As new horrors occur on the ground in Iraq, the thoroughly natural desire to be efficacious in promoting peace does not excuse shoddy and biased analysis, as appears in today's Washington Post. Everyone quoted appears to agree that the dangerous moment brought on by the Askariya mosque bombing would be a particularly disastrous time to draw down American forces. Remarkably, no one is quoted who disagrees with this consensus. So let's examine the logic used to produce it.

On the one hand, the U.S. military is "preferring to let Iraq's developing security forces take the lead in quelling violence". Fine--that's perfectly understandable. Further, there is no doubt among Iraq analysts that the occupation draws jihadist fighters into the country, where their contribution is hardly constructive. The primary rationale for our ongoing presence has long been the fear that leaving would allow an inherently dangerous takeover by such terrorists (or, we might assume, by other insurgents). But while this prospect has always been implausible, now even AEI's Michael Rubin recognizes it: "Insurgents need to realize that if there is a civil war, they are going to be on the losing side of it."

So, our forces are apparently decidedly in the background of the absolutely important effort to prevent civil war and worsening violence, and we know our presence has motivated an influx of terrorists. And even if civil war or some equivalent does occur, minority groups like al Qaeda and other insurgents are not expected to win. But everyone quoted in the Post article seems to conclude that this analysis thereby "proves" that we cannot leave. But to a reader, it suggests a good deal of flexibility. Of course it's possible that we have diplomatic leverage or are making contributions to the security situation (such as the current daytime curfew in Baghdad and a few nearby provinces) in ways the article doesn't mention. That would at least make the stay-the-course prescription intellectually coherent. But the notion that our occupation is, on the whole, a tenable force for calm is hardly self-evident.

It's also worth taking the roster of authorities upon whom the article relies in producing its prescription for more of the same. In addition to hawkish AEI scholar Rubin, the article quotes President Bush, National Security Advisor Hadley, Secretary of State Rice, Ambassador Khalilzad, Army Col. Jeffrey J. Snow, Heritage Foundation scholar James A. Phillips, and A. Heather Coyne of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

While Phillips' comment is actually somewhat pessimistic, it's probably fair to call him a hawk (in addition to his Heritage affiliation, he is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger). Like so many in the U.S. bureaucracy, Coyne seems to have been doing heroic work on the ground (she discussed some of her constructive efforts in an op-ed last year), but her optimism may be a virtual requirement of her position of responsibility. She is quoted as saying that "precipitous withdrawal will cause chaos." Further, "[s]he said, however, that troops are needed to give people a sense of stability and that such stability might not exist on its own for several years" (emphasis added). 

No one who was not already a fervent ideological proponent of the war or a U.S. government official was quoted to offer alternative interpretations of the latest events in Iraq. Instead, the authors present an impression of the propriety of our continued presence as a matter of common sense and as the only possible mature judgment. They obviously could have discussed arguments on both sides of the controversy. But toward the end of their piece, they simply write, "Though some members of Congress have called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and a complete handover to the more than 230,000 Iraqi troops, some say such a move could cause Iraqi society to implode because the security situation is so tenuous." As an aside, it's disingenuous for the Post to imply that the extreme side of the argument is to be found in calls for "immediate" withdrawal when the only alternative time frame the article raises appears in Coyne's mention of "several years"--a prospect which we apparently are to believe is not extreme at all, even though intermediate options have been raised elsewhere.

A hint of relief from the one-sided rhetoric about the U.S. role in Iraq in the body of this article emerges, ironically enough, in its headline, which is easy to ignore once you delve into the tense, messy text of the piece and its imposing list of expert hawkish voices. The headline reads: "Bush Says Iraqis Face Moment of 'Choosing'". Because we may indeed be exaggerating our influence there, and since we are continuing to radicalize Muslims by our occupation, we deserve broader, more thoughtful analysis from the Post. Leave questions of the media's apparent conservative bias about Iraq aside for the moment. The immediate point is that the situation is plenty dire. While conventional Washington wisdom about the need for occupation is not necessarily wrong (I think it is, mostly, but that's a separate argument), it has produced a record largely comprised of failure and chaos for nearly three years. It's embarrassing to have to raise the cliche that relying exclusively on a hammer makes every problem look like a nail, but the remarkably constant monotony of official hawk analyses, combined with ridicule toward dissenting interpretations, which often infects press coverage, compels a response. The Bush consensus just isn't adequate, by itself, to make sense of or guide us through this policy crisis.