From Anthony H. Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies:
From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq’s ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq’s politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning.
The attached trip report [downloadable .pdf] does, however, show there is still a tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq, and for timing reductions in US forces and aid to Iraqi progress rather than arbitrary dates and uncertain benchmarks. It recognizes that strategic patience is a high risk strategy, but it also describes positive trends in the fighting, and hints of future political progress.
[my emphasis]
As Jules Crittenden notes, Cordesman’s report is born of the same trip that led Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institute to make similar arguments in the New York Times — driving David Sirota into a kind of virtual apoplexy during which he accused the pair of being neocon stooges and rhetorical double agents — stopping just short of tying them to the Illuminati or the Knights Templar [note: somehow, the comments I left for Sirota have been disappeared from the Denver Post blog. I suspect an airbrush was involved. The one comment that remained was favorable to Sirota’s insubstantial rant, in which Hitler was invoked — which I’m sure isn’t a bug so much as it is a feature.]
Here’s Crittenden:
Howbout that. Another harsh war critic who doesn’t particularly like the situation in Iraq, but likes the Congressional rush to abandonment even less. No wonder Congress was in such a hurry, repeatedly, to pull the rug out from under Petraeus. Political animals must smell something in the wind.
I suppose it’s possible that Cordesman’s assessment, too, can be dismissed by the likes of Sirota as the ravings of a neocon mole — albeit one who is cited approvingly by Counterpunch, the same far left rag that published a defense of Ward Churchill by a certain former U of AZ adjunct last seen humping a lamppost — but the fact is, his assessment is consistent with those being made by Robert Burns and Michael Yon, and matches the overall assessment of strategic concerns noted by Bill Ardolino, who served as an embed with a Marine unit charged with training Iraqi forces.
In short, the process is difficult and won’t proceed without its share of obstacles and setbacks (I like to refer to this as a “long hard slog”) — but, in the long-term, the best strategy is not a strategic pull-back or an announced timetable for troop redeployments to Okinawa based on “arbitrary dates and uncertain benchmarks”; rather, it is to proceed with “strategic patience,” and a surge strategy that has yielded “positive trends in the fighting, and hints of future political progress.”
As Karl noted in a recent comment, those “hints of future political progress,” alas, are likely to be misread as signs of inevitable failure by those intent on cutting and running — a testament to an self-professed nuance that, in reality, is both single-minded and blinkered:
It will never occur to [many of the anti-war agitators and defeatists] that some Sunni parties are threatening to bolt the gov’t as leverage against the Shia precisely because the Sunni insurgency is being defeated and is now switching sides to fight AQI. Nor will it occur to them that such can lead to: (a) more realistic negotiations on the pressing issues of reconciliation, oil revenues, etc; or (b) possible replacement of unrealistic Sunnis in the gov’t with more realistic ones, such as the tribal chiefs Maliki has been wooing as of late.
If the surge yields positive results — and the tide continues to turn in Iraq as the counterinsurgency forces provide cover (and coaxing) for substantial political reconciliations — Congressional Democrats will have barked and shrieked and dissembled and demonized in the aid of a defeat that was not, in fact, inevitable. And they know it.
And I don’t think that even reluctant reporting of documented progress — filled with caveats and warnings from a press sympathetic to Democrats — will be enough to camouflage the fact that national Democrats were not only willing, but intent, on securing an American miltary defeat in Iraq.
All of which means that if Americans, by and large, retain their famed optimism, Democrats could find themselves at a terrible rhetorical disadvantage come mid-2008.
Which is why this aggressive effort to label the “surge” a failure, even in advance of allowing it a chance to succeed, has been so craven and opportunistic: Democrats have decided to place their own goals of regaining power over long-term national interests and a muscular foreign policy whose strength is derived not from military force, but rather from commitment — which, when coupled with military force, diplomatic coherence, and ideological resolve, has the capacity to overwhelm our enemies.
****
update: Bill emails:
[Cordesman’s] assessment is so consistent with mine, we even used the same word: “tenuous.”
To which I reply, it has always been thus.
The great lie from the anti-war side is that people like me don’t recognize the difficulty — or inherent tenuousness — of what it is we’ve been trying to accomplish in Iraq. But why else do these comfortable defeatists and inveterate contrarians think some of us have devoted so much time and energy to beating back their attempts to undermine the effort?
No strategy to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism is without risk. But maintaining the pre-911 status quo — which was once comfortable enough to declare we’d reached the end of history — is just a way of kicking the can down the road, something that liberal Boomers have proven themselves expert at. That the hard left supports those who would have us do nothing — well, bracketing calls to either “tolerate” a certain level of terrorism, or invade Pakistan, or nuke Iran, should they step out of line — suggests a marriage of convenience between the craven and the demagogic.
Both of whose representatives must be engaged and defeated on the battleground of rhetoric.
The surge was a failed, before it even started, and continues to fail to this day. How dare you suggest otherwise! We have already lost in Iraq. Blah, blah, blah.
I honestly would like if their was a powerful, responsible opposition party in the US. Being simply anti-Bush is insufficient now that they are running the House and Senate. Maybe a bit of responsibility will make them act at least like teenagers. Is that too much to ask for?
Which is a strategy destined to fail. Brian Faughnan at the Weekly Standard sums it up nicely through paraphrasing Bob Casey who is touring Iraq with Dick Durbin.
I once had a a neocon mole removed surgically.
Pablo – Did I read that right? They first, acknowledge that progress is being made, and as a result of that progress, want the President to change the current policy?
I can understand why Casey wants to be seen as being thoughtful on this topic, being the intellectual heavyweight that he is, but I am curious as to why Durbin is even going through the motions. He is as big of a lying crap weasel as there is in the Senate.
One of Prof. Caric’s recent observations
“Instead, they look at the Bush administration and the American right and your arrogance and stupidity and sees us as being a bigger problem for them than al-Qaeda or Iran. It’s no big surprise. We have a $573 billion dollar military. Al-Qaeda is a rag tag organization and Iran has a $6.2 billion military budget. In the proportion of things (which we never recognize), we’re the bigger problem.”
Just when you think they cannot get any stupider, Caric makes a full frontal assault on stupiderest.
What galls me is the continual repetition of this idea that Bush is flogging the same old strategy. There is a new strategy — there has been for most of 2007; there is a new guy implementing it, a guy who was in fact overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate to do precisely this job.
Look, we lost around 2 years of forward progress while political support for the occupation and reconstruction either drained off or was forcibly bailed out by the defeatist bucket brigades. A good bit of that, though not nearly all of it, is Bush’s fault. But the strategy has changed.
TW: Romans relations
If more money spent means more of a problem, I wonder if we shouldn’t be taking back some of that money we’re throwing at failing public schools.
caveats and warnings from a press sympathetic to Democrats
This morning on NPR:
Seems timely to pose this question again:
If–IF–by the time Petraeus testifies to all the (ahem) lying crapweasles in congress next month, there are these continued small but encouraging signs of progress in theater, do you think any of the Donkey candidates will have the guts/suicide wish to get to the right of the others and support the surge? Seems like there is still, contrary to the MSM’s spin, a pretty significantly wide swath of moderates and independents who would get behind this (fantasy)candidate.
OK, I’ll go back on my meds, now.
kelly – They have already proclaimed defeat, and told us that they will disregard any reports of progress from Petraeus, as he is just a political mouthpiece for President Bush. So, when they tell us that we should be listening to the Generals, they really do not mean it. They demanded a change in strategy, and then when it changed, they declared it a failure before it even started. It would take 6 ounces of magic mushrooms, a tab of acid, 2 valium, and a Xanax, washed down with Teddy Kennedy’s breakfast cocktail to allow one to try to wade through the various and ever changing positions that the Dems have held, and will hold, about how horribly we are losing.
“comfortable defeatists and
inveterateinvertibrate contrarians”Fixed that for you, Jeff.
The argument during the TNR debate (advanced by Mona in the comments at HighClearing, and others) was that the nutters were focusing on that story in order to distract from the terrible news coming out of Iraq.
Soon they will have to begin arguing that the nutters are focusing on Iraq in order to distract from the need for universal healthcare.
Heh.
Mona would certainly know “nutter.”
You can hear her arguments coming before they even take off.
She’s like the blogosphere’s very own Bizarro World Stealth bomber.
I didn’t have the link handy when I made the comment, but it was inspired in part by a recent post at Talisman’s Gate. I figure Nibras Kazimi probably knows a thing or two about how Alawi thinks also.
Well, she wrote the comment without once quoting Greenwald approvingly, and I sure as hell didn’t see that coming.
Everyone knows we just haven’t thrown enough money at the schools yet. I mean just look at how underpaid public school teachers are. I mean, they only earn about the same as Registered Nurses and teachers work nine months a year and have to master tricky subjects like 3rd grade spelling or even Freshman Algebra.
We need higher teacher salaries for the children! I’m not some crazy liberal though. We also need to drastically increase the number of bureaucrats that don’t do any educating so we can have more performance testing. Then we can hold the schools accoutable for their performance while we throw more money at them.
I don’t know how about the surge though. After all this time the only thing I’ve learned is that the problem with the Iraqi government is it’s governed by Iraqis.
[…] I’m too busy to write my own stuff, so I’ll pass along this quote from Jeff Goldstein: “The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq: A Trip Report” [UPDATED] The great lie from the anti-war side is that people like me don’t recognize the difficulty  […]
This reminds me of an old joke…
George Bush and Nancy Pelosi are riding a tandem. George is the captain and decides to go up Pike’s Peak. Nancy says they’ll never make it, but George keeps his legs pumping and eventually gets to the top, where they stop and George says between gasps for air, “See, I told you we’d make it!”
Nancy responds, “It’s a good thing I had the brakes on the whole time, otherwise we would have gone down backwards!”
Crap – and there I was, counting on an easy tour in Iraq…bah!
I feel tired, on your behalf, Jeff – maybe you could develop some sort of macro to use when you have to make the same arguments to the Monas of the world, over and over and over again. Personally, were I you, I would be crippled with carpal tunnel from the typing and hung over from the drinking required to sustain the effort with the wilful and intentional defeatists.
[…] Blogging will be light through this week, as I’m currently buried in work. However, in the meantime, Mitch Berg has a fascinating look at what it means to be a conservative, Michelle Malkin takes a look at the left an Winter Soldier Syndrome and Jeff Goldstein examines the strategic case for patience in Iraq. […]
Kind of OT, but I was wondering if anyone could point me to some links or articles that articulate the foreign policy of Libertarians? Also, one(s) that would articulate that of traditional conservatives? Or is “Realism” pretty much the traditional conservative’s foreign policy? And, if it is not too much trouble, an article or link that articulates the Left’s foreign policy, that is if they have one. Thanks. And, no, I’m not being facetious, either. I have just been looking around and other than seeing how these three groups HATE the neo-con’s foreign policy (the vitriol at the neo-cons at places like American Conservative, Lew Rockwell, and Amnation is every bit as nasty and counterproductive as any lefty site), I have not found anything that really describes their foreign policies.
It dawned on me when watching a couple of the sunday AM talk shows that the Dems have already figured on the surge producing positive results, so their new push will be on the lack of POLITICAL results by the lame Maliki government etc. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Levin both pushed the same angle, so apparently those talking points are out there and in play by the Dems.
And by the media. Look at your news papers. I think Allah gave a couple of these articles some coverage over at Hotair too. One about the problems with the electrical grid, and the disintergration of Basra.
Odd what few people in the media seem to wish to mention about Basra is that the probelmes there have been caused by a lack of political will in Britian to confront Islamists and criminals in Iraq. I wonder why they leave that out, hunh? Could it be that with that little fact included such articles wouldn’t be an object lesson for Americans? No journalist would shade facts that way, would he?
Look, most of these folks writing these assessments are trying to play the middle. Not because they are ideologically opposed or for the current strategy but because they don’t want to get caught with their pants down when something goes really good or really bad.
You know, these folks learned something from Vietnam, too. They think what they learned was that “parroting” the government line would make them out to be liars or government propagandists. Strangely enough, that leaves them reporting garbage instead of objectivity.
They don’t realize that they should report a good story as good and a bad story as bad and leave the rest of the balancing up to the public instead of trying to balance it themselves or hedge their bets. That was never their job. Objective news reports the facts, and we decide how well it is going.
These folks don’t seem to get that.
In other words, these are not grown-ups. I hear you.
The great lie from the anti-war side is that people like me don’t recognize the difficulty  or inherent tenuousness  of what it is we’ve been trying to accomplish in Iraq. But why else do these comfortable defeatists and inveterate contrarians think some of us have devoted so much time and energy to beating back their attempts to undermine the effort?
It would be easier to believe that the pro-war blogosphere really recognized the difficulty and inherent tenuousness of what is being attempted in Iraq, if their efforts seemed to be aimed at increasing the chances of success. Bush, for example, pushed for the surge over the objections of the Joint Chiefs. And that wasn’t the first time he’s ignored the advice of military commanders. Look what Shinseki got for expressing disagreement. But where on the pro-war side was the outcry over Bush pushing for the surge over the objections of the Joint Chiefs? And wouldn’t that be the expected reaction from anyone who is truly concerned about winning in Iraq? As opposed, for example, to a more political sort of motivation, which would go a lot further toward explaining the prevailing wind in the pro-war blogosphere.
You talk about “kicking the can down the road,” but that seems like the goal of the pro-war blogosphere. They talk about wanting to win in Iraq, but they don’t push for competent efforts to wage that war. They grasp at the straw of the surge, knowing that the top military commanders opposed that plan. Six more months, and then we’ll be at a turning point. Six more months, and then we’ll be at a turning point. Six more months, and then we’ll be at a turning point. Six more months, and then we’ll be at a turning point. Six more months, and then we’ll be at a turning point. Six more months, and then we’ll be at a turning point.
Comment by JD on 8/8 @ 10:49 am #
“Just when you think they cannot get any stupider, Caric makes a full frontal assault on stupiderest.”
Actually, he was just slipping up and being honest. Its been obvious to me for years the American left thinks American ‘conservatives’ and it’s ‘right’ (they bestowed those terms, I don’t really buy them)… are the main enemey…
“Bush, for example, pushed for the surge over the objections of the Joint Chiefs. And that wasn’t the first time he’s ignored the advice of military commanders.”
So what did the Joint Chiefs suggest? And did you support that?
TW: another squibs Nah, I tink dese is full grown boids.
“Just when you think they cannot get any stupider, Caric makes a full frontal assault on stupiderest.â€Â
Full frontal assault, indeed. The Good Perfessor has used his Massively Edumacated Cranium to divine the real meaning of the Cordesman report, that it is apparently apparent our military is about to go rogue:
http://tinyurl.com/3a5785
That is some world class bullshit, right there.
And that wasn’t the first time he’s ignored the advice of military commanders.
-yeah, the President also relieved MacArthur and McClellan….
Look what Shinseki got for expressing disagreement.
-scheduled retirement?
Bob, if you’re so concerned that the administration is not being properly deferential to the military, would you like to just end civilian oversight altogether?
TW universal, swift. One for Bob’s views, one for mine.
Sorry, Bob, but there have been quite a number of conversations here on the “pro-war” side over strategy and tactics. Steven Den Beste and Bill Quick, two early titans of the political blogosphere, had a very public falling over just such a thing back around the time of the first Fallujah campaign.
This may surprise you, but the “right” doesn’t agree with President Bush’s every decision, nor does it agree with every argument made by the military (for instance, you’ll find quite a few people who disagree with Colin Powell on a number of positions, but would nevertheless agree with him that when you go to war, you do so with the kind of overwhelming force that defeats an enemy thoroughly).
Obviously, though, we’re dealing with a complex set of circumstances that extend not only to military strategy, but must take into account alliances (and their political realities), the opposition at home, international opinion, and must simultaneously try to keep their finger on the pulse of the various interested factions in a complex region.
Petraeus seems to think the surge — nothing more than an aggressive counterinsurgency necessitated by early miscalculations about how the al Qaeda, the Baathists, and certain Sunnis were likely to act (itself precipitated by a host of events, from Turkey’s unwillingness to allow us to bring troops in from the north to Bush I’s broken promises after the Gulf War) — is the best course of action to get a handle on the situation, and those who have studied counterinsurgencies seem to support him.
As, of course, did Congress. Before they began trying to cut him off at the knees at the first signs of success.
Wow.
Just… wow.
Bob, you don’t read much history do you?
tw: seethed 510,000 – uh, wow, even the Turing Word is making fun of you Bob.
SeanH
We need higher teacher salaries for the children!
Actually, although it’s obvious you were being sarcastic, I think we do need higher salaries for teachers. Higher salaries would attract more competent and learned people to the profession.
As an active parent in my childrens education, I’ve met maybe TWO competent professional teachers. And,I must admit, many more who were dedicated,but found wanting. You’re hearing this from someone who admits he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.
The problem is the Union from what I’ve seen. The almighty NEA and even the locals want kind of a “Group-Think” where if you don’t fit in? You don’t belong. There are NO exceptions.
My answer? Privatize the schools, pay commensurate salaries, STOP local and National Unions. That would get the best and brightest out of business,science,history and yeah,I’ll give a nod to English(sorry Jeff)…
Like that will ever happen.
Full disclosure. I used to teach. OK OK…it was only a 3 yr Head Start substitute teacher position, but at least I TRIED!!!!
LOL! grantee also Not so much…
Blitz, when I was awaiting my bar exam results in 1994, I was a subsitute teacher at Batavia HS in IL. The starting salary for a teacher with my education was $7,500 more than what I got, a year later at the State’s Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor. I sort of lost the sympathy thing for the teachers at that moment.
Spot the imperialist.
I don’t think it’s a lie so much as a misapprehension. Look at what Cordesman says here:
Now to you and me and everyone else who understands “it has always been thus,” This would be an odd thing to say. It would be like stating the sky is blue, or water is wet, or fire is hot. But Cordesman is stating this because he is drawing a distinction between our tenuous situation in Iraq and an imagined situation where we COULD “dictate” Iraq’s future. We understand that “dictating” Iraq’s future was never one of our options, nor could it be, but people like Cordesman believe that power is such that with enough, it is possible to “dictate” the future of another nation, to, in essence, command the outcomes we want. So when they recognize the current reality in Iraq as being tenuous, they believe we’ve already failed.
yours/
peter.
So what did the Joint Chiefs suggest?
“Go big, go long, or go home.” Does that ring any bells?
And did you support that?
Yes. Any of the three would at least be defensible.
As opposed to half-assed efforts that seem to be designed to do nothing but prop up incompetent leadership, at the expense of American lives. With the full support of the right-wing blogosphere, of course.
I think maybe bob has a different definition of “long” than the rest of us.
and “big” for that matter, B Moe.
Big meant an increase of multitudes, not 30,000 troops. Long meant downsizing, so to reduce the strain on the military, and preparing for the longhaul.
I suspect bob believes that we’re stuck in a bastardized version of both which isn’t big enough to clamp down, but is big enough to significantly degrade our ability to keep it up over the longhaul.
bob wrote:
Yes, let’s do that. You would think this kind of krep would stop when even the HuffPo calls BS on it.
Also nice that bob attacks Bush for replacing the leadership and going with the surge after his fellow travelers spent all that time talking about the failure in Iraq under that old leadership.
We don’t need higher salaries for teachers, we actually need to make it easier for people to become teachers. Many states have onerous requirements for teachers designed to make it more difficult to get into teaching. An acquaintance of mine has a PhD in education ( no moaning in the back! ) but has been told by the local state board of education that he still has to take a year long course to obtain a teaching certificate.
Another acquaintance of mine was on the board of a charter school helping interview teacher applicants. Since they were exempt from many of the state regulations on teacher qualifications, he was getting applications from PhD’s in physics and chemistry who had been rejected by the local school district.
Robin, I have a simpler solution: more charter schools.