I wonder if McCain is ever going to realize that a monologue on Iraq will not get him elected President.

Posted at July 24, 2008 6:01 AM in response to McCain Gets Another Pass

McCain is infinitely preferable to 43, but I believe he has it wrong on Iraq.

The "no timetable" crowd seems to advocate occupation until they themselves have decided that their goals, whatever those are, have been achieved.

Not only does this neglect Iraqi opinion, it is devoid of common sense. There is an occupation cost, a substantial cost, albeit borne mostly by 0.4% of the country. A sensible approach would define cost/benefit and attempt to maximize benefit and minimize cost. McCain's position doesn't do this - it is romantic and inchoate. Until "win" is precisely defined, it is simply a recipe for indefinite occupation.

Posted at July 21, 2008 5:00 AM in response to Maliki's Move

Al Maliki's comment is perfectly in keeping with Iraqi public opinion. Hard as it may be to believe given our news sources, the Iraqis want us out.

Iraq may not be much, but it is theirs, not ours. Your average Iraqi knows this and doesn't want foreigners riding around in MRAPS running the country. Really.

My wonder is not the comment, but why it seems so surprising over here. When was the last time you heard an Iraqi notable suggest that a hundred year occupation would be a good thing?

This is inevitable, and yes, it pops John McCain's balloon, as it should. Obama will be the next president, and I for one can only hope this definitively turns the page on the Bush era.

Posted at July 20, 2008 6:04 PM in response to Maliki Goes Obama's Way While NYT and WP Wait--For What?

The UN would never go into Iraq given the conditions. There is no peace to keep, pace the improvements of the surge.

Again in my opinion, peace will come when the internal Iraqi dynamic has played out. I think the notion of a bloodbath is probably incorrect. I actually doubt genocide, although gruesome violence is a specialty of that part of the world.

This is a fight for power and money (oil). That fight will end in some sort of stable configuration after the Iraqis have had it out. We only have 2 levers to influence the outcome: money and weapons. We can use those levers from afar; I doubt they will be determinative.

Posted at July 20, 2008 5:56 PM in response to Maliki's Move

I would just like to correct one item: initially the combat power was directed at AQ, but Sadrists have been increasingly in our sights. One way of seeing this is force protection - we direct our combat against those that represent the largest threat to our soldiers. The Sadrists (JAM, Jaish Al Mahdi) set EFP-IEDs, a lot of them. They are also responsible for almost all the indirect fire on the IZ (Green Zone). We are responding pretty effectively at the moment.

Diyala and the northern provinces still have AQ, when you see a suicide bomber think AQ.

Posted at July 20, 2008 5:50 PM in response to Maliki's Move

The surge period saw a number of developments, the most important being

(1) engagement with Sunni tribal insurgents that more or less were carrying on as normal. They never liked AQ much, so by paying them a little something and letting them be "Sons of Iraq", we squelched AQ and eliminated a lot of homegrown nonsense.

(2) engagement, at arms length, with Sadr. The Sadr problem is that his movement actually doesn't depend on him - the decapitation option wouldn't work. Too bad, he is a thug and a killer, but there it is. Our current policy seems to be: hunt the Sadrists known to plan/execute attacks and let the politics be an Iraqi problem.

(3) Presence. I don't dismiss this - it was clearly lacking in early 07, with the result that villages and muhollahs were controlled by bad guys. They aren't now. Increasingly, Iraqi Army (IA) and Iraqi police (IP) are the security presence. This is a good thing, although they are taking significant casualties and are much more inclined to form local accommodations with militias. Of course, living conditions are hell for our soldiers on the COPS and COBS.

Now as to the success of all of this: the surge was to create political space for the creation of a new, unitary Iraq. I haven't seen this, have you? My belief is that there are real tough underlying problems in Iraq that we really cannot influence. Fights over oil, Kurd/Arab tensions, armed politics, these are things that we really cannot solve and really are not our problem.

So: the surge did what it was supposed to do, but it is a failure because the transformative Iraqi political accommodations never happened.

In my opinion, we not only did all that we can do, we did too much, way too much. Our shifting goals, driven by domestic politics, ended up in a place best described as a fairyland, high on democratic panaceas and extremely low on a factual grounding in Iraqi problems.

I believe the last four years in Iraq are best described as the result of a US domestic political dynamic where any admission that we had it wrong would have caused the party in power to lose power. They lost anyway in 2006, proving that the public is smarter than the politicians or the media.

Posted at July 20, 2008 5:43 PM in response to Maliki's Move

I am a civilian working with combat soldiers. My work necessitates the trips to stand up systems and train soldiers in their use. In that regard, I have been to several FOBs (forward operating bases) and have never spent time in the Green Zone (IZ).

The regular soldiers are like regular citizens in their opinions. The field grade officers are pretty solidly Republican, but the junior officers and NCOs have opinions that better reflect those of the larger public. Obama's trip will be interesting.

Posted at July 20, 2008 5:50 AM in response to Maliki's Move

I have just returned from my third trip to Iraq in 18 months. I am afraid that Americans cannot wrap their minds around the idea that Iraqis hate and fear them.

Let me observe that killing people is no way to make friends. War is personal. We bring an ideology that we truly think is the best in the world, but in the case of Iraq we also brought enormous suffering and death. Guess which is more important to the Iraqis?

Al Maliki (reluctantly, because he knows he will be swept away by someone who actually lives among the people) gave voice to what virtually all Iraqis think: the Americans have to leave, and the sooner the better.

Posted at July 19, 2008 6:14 PM in response to Maliki's Move

These sorts of discussions serve to underline the fact that our primary policy failure, the lack of any serious effort to obtain energy independence, virtually assures a plethora of bad options on the way to strategic failure.

Our problem is oil. Get rid of the oil problem, and we won't have to worry about Iran, Iraq, Saudi, etc.

Until we free ourselves of oil, we will be spending oodles of blood and treasure in the Middle East. Full stop. Policy nuances won't matter, except at election time.

Posted at October 7, 2007 9:10 PM in response to Glimmer of Hope for US Policy Towards Iraq and Iran

RD starts by agreeing with Greg's negative evaluation of many central conservative policy initiatives.  Why wouldn't this suggest that honest, thinking conservatives themselves understand that movement conservatism is bankrupt? 

 The subsequent chatter is merely cherry picking. 

If RD insists on being inclusive, then I'd like to know his opinions on Schiavo and other eruptions of "social values". 

While we are at it, what does RD think of the self-identification of governing conservatives with corporate America?  Is it really the case, that what is good for Exxon is good for the country?  If so, does this extend to insurance companies, defense companies, pharma? Can policy that is captured by business lobbyists possibly have as its primary goal the welfare of the public as a whole?

Modern American conservatism isn't just intellectually bankrupt, it is exclusive and elitist at its core.  This movement spends an inordinate amount of time and money pretending otherwise, because without hoodwinking voters they would lose every single election. 

Posted at September 22, 2007 5:05 AM in response to Ideas and Consequences