This is a very cleverly conceived and artfully done piece of satire, right?

It is satire, isn't it? Please say it is satire. Please. 

There's also been some discussion here about long-term American presence in Iraq, including military bases. In some ways, that's exactly the idea... There can be no "exit strategy" that is a "victory strategy," in any meaningful sense,...

What does it take for some people to realize that their fantasies of what other people, nations and cultures think are in no way related to what those people, nations and cultures actually think? And worse, that they will do not what you fantasize they might, if they indeed thought like you, but what they actually believe is in the own best interests, as they perceive them to be.

It is thinking (used in its broadest sense of ideation, not the sense of collecting and assessing data and proposing solutions based on logic and experience, of course) like this that creates disastrous blunders like the Iraq war, and thinking like this that perpetuates them and makes them even more destructive. 

Now I notice that "Donnelly is the resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI"

Perhaps then, this is not satire. How tragic.

It would also be nice if Democrats got serious about the business of helping shape a strategy rather than simply bashing the president.

As I recall, every time the democrats make anything like a helpful suggestion, the republicans twist their words and use them to try and score political points. Let me suggest that democrats have repeatedly made strategic suggestions, e.g. Kerry's take on affairs during the 2004 elecion runup, which were ignored then and mocked by the republicans ("more sensitive war"), even as they now struggle to co-opt them while giving no credit for the original ideas.

This comment is absolutely perfect.

If anything, Democrats have been far too unwilling to bash the shallow, immature little man who occupies the oval office, but even with that said, when Tom Donnelley shows us that he wrote sympathetically about john kerry's attempts to get america on the right track in iraq last year, then i'll listen to him about democrats.

otherwise, for nearly 3 years now, those of us who foresaw the fiasco, who understood up front that there would be no cakewalk, who could tell simply by using our heads and not our testosterone that the costs in blood and treasure would far exceed any gain, who resented the dishonest case for war that the bush administration and its enablers (like tom donnelly) foisted off on the american public, have had it up to here with hearing people tell us that we should "stop bashing" that poor president bush.

there's one word to say to that, and as someone familiar with military history, tom donnelly will probably recognize it: nuts.

Mr. Donnelly, do you honestly believe that the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has not been serious about shaping a strategy but only been intent on bashing the president?

But I must admit I wonder why Mr. Biden is so patient when he has to deal with people whose judgment is that a pernicious insurgency can be quashed while tens of thousands of American troops remain on Iraqi soil.

Mr . Donnelly--I'll filter away the stuff in your post that elicits a "you cannot be serious" and ask a serious question. You say:

Moreover, in the strict military sense, the Iraqi insurgents are nowhere near as strong as the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army

Which insurgents are you talking about? The dead-enders, former Ba'athists, and international terrorists who kill Americans and other Iraqis? Or do you mean the pre-existing Iraqi factions who have occasionally used violence to achieve their ends, and who if we weren't there would be killing each other with a lot more regularity? Wouldn't you say the various Shi'ite militias, at a bare minimum, have significant outside support, and that assuming anything resembling democracy is in place Shi'ites will control the government, wouldn't you say the long term prospects for a maximalist Shi'ite victory are pretty good?

 And what system do you forsee being strong enough to keep these factional interests in check? Is anything being done to forge actual consensus in a country where not only does it not exist but the differences are deep and fundamental and have resulted in violence in the past and likely will again? And please don't cite the hollow democratic structures foisted on Iraq by the CPA. I fail to see how running an election featuring slates of anonymous candidates does anything other than entrenching pre-existing factional loyalties.

Aren't you disturbed by stories like the one today about the Mayor of Baghdad being deposed by Shi'ite militia? And is there anything other than wishcasting being used to prevent--or punish-- acts like this? Doesn't stuff like this, and the recent agreement signed between Iraq and Iran, suggest that all you experts have accomplished with your project is to do Iran's dirty work for them?

Look, I'll take you at your word that "our prospects for success in Iraq haven't been entirely ruined by the administration's mistakes." But does the Administration even admit mistakes? Do they have a plan, or even a vision? Do they have the necessities to actually get the job done?

The government of South Vietnam never enjoyed widespread legitimacy, but the situation in Iraq couldn't be more different and, again, the price that Iraqis seem willing to pay should remind us of that."

I read the seemingly reasonable comment until I got to that phrase emphasized by me.

Nothing I have read in international news including that from bloggers living in Iraq, from Arab news, from polls of Iraqi people leads me to believe that the Iraqi people are willing to pay the price they are presently paying. The living conditions in Iraq are a living hell. Even a staunch supporter of the Iraq invasion, war correspondent, Stephen Vincent, until his recent execution in Iraq, was making an attempt to inform his readers on the right-wing FrontPageMagazine.com that the living conditions in Iraq were unbearable. He was met with derision for telling the truth of what he was witnessing with his own eyes.

Can the Thomas Donnelly back up his statement that the majority of the Iraqi people are willing to pay the price.

The United States, unprovoked in terms of national security, almost single-handedly  took a secular nation and has turned it into a shaky theocratic-leaning democracy on the brink of civil war.  No one in the administration (or in the media) has so far explained what victory we can expect from this muddle.  They sling around words like "victory" and "winning the war" as if this were World War II, talking to us as if we were children.  But if you listen to the women of Iraq, for example, our actions have resulted in a curbing of their freedoms, which will not be returned to them after Americans finally declare victory and leave. 

Can the Thomas Donnelly back up his statement that the majority of the Iraqi people are willing to pay the price.

I wondered about that as well.  The most charitable explanation I could come up with was that Mr Donnelly is taking the fact that even despite the incessant slaughter there do appear to still be lines outside recruiting stations for police and army in Iraq, as evidence that the Iraqi people are "willing to pay the price".

Of course Iraqi people like the rest of us have to eat.  And it's probably better to take the chance of getting slaughtered as opposed to staying home starving and listening to your family starve.

And of course, reading dire economic necessity as fulsome moral support for the occupation is probably the kind of straw people in Mr Donnelly's line of work have to get used to clutching.

(I wonder how many Iraqi people are willing to risk being slaughtered for the purpose of achieving long term US military bases in their country.  Unlike Mr Donnelly I wouldn't pretend to know)

Worse than that.  The US, and the author, have been manipulated by Iranian intelligence to advance Iranian strategic ends.  Iran's deadliest enemy, Saddam, has been deposed.  The largest party in the "government" is an Iranian-style Shi'a theocratic party, whose spiritual leader, Sistani, is an Iranian citizen.  Their second deadliest enemy, the US, has almost its entire army tied up, and is bleeding its wealth and lives.  The possibility of a major American attack on Iran has been largely neutralized, and the American position in the world has been greatly damaged.  

And all this has been accomplished at minimal cost to Iran; unlike the bloodbath of the Iran-Iraq war, no Iranian blood and relatively little money (mainly in financial support to pro-Iran Iraqi exile groups) has been required.

It's pretty nearly the optimal outcome for Iran so far, even better than a peaceful, Shiite-dominated pro-Iran Iraq would be, because of the damage done to Iran's deadliest enemy, namely us.

Any competent analyst would see this, but in the US, analysts are paid to have opinions that support the views of their customers, not for competence.

A US withdrawal is not in Iran's interest, as it frees up the armed forces for action against Iran, and a full-scale regional Shiite-Sunni civil war could cost Iranian lives.  What's optimal for the Iranians is for the US to continue to follow AEI advice, and to press on, forever, to try to stabilize the situation, at the cost of $100 billion to $200 billion, and several hundred lives, per year.  Forever.

At least Ahmad Chalabi made a profit on his collusion with the Iranians.

The government of South Vietnam never enjoyed widespread legitimacy, but the situation in Iraq couldn't be more different and, again, the price that Iraqis seem willing to pay should remind us of that.

You have got to be kidding us.

We have a puppet government defined by elements of an old regime, a post-colonial civil war which Americans are misengaged in, and a bunch of old Vietnam hands trying to run the thing the same way from the Washington Beltway.   I seem to remember polling done in Iraq that shows the populace in no way meaningfully supports the 'Governing Council'.   Who would, given how Allawi is ostensibly licensing torture and death squads and that find moral exemplar Chalabi is out to become Hussein's judge, jury, and executioner?  Just how does this regime truly distinguish itself from Hussein's?

I'd agree that Iraqi democracy is a long term prospect- rather like Vietnamese democracy was in ~1973/74.  The ugly fact that the civil war at the heart of the problem had to be won by one side or the other before further progress could be made, that is also evident in Iraq as it was in Vietnam.  American denial of this, and of having once backed the losing side, seems also horribly familiar.

It's amazing to me to me how many people have bought into this Bush Administration cargo cultism of 'freedom and democracy'.  Somehow, all we have to do is provide the forms and structures and perform all the orthopraxis ritualia "properly", and Liberal Democracy will swoop in from the heavens and bestow riches of Freedom.

Then again, how could anyone expect an Administration that is built on political alliances of groups of Americans whose shared trait is subscription to occultisms. to act in a logic that isn't based in magical thinking?

It's amazing to me to me how many people have bought into this Bush Administration cargo cultism of 'freedom and democracy'.

I read about a mother of a US Marine killed in Iraq who learned the news from a Marine at her front door. He told her that her son 'died for freedom.' She deeply resented the comment. I have thought many times, how I would react in her place.

many countries outsource their security needs to the U.S.

Just like Lando Calrissian "outsourced the security needs" of Bespin to Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back?  :)

It would also be nice if Democrats got serious about the business of helping shape a strategy rather than simply bashing the president.  To win in Iraq and the Greater Middle East, it's got to be more than a one-party war.

You assume that the Democrats WANT us to win.  But that is clearly belied by the facts.  Rather, it is clear that the majority of Democrats want us to lose.  After all, losing would prove their anti-war position to be correct, vindicate their hatred of George Bush, and make it more unlikely that the United States continues to have an internationalist foreign policy.  Moreover, a smaller segment of the Democrat Party also believes that the insurgents are morally superior to America (that would be the "Insurgents are the Iraqi Minutemen" wing of the Democrat Party... you know, the people sitting in Jimmy Carter's Presidential Box).

It's nice of Thomas Donnelly to play along here, but Diamond's book, along with most anti-war material, seems to more an exercise at justifying their anti-war views than an honest analysis of the situation in Iraq. 

There's also been some discussion here about long-term American presence in Iraq, including military bases. In some ways, that's exactly the idea - to create a longlasting strategic partnership with Iraq, and to help protect this nascent experiment in Arab democracy, as imperfect as it is and will be for years and years.  

"We come in peace.  Well, we didn't really come in peace, but we stay in peace.  How's that?"  

Ridiculous.    

It appears from the news reports that we are frustrated tactically in Iraq, but I do think we are winning strategically.  

Ah yes: it's the news reports that are the trouble.  Can't trust those biased, liberal journalists.  Nice little slip in.  

Why in the Bush-Rumsfeld plan has there been so little emphasis in protecting ordinary Iraqis?  Whether it was to allow the looting of arms caches to letting insurgents murder Iraqis daily.  Would we be better worrying less about tracking down the insurgents and engaging them in firefights and worrying more about getting Iraq working again?

What seems to be an apt comparison between Iraq and Vietman is the expectation of whoever is directing American policy about the war we are fighting.  One of Westmoreland's biggest blunders was to keep waiting to fight a WWII style war.  He kept directing bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail and having U.S. forces engage in firefights that killed more Vietnamese civilians that enemy.  The result was to give the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces a lot of resources for supplies that didn not need to be brought in from outside.  

In Iraq we keep fighting the insurgents and driving them out of a particular city.  The result is we also kill a lot of Iraqis and destroy their cities.  Since we do not have enough troops we then leave and the insurgents return.  

I do not know if we are not getting a proper story from Iraq but it sure seems like a good idea if Bush and others connected with this war both studied the history of Vietnam and read the Marines manual for small wars.

It would also be nice if Democrats got serious about the business of helping shape a strategy rather than simply bashing the president.  To win in Iraq and the Greater Middle East, it's got to be more than a one-party war.

You are making the assumption that the Democrats want to "win in Iraq and the Greater Middle East".  This assumption is not borne out by the facts, though.  The majority of Democrats do not, in fact, want to wini, but would rather lose, so as to prove their anti-war views correct, vindicate their hatred of George Bush, and make it less likely that we'd use force in the future.  Moreover, there is a smaller segment of the Democrat party who consider the Iraqi insurgents to be morally superior to the United States (call that the "Insurgents are the Iraqi Minutemen" wing of the Democrat party -- the wing prominently displayed in Jimmy Carter's Presidential Box at the convention).

I rated this up because I don't think that we should rate down legitimate comments. I also think there is a kernal of truth in what Al has said, although I do disagree with theoverall premise.

Dan,
And I rated up the first posting of this Radical talking point the first time it was posted, for the same reason.  Eleven people disagreed with me and it was zero'd out.  Posting it a second time is by definition spam.

sPh 

Well, I'd hate to see this blog become an "I'll lowrate your posts and then you can lowrate mine, and then I'll lowrate yours, so you can lowrate mine", and so on. That seems to be what is happening the past few days. I've had several of my posts rated zero or one, and have been called a ntroll. When regular members start using those tactics to substitute for reasoned disagreement, the that's the sure sign an internet blog or forum is headed for trouble. The answer is for strong moderation to stop such tactics. 

Isn't it time that we move beyond tired Marxist cant?  It really doesn't help in the analysis of the war in Iraq.

I wish you could substantiate either assertion.

Furthermore, the more often complaint heard is that the government in Iraq won't be "puppet" enough.

By supporters of democracy, I'm sure.

I seem to remember a poll in which over 8 million voters participated despite terrorist threats and attempts to prevent the election.

My grandparents voted in the first elections after the Nazi takeover of Germany, and they describe it likewise.

I remember proud voters who raised their ink stained thumbs in defiance to the terrorists and in support of a free Iraq.

I believe the outcome was in fact that they all voted for the parties serving their tribal leaders and warlords and theocrats, i.e. feudalism.

It amazes me that so many people who so loudly proclaim support for liberal ideals everywhere in the world for some reason oppose it for the people of Iraq.

Liberalism is not an occultism, unlike whatever it is you subscribe to.  Liberalism is rooted in social reality and respect for social reality and its evolution.  There's even a science that backs liberal thinking in this way: anthropology.  And there is a field of study that shows the diachronic developmental patterns anthropology has discerned in their political manifestations across many peoples and great periods of time: history.

Iraqi society is at a stage where a civil war between tribalisms is taking place, and liberal democracy follows rather than precedes a tribal warlord stage of development.

Your theories and 'analysis' suggest that you subscribe to the pseudoscientific notionalisms that always contain the three axioms of occultism/magic discerned by Henri Constant: the existence of an Astral Plane and emanations of it, a horrifyingly unsubstantiated use of Analogy (to connect the Above, i.e. hoped for, with the Below, i.e. the actuality of things), and Omnipotence of the Will.  Plus that wonderful addition made by the Manichaeans, of pretending that the failure of this magical thought/belief system as not being due to reality, but as being due to absolute cosmic division of the world into Black (oooh, "Terrorists"!) and White (i.e. High Priest of the White Demiurge George Dubya Bush).

So you are one of the cargo cultists, I suppose.

Thomas, strictly speaking you're right, that "our prospects for success in Iraq haven't been entirely ruined by the administration's mistakes." But that is simply because there weren't any prospects for success to begin with. 
The terrible truth is that the Iraq situation stands not a chance of getting better until Bush is retired to Crawford, sleeping in the shade while someone - Woodward? Hitchens? - ghostwrites his memoirs and a halfway sensible president/administration is in charge.
Much has (rightly) been said about the incompetent handling of the occupation, but most commentators, even now, refuse to recognize that the decision to go to war against Iraq was a thoroughly incompetent, crazy idea, based on genuinely incoherent reasoning. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the Bush administration has continued to mess things up.
And that is the terrible tragedy of Iraq right now. What should the US do? Withdraw? Stay? It doesn't matter. Whichever decision is taken, the Bush administration has demonstrated that they will persist in turning a bad situation into a catastrophe. It may save American lives in the short term to withdraw, but the increased anarchy will be blamed on the Americans. It may save Iraqi lives to stay, but it will be at the expense of a mission that increasingly makes Quixote's windmill tilting look like a justified fight.

You wrote ... "I'm quite saddened to suspect that you do indeed agree with "the overall premise" - that you see the Democratic Party as a largely traitorous organisation. "

No, I don't see that small but vocal segment of the Democratic Party as traitorous, but I do see them as dabling dilettantes when it comes to military and national security matters, not the types who I would like to be in a fox hole with in a combat situation. I do make a distinction between the talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk types. So do teh American people when the going gets rough, and wise (and elected) Democrats admit that is so.

"I thought the President made a mistake in attacking Iraq.  That is a moot question at this point.  We need to focus on a going forward strategy."
On the contrary. Invading Iraq was such a spectacular mistake, and so easily avoidable, that it calls into question the capability -and moral character- of the people who made the decision to attack a country for no reason whatsoever. 
And as mentioned, it is impossible to devise a practical "going forward strategy" that fails to place front and center the full extent of the sheer incompetence of the people currently in charge of the US government and its foreign policy. That includes the decision to invade Iraq in the first place (and the well-documented Administration negligence that led to 911, of course).

I wish we had no ratings here.

The proper phrase for what you did is:

"I don't have any evidence or proof; I just made it up"

You might have the integrity to use it. 

sPh 

You wrote ... "So spare me the tough-guy talk about 'walking the walk'."

Oh, I wasn't aware that any of them had served in the military or put themselves at risk in combat. Unless someone has done so, I just take what they say with a certain amount of reservation. That's one of the reasons I don't trust the Bush administration. They are just talkers, or, in the more modern phraseology, spinners. We have a lot of that going on on both sides of the ideologies.

You wrote ... "I think you need to take a broader view."

And I think you would probably profit from some military service and combat time. Now, your ball.

Doesn't the number of Iraqis willing to be police even in the face of virtually daily car bombings suggest they are willing to endure a lot more pain than you suggest?

Or, it could mean that they have nothing, they are poor and hungry, their country is on the brink or even in civil war, and the BEST option they have is to stand in line for a job with the police dept. and risk getting blown up by a suicide bomber.

It may show how much they are willing to endure; it could also show just how desperate they've become.

The sacrifices of U.S. forces and, even more significantly, the Iraqi people, have done much to remedy blunders made in Washington or in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Oh please. Talk about hamhanded.

why Vietnam analogies serve us so poorly.

ok, point by point then.

The government of South Vietnam never enjoyed widespread legitimacy, but the situation in Iraq couldn't be more different

Are you saying the US supported Iraqi government is enjoying widespread legitimacy? On what planet? Showing up for government meetings to shout at the occupation reps and each other in the face of a coercive occupation is hardly popular legitimacy. Neither did the vote represent legitimacy. Polls show Iraqis voted because that token gesture is all they've got, but the popularity of the occupation and government is still incredibly low, while support for the ouster of US troops and insurgency stays high.

the price that Iraqis seem willing to pay should remind us of that.

The suicide bombings? They remind us of a severe and persevering militancy against US involvement which taints anything we touch in Iraq. 

Moreover, in the strict military sense, the Iraqi insurgents are nowhere near as strong as the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army.

The point isn't conventional military strength, it's popular support for insurgency and staying power, both of which are high, and increasing.

They have no international support, and no political agenda that's viable in a post-Saddam era.

Absurd! Their goal is to oust an occupation and thwart any government set up under it. They don’t have to build anything to win, just make our staying too costly. So far they're winning that goal and only increasing in effectiveness. There are no shortage of groups who would rush in to fill the power vacuum, all of whom would generally be preferable to Iraqis than an American backed government. Regardless, ask the US troops their if their bullets are any less deadly for their shooter’s lack of political goals.

 They can produce suicide bombers ad infinitum, or at least for a very long time to come, but the situation in Iraq is almost the inverse of Vietnam, where we are said to have never lost a battle but still lost the war.

What exactly do you consider a victory? An ongoing occupation where we're attacked by "suicide bombers ad infinitum" for backing an unpopular regime while deploying our troops in an increasingly hostile M.E. into the indefinite future? And where civilians continue dying by tens of thousands? Is that a victory in your view? Sounds to me exactly like Vietnam in the way that counts: popular insurgency ad infinitum. Anything else is kind of irrelevant.

If that’s your idea of a victory, I hope you stand up and take credit for it if in the future. If another 9/11 occurs and the perpetrators are militants radicalized by the occupation of Iraq, I'll be looking for Iraq hawks to stand up and take a bow. 

This is ridiculous!   My comment was erased, courtesy, I assume, of Donnelly's Kool-Aid co-drinkers. 

I only suggested that if Mr Donnelly wants us to believe that he and his AEI/PNAC ilk are "serious" -- while we are not -- then he should move his comfy little tea parlor in DC to the banks of the Euphrates.

Let's be clear: Donnelly's PNAC engineered the greatest strategic mistake in the entire history of this country. Decades from now, when one reflects about the end of the American Century, it'll be the Bush administration and its  PNAC ideologues who'll get the "credit."

Now, you, trollish little Lord Curzons out there, go and low-rate my comments to get rid of them and show your true democratic colors.

Because Oh wait, I bet I know. You're another one of those people that doesn't need the "reality-based community." was an inappropriate ad hominem attack.  Thus, it seems fit in to the "1" category.

I disagree vehemently with the rest of your post - it is clear to me that it is Democrats, not Republicans, who are not interested in working with the other party - but it certainly isn't worthy of a low rating.

ya know, robert ol' pal, i'd be happy to see 3 (hell, i'd be happy to see 1) example(s) of someone saying "I would rather lose in Iraq, so as to prove my anti-war views correct, vindicate my hatred of George Bush, and make it less likely that we'd use force in the future."

I can't recall the sage who noted that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. Show us the examples that lead you to this misguided opinion.

PS. notice i'm making it easy for you: i'm not asking a difficult matter, like define "winning."

First off, I'd like you to justify rating my earlier answer as "1 - Inappropriate".  You had written "Oh, I wasn't aware that any of them had served in the military or put themselves at risk in combat. Unless someone has done so, I just take what they say with a certain amount of reservation".  I pointed out that of the three lefties I mentioned, Oliver Stone had served in Vietnam.  I could have added that Kos is also a military veteran.  So presumably you no longer feel reservations about them?  I then pointed out that Franklin Roosevelt never served in the armed forces (even before he had polio) and it didn't make him any less of a leader. 

You had earlier made a high-minded post about not misusing ratings - indeed you even bewailed the fact we had ratings here at all.  Please tell me YOU don't rate posts as inappropriate just because you disagree with them. 

And in what way exactly would I benefit from military experience, or being in combat?  You seem to be very proud of your own heroic record - maybe you could remind me what that consisted of again, and how precisely it has made you superior to me and everyone else who was never in the military.

Why is this a "1"?

Is it really necessary to throw ratings out without an explanation?

Did I upset you somehow with my comment?

A "1" is for trolls. Do you know what a troll is? Am I one? Check my history.

"Robert, i'm sorry, you are really living in an overgeneralized fantasy, and you don't seem to know it."

Maybe.

Do those who call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq really care about what happens in Iraq?

Do those who think Bush invaded Iraq just so his oil buddies can make a profit in Iraq's privatized oil fields really want him to succeed?

Do those who think Bush started the war just so his buddies could make profits on the war want the war to continue to any kind of "winning" conclusion"?

None of the commenters with the above views will state that a defeat in Iraq would please them, but I draw that conclusion.

Assuming that among progressive goals are 1) smaller U.S. military, 2) less U.S. imperialism, 3) more reliance on the U.N. for global security; would a defeat further those goals?  Sure it would.

Many progressives hold the view the most "Repug's"  are bigoted, racist, homophobes who want to implement a fascist theocracy.  They generalize these views, I assume, from anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-illegal immigration, anti-racial preference comments even though one would be hard pressed to find anyone explicitly stating they are bigots.  Are these generalizations wrong?  Not entirely but probably exaggerated.

I am probably wrong in extrapolation the views expressed on blogs to any percentage of the D party when they could well be Greens/Socialists/Communists for all I know.