalities per day.
And again, a month and a half later, I continued to be optimistic:
In the month of January, before the elections, the loss rate was 4.1 soldiers per day. Immediately after the election, in February, the rate dipped to 2.1 per day.
Currently, we are losing an average 1.2 soldiers per day to hostile and non-hostile casualties. The number of wounded appears to be declining as well.
Two and a half years later, and we are averaging double to triple that number. Clearly, we have turned another corner. Charles Bird tries to be upbeat with this data, but I do not share his optimism.
Regardless, the point of this is not to minimize the fact that the recent drop in troop casualties is a good thing. It is. I am always firmly on the side of fewer dead American soldiers. However, as a metric for whether or not we are succeeding in Iraq, American troop casualties is a pretty meaningless metric by itself. After all, there is a sure-fire way to reduce the number of American casualties- bring them all home. Does anyone think that would mean things are all of a sudden rosy in Iraq? What would seem to me to be more important is what they are dying for, rather than how many of them are dying.
Over the next few weeks we are going to hear all sorts of things that seem to indicate progress, but that really does not leave me very hopeful. Yes, I am glad things seem to be, for now, calmer in the Anbar province. But how did they happen? Was it from a national political reconciliation? Of course not:
COOPER: The president flew to Al Anbar Province. We’ve talked about it a lot. He touted the security progress that has been made there. Undeniable, things are getting better. What is working in Al Anbar and how and really, frankly, can it translate into the rest of Iraq?
WARE: Well, certainly, one of the president’s war counsel — I believe it was Secretary Gates himself — said that really the success of Al Anbar Province predates the surge. It’s really an Iraqi initiative. And what that is is that the Sunni Baathist insurgency turned on al Qaeda and it offered America the same terms of negotiation that it first offered four years ago in 2003 in that it was willing to work with America, but not with the Iraqi government.
And America, after four years of bloodshed, was finally ready to accept those terms. So it’s the Sunni insurgency that has turned Al Anbar around and made it safe. And having just returned from that province ourselves, having been with those insurgents, we watched with our own eyes as the insurgents go in one door of a training camp and emerge as the so-called Iraqi police. So they’re keeping those streets safe that President Bush referred to — Anderson.
I wish I knew the name of that one famous Baathist who used to run Iraq, but we have turned so many corners his name just seems to escape me.
Regardless, I applaud the President for visiting the region. I don’t care if it was a photo-op, I am not under the illusion that he actually learned anything (and if he did learn anything, he will soon forget it or lie about it – I see that Paul Bremer joins the ranks of people with a book to sell), and I am well aware this was little more than a PR build-up for the Petraeus/Crocker stay the course speech next week. His being there was good for troop morale, his being there was something those guys in the military will remember the rest of their lives. Any way you slice it or dice it, I am glad he went.
But that doesn’t change the realities facing us in Iraq. We are at the end game, and there are a few things that can not be nuanced, or can not be put through a PR spin machine.
1.) The surge has to end. It really isn’t a matter for debate. The military can not sustain it. End of story. We are down to one more Friedman Unit, maximum. Maybe if we had a massive military build-up, maybe if we had had a draft several years ago, maybe if we had done something- anything. But right now are at the limit of what the military can do. No amount of stories about safe markets in the Green Zone (Potemkin or otherwise), changes that.
2.) The reason for the surge, to provide time for a national political reconciliation, seems to have failed. The GAO report (the unvarnished one leaked to the press last week, at least) points to a widespread failure to achieve these goals. These were goals agreed to by the administration, and now the only course of action for the administration and supporters is to haggle with how we define progress. Inspires a great deal of confidence, doesn’t it?
3.) If the GAO report was not depressing enough, there are other reported problems so large in scope that it is, quite honestly, too depressing to think about for too long. For example, the recent report stating that the entire national police force in Iraq needs to be scrapped. Or the report of the widespread corruption in Iraq (corruption is the norm). Or the myriad other problems, to include the complete breakdown in public health (and, in fairness, cholera outbreaks are the norm this time of year) that coincides with our inability to provide longterm stability.
4.) Things are so bad, the military seems to have dedicated precious man-hours to try to convince us things are not really that bad. Staged visits, complete with background bios of the VIPS, are the norm.
Iraq is a mess. It will continue to be a mess for the foreseeable future, and there seems to be very little we can do in the short term to fix the many problems, and we are hamstrung in the sense that there literally is nothing we can do in the long term other than cross our fingers and begin the inevitable drawdown to keep the military from completely disintegrating. I state all of this not because I hate America, not because the liberal media wants us to lose, and not because I have Bush Derangement Syndrome. I say this, because when I look at the evidence, there is no other conclusion to be reached. I want us to win, if for no other reason than I feel very, very responsible for us being in Iraq. But I simply do not understand how sane people can look at the evidence and conclude the only problem we face is a liberal media lying about our inevitable victory.
Most important, we have no options left, really. That doesn’t make me happy, and it certainly does not make me proud, but it does mean that I am going to greet the rosy scenarios fed to us over the next few weeks with some massive servings of salt.
So should you.
*** Update ***
According to the comments, even the new metric is being willfully misinterpreted.
*** update ***
And, as if on cue, the Weekly Standard begging for nuance.
*** Update ***
The Instapundit, blogging from another planet:
KATIE COURIC REPORTS progress in Iraq. Tom Smith comments. And Petraeus is talking about a troop reduction by March, though he’s been saying that for a while. Still, this has got to be depressing for those who were hoping for bad news.
It is bad enough he doesn’t recognize bad news. The assertion that those who do are praying for it is what takes the cake. I guess all that really is left to do is smear.
by John Cole| 12 Comments
This post is in: Media
This should cheer you up:
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Busy till later this afternoon.
by Tim F| 108 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I’m Back.
The view from Saturday:
Can’t say that I missed politics much.
by Tim F| 23 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Publius at ObWings recently brought up a point that most seem to miss.
[T]he problem with Warner isn’t that he puts politics first. The problem is that he puts politics first while pretending not to do so. Few can furrow their brow on the Sunday morning talk shows better than Warner. But when push comes to shove, Warner never really did anything different than people like Inhofe.
Indeed, never underestimate the value of principled “moderates” to the overall GOP effort. The kabuki generally runs like this: George Bush proposes some extravagant new executive power, say legal sanction to pull the legs off of kittens. The Democrats reasonably agree (mostly) that pulling legs off of kittens is wrong, but usually lack the party discipline and/or the overall votes to stop the president on their own. Worse, nothing terrifies Democrats more than the thought that somebody might call them soft on terrorism for denying the president the power to deal with the awful kitten leg threat. The thought of David Broder calling them partisan practically reduces Democratic leaders to tears.
Mirabile dictu!, some combination of John McCain, John Warner, Lindsay Graham and Arlen Specter will step up and announce grave, serious concerns about the president delimbing kittens, dangling the possibility of sustaining a kitten-leg filibuster. Hey, Harry Ried says, let’s let these guys take the lead! Take that, David Broder! A month later the very concerned Republicans announce a compromise that looks almost exactly like what the president proposed in the first place. Blue dogs vote GOP, of course, leaving Harry Reid looking like a twice-fooled chump. Kittens lose. It happened so often that I named a post category after it.
Then again, that kabuki only worked when Republicans held a modest majority in both houses. No doubt the GOP was as surprised as the rest of us to find the whole enterprise completely unnecessary.
The Understated Importance of Johns McCain And Warner To The Rightwing MovementPost + Comments (23)
by John Cole| 39 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I completely missed this:
It seems to me that the phrase, “the guy that we get out of the hood,” is an implied racial reference. It refers specifically to blacks, though one could say the officer meant to refer only to young black men from the ghetto who, in the officer’s view, are prone to commit crimes.
Either way, it’s still race-specific in a case that otherwise has no obvious racial dimension. To shame Craig into telling the truth, the officer could have used a different example, like, “I expect this from some punk we get off the street.” Or, “I expect this from some low-life, but not a Senator.” It’s also fairly clear from the context that the officer is not associating blacks with bathroom cruising, but with dishonesty and “disrespect” toward the police.
Why would Karsnia use a race-specific reference in this context? First, the officer may associate blacks in general, or at least those from “the hood,” with bad conduct. In the heat of the exchange, this particular example is the one that first comes to his mind because black men from poor neighborhoods are the kind of people he would most associate with dishonesty and disrespectful behavior.
Second, the officer may have expected that Craig would immediately understand the reference and be especially shamed by it as a law-abiding white person. “Not only were you engaged in this tawdry behavior but now you’re acting like a black thug who lies to a police officer about it,” he seems to be saying. I doubt the officer would have used the “hood” reference if he’d been talking to a suspect who was black. It simply wouldn’t have worked against a black suspect, whether that suspect was from “the hood” or not. It would have backfired even if used against, say, a wealthy black lawyer in a business suit. Further, in the presence of a black person the officer would have been sensitized to using a racial reference. It only works as a shaming technique if it’s one white person speaking to another, with no blacks around to object.
I can see how that could easily be interpreted as a racist comment, but when I heard it, I thought nothing of it. I remember my drill sergeants and NCO’s (white, black, hispanic, and other) in the army referring to “back in the hood” or “back on the block” (‘You might be able to get away with that back in the hood’ or ‘We do things differently here than back on the block’, etc.) almost interchangeably, and there was no racism in their statements when they made them, so I paid no attention to his remark when I heard it.
Interesting, though.
The Craig Conversation- Something I Paid No Attention ToPost + Comments (39)