Decision ‘08

In Iraq, The Glass Is Always Half Empty…

Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq’s diverse political factions.

And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom’s Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush’s policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war’s progress. The first installment of Petraeus’s testimony is scheduled to be delivered before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a fact both the administration and congressional Democrats say is simply a scheduling coincidence.

The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.

“We’ve begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it’s working,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday.

“My assessment is that if we put an additional 30,000 of our troops into Baghdad, that’s going to quell some of the violence in the short term,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) echoed in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that as long as U.S. troops are present that they are going to be doing outstanding work.”

Advisers to both said theirs were political as well as substantive statements, part of a broader Democratic effort to frame Petraeus’s report before it is released next month by preemptively acknowledging some military success in the region. Aides to several Senate Democrats said they expect that to be a recurring theme in the coming weeks, as lawmakers return to hear Petraeus’s testimony and to possibly take up a defense authorization bill and related amendments on the war.

For Democratic congressional leaders, the dog days of August are looking anything but quiet. Having failed twice to crack GOP opposition and force a major change in war policy, Democrats risk further alienating their restive supporters if the September showdown again ends in stalemate. House Democratic leaders held an early morning conference call yesterday with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), honing a new message: Of course an influx of U.S. troops has improved security in Iraq, but without any progress on political reconciliation, the sweat and blood of American forces has been for naught.

At times, the ugly stench of politics becomes damn near unbearable. Sure, both sides are playing politics with this issue, as the quoted excerpt shows…but apparently absent from any discussion among the Democratic leaders is whether the fact that the surge IS working, militarily, is going to bring us any closer to having real leverage to effect political change from the infuriatingly recalcitrant Iraqi government.

Instead, the Democrats are going to calculate the best way to spin good news as bad news, in a nakedly transparent attempt to accentuate the negative for political gain, the national interest be damned.

Objections that (a) Republicans do the same thing, only reversed, and (b) that this is just what politicians do somehow fail to lessen my nausea…

22 Responses to “In Iraq, The Glass Is Always Half Empty…”

1 Fargus Says:
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:56 pm
So…..the surge is having some positive effects militarily. Of course. But the political situation hasn’t been touched, and has in fact gotten worse since the surge has been in place. Are we supposed to forget that the entire purpose of the surge was to give the political leaders breathing room in which to do what they had to do? Or are we supposed to subscribe to this new narrative that the surge was to win militarily for a while to pave the way for the next phase, in which maybe, I hope I hope, the political leaders might actually do something?

Sometimes the rationalizations and rewriting of the past leave me simply shaking my head.
2 Scott Says:
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Mark, your posts suggests that Democrats have now realized that it really is in the best interests of the nation to continue this war, but they’re not going to do that because they would lose political points…..perhaps you should reconsider who is poisoning the political field.
3 Mark Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:30 am
Please, Fargus, you’re missing the point. I’m not trying to rewrite the past - few Republicans have been more critical of the do-nothing Iraqi government than me.

But note that the Democrats - before Petraeus even gives his testimony - are plotting how to undermine that testimony. They know he’s bringing good news on one front and bad on the other - so by God, let’s emphasize the bad, because the important thing here is to beat the Republicans, not to win the war.

Don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong with that…
4 Mark Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:37 am
Scott, I’m not suggesting it, the Washington Post article is. If the Democrats are having conference calls on how to spin the report, they are certainly focusing on political consequences and not the most effective way to win the war - that’s self-evident…
5 Scott Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 7:34 am
This poorly conceived War is lost/will be lost in time Mark. No minimal progress on one front changes that. Dems know it and are willing to admit it so that more American don’t die who otherwise wouldn’t have to. At this point their sigular interest is the national interests. The Post is writing about the politics which will determine when the war ends. You are the one saying that Dems take the position of “national interests be damned.” You are the one trying to score cheap political points by distorting their intentions. You are welcome to disagree that the the War is a lost cause, no doubt that you will be proven wrong in time; however, your attribution of intention toward the Democratic leaders is without merit.

I happen to believe that Bush actually thinks that this War is winnable. Your assertion about the Dems is equal to me saying that Bush is only continuing this war in order to place the eventual democratic president in a bad position, national interests be damned. So how exactly does this contribute to the public discourse?
6 too many steves Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 am
As documented in the article, all the activity/discussion, on both sides of the political aisle, is about the political positioning the situation in Iraq provides the Parties and the Candidates. The time for principled discussion (moral, ethical, tactical, strategic) has long passed. How you can observe the wavering of the Republicans and the read the statements of Hillary and Obama and assert that “This poorly conceived War is lost/will be lost in time Mark. No minimal progress on one front changes that. Dems know it and are willing to admit it so that more American don’t die who otherwise wouldn’t have to.” is baffling to me. As I recall, Harry Reid is the only person on record saying we’ve lost (I don’t count Cindy Sheehan).

It is about political opportunism, which nauseates Marc. I’m not made ill by it, but am much less offended by Reid’s candor than the crass political posturing.
7 Stan Peterson Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Democrats need to take the wonderful vacation interlude at the Spa that Mr. Kerry recommends so heartily. A pleasant interlude in a concentration camp while having your brain thoroughly laundered, is touted by him to have major therapeutic effects. The new fad diet also known as the “Auschwitz Starvation Diet” will shed excess pounds from the midriff (and everywhere else, too.)

If you are unhappy, you can go swimming in the warm waters of the South China Sea; or visit the Spas well known crematoria. If you are a nature lover, you can take a walk in th fields and joyously sing “Rocks Keep Falling on My Head”.

Mr. Kerry knows all the delightful emporium owners. Socialists are the world’s experts in constructing and operating such palaces, with the latest amenities. All Five Star rated on the Michelin Guide to Concentration Camps.

There are older resorts other than Fidel’s’ tropic island Tiger Cage resort; or Kim Jong Il’s cool mountain Spas; or Beijing brisk dry desert air resorts in the Gobi. For those who demand the beauty of historical tradition, there is always Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen run by Socialists of another era.
8 Aaron Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Scott, the Democrats have been declaring the war lost since at least the day it started (possibly before hand, I don’t quite remember). Was that based upon their sincere beliefs about the facts on the ground or was it a way for them to criticize the president? Thus, I will remain skeptical about their credibility on this issue of whether we are winning/can win. They’ve been declaring our efforts in Iraq a failure from day one and they’ve been doing their best to ensure that their prophecies come true.

Furthermore, if the Democrats are arguing with the commanding general in Iraq about the possibility of success there, then how can they claim that the war is already lost? I would think that General Petraeus knows more about the situation in Iraq than congress. If the facts on the ground indicate that the war can still be won, for what other reason could the Democrats insist that it has been lost, but for politics?
9 Fargus Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just seen Stan Peterson’s one-man show,, Apropos of Nothing.
10 doug Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 10:43 am
The continuing discussion about whether the war can be won or not really misses the point… we are not at war with the country of Iraq. To be sure there is a continuing problem of violence daily here, (the same could be said for a large number of places), but Iraq is just one front in an on-going ideological struggle that is fought more aggressively by us if we are in the game. For our friends in congress to do things like suggest that we should pull out and move our Army to other areas to fight Al-Qaeda makes no sense logistically. Why not make them stretch their assets to fight us here like they are doing.

Iraq just happens to be the playing field at the moment in what hopefully will be a long string of “away games”. We don’t need their team coming to our house again. When will the public wake up to the fact that this is a war, (Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon by proxy, the Phillipines, Indonesia) and numerous other places that must be fought and it must be won. The security of all western free Civilization is at stake.
11 peter Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Aaron:

“the Democrats have been declaring the war lost since at least the day it started”

Not true. There was no consensus that the war was lost until it had been going on for some time and revealed itself to be the fiasco which it is. When the statue of Saddam fell, it looked for a short period of time to many that things might go OK. One could imagine then a situation where power was transferred to the Iraqis and we were the peacekeepers. I felt that way myself: I remember thinking that we had the A Team of people who had been there before (Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld). These guys managed the first Gulf War and things (arguably) turned out OK, so I thought we would get a repeat except without Saddam in place. Needless to say, I got that one wrong. To suggest that all Democrats – or even most Democrats – declared the game lost during the first inning is incorrect.

“they’ve been doing their best to ensure that their prophecies (of failure) come true.” Absolutely untrue. Evidence?

“If the facts on the ground indicate that the war can still be won, for what other reason could the Democrats insist that it has been lost, but for politics?”
Even Patreus says that the war cannot be “won” by military means alone. As Fargus notes above, the theory behind the surge was that it would provide breathing room for a viable and respected government to emerge. The theory has been proven false. It’s like saying that the patient died on the operating table but we ought to continue surgery because the anesthesiologist did his job.

As a side note, Bush’s insistence on comparing Iraq to VietNam is shameful. Bush correctly notes that there was carnage on a massive scale after we left VietNam. The inference is that we should have stayed there to prevent the violence. However, he does not address the question of whether we should have sacrificed another 58,000 lives to stop the genocide, or even whether continuing the conflict would ever have stopped it. For George Bush, the lesson of VietNam is that we left that quagmire too early. I find that statement to be amazing.
12 too many steves Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
The choices seem to be:

1. The war is lost.
2. The war is not lost.

If #1 is true then we should, post haste, extract ourselves. If #2 is true then we need to answer the question: can it be won? If yes, stay to win, if no, exit, again, post haste.

Seems simple to me. Maybe too simple. There is not broad agreement on the status. Petraeus doesn’t say it can’t be won, he says it can’t be won by military means alone; big difference. Harry Reid says we’ve lost; fair enough, then he should be 100% behind getting us out. Hillary says the surge is working but our long term prospects are not good given the political climate. What does she advocate as a course of action? Replace Maliki? Get the hell out? I’m not sure what Obama is saying (I think he’s saying the surge is working but that is only delaying our eventual loss). George Bush says we haven’t lost, we can win, and the consequences of our leaving early, to ourselves and the Iraqi people, are catastrophic, cataclysmic even.

The person who figures it out and shows leadership is our next President. So far that person hasn’t shown him/herself.
13 peter Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
The problem with deciding if we can win or not lies in the inability to define victory. The administration has consistently moved the goalposts. Victory was first defined as finding and eliminating Iraqi WMD; then it was redefined to a democratic Iraq which would be a beacon for the Middle East; then it was creating a stable government which could unite ethnic groups; then it was stabilizing the violence so the government wouldn’t completely disintegrate; now it is apparently preventing genocide and helicopter-from-the-Embassy scenes on television.

It seems to me that each of the definitions of victory except the possibly the last one or two are now out of reach. The question then becomes how effective the military can be in changing things for the better, or whether a cataclysm is inevitable regardless of what we do. We will have to draw down troops regardless of what happens in Iraq: we just don’t have enough troops to do otherwise. If the case can be made that a continuing presence at a scale close to what we have now will change things – instead of delaying the inevitable – then I’m eager to hear it. Otherwise, the question is simply the logistical one of what pace we wind down American military involvement to do the least harm.
14 Andy Vance Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
the Democrats have been declaring the war lost since at least the day it started

That was by no means an unreasonable position to take. Every one of Davies’ principles still applies to the current situation, particularly this one:

The Vital Importance of Audit. Companies which do not audit projects in order to see how accurate the original projections were, tend to get exactly the forecasts and projects that they deserve. Companies which have a culture where there are no consequences for making dishonest forecasts, get the projects they deserve. Companies which allocate blank cheques to management teams with a proven record of failure and mendacity, get what they deserve…

There is much made by people who long for the days of their fourth form debating society about the fallacy of “argumentum ad hominem”. There is, as I have mentioned in the past, no fancy Latin term for the fallacy of “giving known liars the benefit of the doubt”, but it is in my view a much greater source of avoidable error in the world. Audit is meant to protect us from this, which is why audit is so important.

We have no independent audit of this war’s progress (in part because it’s too friggin’ dangerous for anyone to conduct one, which tells you much in itself). Therefore there’s no reason to believe this administration’s claims are accurate (a conclusion that has borne out time and time again through the years) and therefore no valid reason to invest more blood and treasure in this project.
15 too many steves Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Much has gone wrong with this war, from the incorrect premise that it was based on to the expectations of how it would proceed and to the failure to adjust tactical actions to the realities on the ground in a timely manner.

You call it moving the goalposts, I prefer to say that we haven’t had a definitive, and consistent, strategic objective for our presence in Iraq. Talking about tactics when the objective is absent or poorly defined is not only a waste of time but in war can be lethal. Certainly the President has failed to offer a consistent, well-defined objective for our presence in Iraq, but the war opponents - those that voted for it and then changed their minds, rather than those who were against it from the beginning - have also been quick to define a new objective every time some amount of success has been achieved.

Rather than laud the historic election in Iraq - and the physical risks the voters took to vote - they restate the objective (success) as nearly 100% voter turnout. Lately there is an acknowledgment that the surge is working accompanied by a “but we won’t have success” until Maliki is chastised, at best, or replaced, at worst, for his so far failure to install a stable, happy, functional political structure.

If you are inclined to believe we can win in Iraq, and that there is value to us in doing so, how would you define victory (aka: strategic objective)?
16 peter Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I agree with the first two paragraphs but disagree with the third. Many on the left — most notably the New York Times — were thrilled with the elections. It was indisputably good news. I can’t recall anyone churlish enough to insist on 100% turn-out (needless to say, we don’t come anywhere close to 100% here). However, it didn’t lead to much — in fact, we engineered the replacement of Iraq’s first democratically elected leader to replace him with Maliki.

I’m disinclined to think we can win in Iraq, regardless of how low a bar you set for victory. My suggestion for getting out is a referendum on whether we should stay or go. Whether we think we can do some good is perhaps not as important as whether the Iraqis think we can do some good.
17 Andy Vance Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
they restate the objective (success) as nearly 100% voter turnout.

Oh, come now. The criticism revolved around the lack of Sunni buy-in, thus undermining the government’s legitimacy and exacerbating suspicions and tensions. Which is exactly what happened.
18 too many steves Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Would it be the Iraqi’s voting in this referendum? Fine by me, were they to vote for us to leave we could do so with a clear conscious about anything that happens afterward.

I do think the question of the strategic value of victory in Iraq - to us - needs to be addressed too. The President asserts that leaving would be both a strategic and humanitarian disaster. An Intelligence assessment and political consensus on that is needed.
19 peter Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Yes — I believe there should be a plebiscite in which the Iraqi population is asked if American troops should remain in their country for some fixed period of time, and we should abide by the results, whatever they may be.
20 Aaron Says:
August 25th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Evidence that the Democrats (at least some of them) have been trying to make Iraq into a failure?

Materially they have voted against funding for the war, ever since the first funding vote was taken, I believe. There is a contention over whether this was funding for military equipment for the US forces in Iraq or for the reconstruction of the country — but then, as you said, the war cannot be won exclusively by the military, so either way, those (like the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee) who voted against such funds were voting to undermine the war effort. It seems quite clear that the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee cast this vote for political reasons. I hope you don’t expect me to re-tell you this story.

Rhetorically, the Democrats have been declaring the war a failure and seeking to undermine US goals in Iraq by taking everything they could and casting it in a negative light — primarily to hurt the president and later the GOP congress. A responsible statesman would have acknowledged that whatever the reasons for going to war against Saddam where (if he agreed with them or not) the war against Islamists in Iraq is certainly justified and should be fought. For an example of such a rare statesman, see Congressman Brian Baird (D).

Also, just because the Surge has been fully underway for a couple of months and the Iraqi politicians haven’t all started holding hands and singing kumbayah — or however it’s spelled — we ought to cut and run? I mean, what has the US congress accomplished in the last three months?
21 Aaron Says:
August 25th, 2007 at 1:46 am
I’d also add that the constant insistance that we pull out of Iraq is working to empower the Shia militias in the political realm.

The logic offered by those supporting a troop reduction is reasonable: It will let the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever, so they’d better get their acts together.

Unfortunately, what the Iraqi politicians take from this is that they need allies with guns who will not be leaving if they are going to maintain power — hence Maliki’s forced removal of roadblocks that allowed al-Sadr to escape among other things.

Maliki has suggested that Iraq could take care of the insurgency within a few months if the US left — the way they would “take care of” the insurgency, of course, would be mass slaughter of the Sunni population, probably resulting in either veiled or direct intervention from the Sunni Arab states to the west, which would likely be met by intervention from Iran to aid the Shia. So we get a region-wide war and chaos across the Middle East for a decade or more (not to mention $8-gas over here, further empowering “President” Chavez, but that’s another story). If this weren’t such a dreadful scenario, I’d find it amusing that the same people who opposed the war in 2002 and 2003 because it would bring chaos are now urging a pull-out in spite of the same likely result.
22 Peter Says:
August 25th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
1) Democrats “have voted against funding for the war”

Not true. When Republicans controlled Congress, Democrats votes were moot because the GOP always had enough votes to pass funding in the annual appropriations bills and the “emergency” authorizations which followed it (because the administration consistently low-balled the cost of the war in the annual budget and got a compliant GOP to add to the war budget during the fiscal year). Now that Democrats control Congress, the war is still fully funded. Some Democrats have voted for funding and others against it; never have enough Democrats voted to de-fund the war for it to make a difference.

Re reconstruction funds: the amount of funds which have been misspent due to corruption, projects which were abandoned after they were half-built, waste, and loss of principal (funds which are simply unaccounted for) is mind-boggling. Is your suggestion that the spigot always be open regardless of what happens to the money?

2) “Rhetorically, the Democrats have been declaring the war a failure and seeking to undermine US goals in Iraq by taking everything they could and casting it in a negative light”

The war has been a failure since nearly day one. Is there something wrong with mentioning the obvious?

It is hard to discuss Iraq without “casting it in a negative light.” A stable country has been turned into anarchy, tens (hundreds?) of thousands are dead, the balance of power in the region has shifted to Iran, terrorists have their best recruiting tool ever, and our ability to influence events in the Middle East and elsewhere has been drastically diminished. Is it your suggestion that politicians evaluating Iraq should be docile Pollyannas happy to rubber-stamp whatever they hear from the administration?

3) “primarily to hurt the president and later the GOP congress”

Let me get this right. You’re a member of Congress and you recognize that the war has been a catastrophic disaster. You discuss this on the floors of Congress, to the media, or in your district. Your motivation therefore is not to do your job and try to correct the nation’s course, but rather to hurt the opposing party? The logical implication of your statement is that the opposition party ought to always support whatever the President does, because to do otherwise would be due to partisan considerations. Is this really what you believe?

Let’s go back to the 1990’s when the Clinton administration tried to strengthen the ability to track Al Qaeda’s finances, which was blocked by Republican Senators such as Phil Gramm and Fred Thompson. Did they do that to “hurt the President?” When the GOP Congress wouldn’t go along with Clinton’s health care program, did they do that to “hurt the President?” Gramm and Thompson blocked the anti- terrorist program because they thought it would place undue burdens on the financial system; the GOP Congress rejected the health program because they disagreed with the policy. Reasonable people can argue as to whether these actions were misguided or not, but if your first assumption is that the opposition party does everything out of political self-interest to damage the party in power, then you’ve denied the justification of representative democracy.

4) “the war against Islamists in Iraq is certainly justified and should be fought.”

A very revealing statement. Who exactly are the Islamists in Iraq we should be fighting? Are they the Sunnis who are killing Shia to extract revenge for the decades of Shiite rule? Are they the Shia death squads who kill Sunnis living in Shiite areas? Are they the death squads who killed 500 Iraqis last week because their obscure religious sect doesn’t recognize Islam? And what have the “Islamists in Iraq” done to threaten us? By what right do we occupy their country?

5) “because the Surge has been fully underway for a couple of months and the Iraqi politicians haven’t all started holding hands and singing kumbayah”

The escalation started in February. The war has been going on for years. There are no signs of political progress since the war started: in fact, things are getting worse as minority groups pull out of the government. This has occurred at the cost of hundreds of American lives. How many more lives are you willing to throw on the fire so Iraqi politicians can dither?

Moreover, we have created a situation where the different groups in Iraq stand to benefit from continuing chaos, and hence are either unwilling to support the central government or actively oppose it. I suggest you read the following article from today’s New York Times – it also rebuts Post 21:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/world/middleeast/25assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin