Iraq "Surge" Update

Since John McCain is now running around saying "I told you so" I thought I would do the same. Almost a year ago I wrote this about the pending "surge" in Iraq:

In essence, I think John McCain has the right attitude to the surge at this time. He made the following points on MTP which I agree with (this is from memory):

• General Petraeus has a genuinely new plan for Iraq which insists on gaining control over Bagdad and Anbar province
  
• General Casey's previous plan of slowly transferring control to Iraqi forces was ill conceived from the beginning and has been failing for over a year now
  
• Bush deserves a lot of critisism for not realizing that Casey's plan was failing earlier and taking steps to correct it
  
• General Petraeus has very solid credentials for this type of warfare (among other things, he helped oversee the military's new manual on counterinsurgency) and expert military opinion think his plan has a significant chance of success
  
• Anyone who opposes the "surge" should advocate a clear alternative strategy, which most Democrats don't seem to be doing

However, I agree with this Sullivan reader's observation that the successful surge won't make much of a difference:

I don't have any doubt - and really, never did - that increasing the use of (and apparently, more properly deploying) American troops would reduce violence in Iraq. And I think that although Bush did this belatedly and only in response to political pressure he deserves (along with Gates and Petraeus) to be applauded for that.

But what does that have to do with the goals of the war?

As I understand it, we don't have a military goal - we have a hope that the Iraqis are able to put together a democratic government that is capable of unifying and securing the country. That has nothing to do with whether there is a lot or not a lot of violence in Iraq.

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations - New York Times

A NYT must-read on the saga of Bush administration lawbreaking in the area of interrogation.

Yet More on the Heritability and Malleability of IQ

Yet More on the Heritability and Malleability of IQ (Via Andrew Sullivan). This post succeeded in convincing me that intelligence is so strongly affected by environmental factors that the conclusions drawn by the Bell Curve are likely vastly exaggerated.

Taking on the Bush-enabling Democrats in Congress

Glenn Greenwald is on the case and not a moment too soon:

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault.

I'll be very curious to see if Glenn will be as successful at influencing this debate as he has been when it comes to the role of establishment media figures in enabling the tragedies of the Bush presidency. For a small example of the latter see Frank Rich's column in today's NYT.

The MSM Wars

It takes a great deal of self-awareness to write something like this:

Something is stirring out there - as the Obama and Paul candidacies show. The polls show record levels of discontent. The logic for permanent engagement in the Middle East is far less cogent than it was only a year ago. And the capacity of Americans to throw their own elites overboard will be tested in the next two years.

I do not know where this is headed. A new isolationism? A new liberal hegemony? More of the same? But I have a feeling that those of us in the Beltway may be among the last to see it coming.

2008 Favorite

In case you were wondering; I'm with this chick when it comes to 2008:

New Blog: nordicmodel

Posting has been slow lately as you've no doubt noticed. But here's someone else talking about Scandi issues:

A new blog, the topic is obvious, hat tip to New Economist. I've said it before, I'll say it again. No matter what your politics, contemporary northern Europe represents a high point in human civilization. If you're not deeply interested in the region, you should be. If you haven't visited, you must. Go, go, go. Travel is the starting point of learning social science.

H/t Ross

Dissenting Views

Scott McConnell in The American Conservative (h/t Yglesias):

.. it’s true that many Christians won’t enter this battle [against Israeli policies] without Jewish allies or at least will join it with less enthusiasm. It’s not simply that they can’t take the heat. It’s that those who have spent much time in journalism or academia or trying to influence public policy have generally done so alongside Jews and are accustomed to having Jews play significant roles in their personal and professional lives. To fight a battle without Jewish colleagues, or even against Jewish colleagues, is likely to feel rather lonely.

Someone should enlighten Andrew Sullivan...

Why Stay

A Sullivan reader nicely sums up my own reasons for not wanting to leave Iraq:

One of the main arguments against an American pullback or pullout is the likelihood of a genocidal and brutal civil war that would "force" the U.S. to come in to stop the slaughter.

I think it is appropriate to assume that there would be massive killing. I've heard arguments to the contrary and I've heard arguments that Syria/Iran, etc. would not permit it, but assuming that it would not take place is as foolish as assuming that everything will be just fine. So we should assume that there will be incredible slaughter, religious dislocation and depravity - at least in the non-Kurdish areas - if we get out.

Query: Do we have the discipline to stay out and to be presented night after night with scenes of uniminaginable slaughter that we will be accused of being "responsible for"? Because if we don't have the discipline - or the cold-heartedness, if you will - then that's a strong argument to continue with Bush's approach.

It's that simple; I don't want scores of Iraqi people to die. This morning I was listening (NPR) to a story told by an American soldier who was treating two Iraqi kids (a 6-year old boy and his 7-year old sister). The girl told him through an interpreter that she watch both her parents die. By the time he got them to the hospital the girl was clinging on to him and didn't want him to leave.

War is horrible. We can't leave the Iraqi's to kill each other unless there's no hope left. I'd rather maintain status quo for 2 more years until we can get a competent president who can put in place a regional plan that works. Sorry Hillary. It sucks for Democrats to have to clean up giant deficits and messy wars after Republican presidents. I'm all in favor for Krugman's suggestion that Democrats should stop fixing the deficits only so that Republicans can keep cutting taxes. But basic human decency means the same strategy can't be applied to unnecessary wars.

Bill and Steve

I didn't know this:

The only problem with Microsoft," said Jobs, "is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way..."

Yes, in a big, big way.

And you can see why. Bourgeoisie Bill's career was helped by his parental connection to the business charity The United Way; IBM may well have lost patience with the tiny contractor Microsoft if Big Blue chairman John Akers hadn't indulged the son of fellow board member Mary Gates. Meanwhile, Orphan Steve was raised in the lower middle-class trades and had to acquire his own wit and nous, and develop his own sense of which technologies could be made malleable and sellable. It's entirely understandable then that when Bill made off with the loot, Steve felt cheated.

More fun at the link.

Journalism 101

An excellent set of rules that might have prevented the Iraq war and could prevent the looming Iran war from the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin (h/t Glenn Greenwald).

Iraq "Surge" Update

I heard on NPR this morning that Iraqi defense and police forces have now been placed along with American troops under a single command. They interviewed an American Colonel who said even though this is the last chance to get Baghdad under control he thinks the strategy might work.

This type of news coupled with a new Secretary of Defense (Gates) CentCom commander (Petraeus) warrants some optimism about the "surge". That is not to say Bush has not been a complete idiot about this war. But Democrats should not hurry to condemn Iraqi civilians to civil war either. But as usual nobody in Congress (Rep or Dem) seems to be thinking about the real issues here.

Sickening Comparison of Bush Warriors and Churchill

Reading the post Our little Churchills by Glenn Greenwald makes me literally sick to my stomach. I am not kidding - the strong anger I feel when I read comparisons of sub-human weakling Bushies and truly great war leaders like Churchill and Lincoln is really affecting me physically right now.

As Glenn points out, in the face of existential danger during WW2 Churchill remained open to critisism and constructive debate at home. Bush, by contrast, says every critic of a minor war of choice is "aiding the enemy". This is so far beyond pathetic that words fail to describe how I feel about it.

Democrats Got Balls

Sez Sullivan.

The Situation in Iraq

I'm fairly busy today so I'll have to keep this brief, but listening to a podcast this morning of John McCain on Meet The Press (could not find the transcript) I can't help myself from commenting on the proposed "surge" and the situation in Iraq in general.

In essence, I think John McCain has the right attitude to the surge at this time. He made the following points on MTP which I agree with (this is from memory):

• General Petraeus has a genuinely new plan for Iraq which insists on gaining control over Bagdad and Anbar province
• General Casey's previous plan of slowly transferring control to Iraqi forces was ill conceived from the beginning and has been failing for over a year now
• Bush deserves a lot of critisism for not realizing that Casey's plan was failing earlier and taking steps to correct it
• General Petraeus has very solid credentials for this type of warfare (among other things, he helped oversee the military's new manual on counterinsurgency) and expert military opinion think his plan has a significant chance of success
• Anyone who opposes the "surge" should advocate a clear alternative strategy, which most Democrats don't seem to be doing

Now, I don't agree with McCain's view that opposing the surge without presenting good alternatives is a vote of no confidence in the troops. Rather, I agree with Russert's proposition that it is more likely motivated by a lack of confidence in the Commander in Chief. Nevertheless, it is unwise to oppose a surge without presenting a clear alternative. Oh - and the Democrats plan for slow withdrawal and transfer of power to Iraqi troops is not really a "clear" alternative in my opinion. At best it's no more than damage control.

The clear alternatives I've seen so fare are

• withdraw ASAP, leaving it to the military to decide if that takes 1 month or 6 (cut and run),
• withdraw from central Iraq but stay in the periphery (like Iraqi Kurdistan) and intervene with airpower if the civil war killing gets too much out of hand (humanitarian containment), or
• use a new military strategy and more force to try to turn things around (surge).

I think you can make good arguments for each of these strategies, but if you oppose the surge you should clearly state your preference for "cut and run" or the "humanitarian containment" strategy. Personally, given General Petraeus' qualifications and proposed plan I have to say I support the surge alternative at this time.

(It pains me to say that because I deeply dislike Bush and in some ways I want him to fail so badly that there won't be another president like him for a thousand years. But his popularity is spiralling down so fast these days that hopefully the country will have learned a lesson even if Petraeus manages to turn things around in Iraq. At the end of the day I just can't morally justify a strategy that will inevitably lead to hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis in a prolonged civil war brought on by the United States.)

Now, having said all that I also want to clarify that I don't particularily like John McCain as a presedential candidate just because I think his opinion on the surge is a sensible one. In fact, I agree with the liberal blogosphere consensus view that McCain's flip-flopping on all sorts of issues in order to pander to various right-wingers is extremely pathetic. On MTP he remarked that he had disagreed with Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq for a long time (I forget the exact wording he used). Surprisingly he even pointed out that the failures of the war had been comprehensively chronicled in books like Fiasco and Cobra II. But I wish Russert had asked him about this quote from his 2004 Republican convention speech in August 2004:

Most importantly, our efforts may encourage the people of a region that has never known peace or freedom or lasting stability that they may someday possess these rights. I believe as strongly today as ever, the mission was necessary, achievable and noble. For his determination to undertake it, and for his unflagging resolve to see it through to a just end, President Bush deserves not only our support, but our admiration.

No doubt McCain's answer would have been some version of "at the time I didn't know how badly handled the war was going to be". But that's a poor excuse. I'm just a lowly software developer but even I caught the "Blind Into Baghdad" article by James Fallows in February 2004 which detailed most of the early failures of the Iraq war.

The truth is, of course, that McCain knew full well in August 2004 that Bush had botched the post-war phase of the Iraq invasion. But he knew that his chances in 2008 would be shot to hell if he didn't support a then-popular Republican president. McCain may be wiser than most Washington politicians when it comes to foreign policy, but a man of integrity he is not.

UPDATE: I'm open to the possibility that this Sullivan reader may be right in his assumption that the "surge" or "plus up" is simply an attempt by Bush to kick the bucket down the road to the next president. But if those are the grounds on which the Congressional Democrats base their opposition then they should say so. Right now (imho) they just look like they're opposing the surge simply because it has Bush's name on it, while scrambling to come up with a justification. This other Sullivan reader sums up the Congressional cowardice well (although unlike him I would never endorse anything done by Hugh Hewitt).

UPDATE II: David Brooks argues (subscription only) in the Sunday NY Times for a Bosnia-style partitioning in Iraq. He has some good points.

The Republican Fourtysomething Explained

A phenomenal explanation of today's young(ish) Republicans that supports what I've observed during my 5 years of living in the South (via Glenn Greenwald):

Dreher's earliest political memories are of the Carter Administration and the Iranian hostage crisis, followed by the triumphant ascension of Ronald Reagan. He was 13 years old when Reagan was elected, so you can't fault him for viewing these events through a child's eyes. The problem is, as it is with so many of his fellow travelers, that his understanding of politics remained childish.

It sounds insulting but I think we're all colored by those first encounters with politics as a child. Luckily I didn't grow up in the United States under Carter and Reagan so I don't have any deep-rooted prejudices against Republicans or Democrats. I do strongly dislike the Soviet communists and stubborn "we-are-entitled-to-everything" 70s-style European union leaders, but both groups are practically extinct today.