<p>By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK</p>
<p>Washington</p>
<p>VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place. </p>
<p>Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with . . .</p>
<p>Those two are billing themselves as critics of the war, but actually they’ve been strong supporters. They’re only critics in the “the administration ruined our brilliant Iraq invading plan” sense of the word.</p>
<p>And Pollack is misrepresenting his own research he did for the Brookings Institute on the # of Iraqi deaths.</p>
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<p>This one utterly untrue claim calls the credibility of the whole rest of the story (which you’ll notice is all anecdotal or opinion) into question. Especially in the context of the misrepresentation of the journalists’ prior positions.</p>
<p>It’s just more repositioning of the goalposts. If you recall, the escalation in Iraq was sold as a means to buy time for poltical progress, that there was no military solution, that without political progress, Iraq would be a lost cause.</p>
<p>Since there has been no political progress, we are now seeing an effort to redefine “success” in Iraq as purely military again, i.e. how succussful the increased number of troops are at playing whack-a-mole. This redefinition will be used to kick the can down the road for another Friedman Unit (6 months), then they’ll flip back and sell the need for a second Friedman Unit to give time for progress on the political front. By then, we’ll have been kicking the can down the road, one Friedman Unit at a time, for 5 years and 4000 US deaths. By every metric (political stability, hours of electricty, oil exports, etc.) Iraq will be worse off than it was three years ago as the situation continues to disintegrate everywhere outside of the immediate area of whack-a-mole operations.</p>
<p>The important questions to ask are not whether we have been successful in arming tribal sheiks in Anbar province. The real questions are:</p>
<p>a) Is there any hope of a stable political situation</p>
<p>b) How long would that take</p>
<p>c) What is the cost in terms of US casualties, cost, and destruction of our military.</p>
<p>d) Is that cost worth it?</p>
<p>In other words, there is no validity to measuring “progress” in Iraq in a vacuum that doesn’t include the US cost side of the equation. Sure, if the Iraq occupation were without cost, you could continue it for an indefinite number of Friedman Units. But, there is a cost – a high cost – attached.</p>
<p>We’re arming the Sunnis in Iraq to get rid of AQ just like we armed the Taliban to get rid of the Soviets in Afghanistan…<em>that</em> sure worked out well, just like we planned.</p>
<p>The purpose of the surge, started 7 months ago, was, according to our fearless leader, to allow Iraq to get its political act together - no less, and no more. Is there ANYONE out there who thinks the political situation in Iraq today is better than it was 7 months ago, or better than when Murtha called for a pull-out in October 2005?</p>
<p>Even on Bush’s own terms, the surge is an abject failure, and is, regardless of what the hostile, aggressive occupiers are up to.</p>
<p>The war is just another political opportunity. If things start to become good, the left feels the need to talk it down. (In between fake sorrow for the innocent Iraqis - never mind that the innocent Iraqis will be the hardest hit by our withdrawal, with John Burns from the NYT saying that it is conceivable that 1 million people could be killed in the resulting chaos.)</p>
<p>That’s a separate point, not necessarily a bad one; just a separate one. If the U.S. wanted to protect the innocents, it wouldn’t be playing this charade with the Maliki government. The U.S. would go in and set up a protectorate for a generation. If that’s what you support, say so.</p>
<p>But I don’t believe either the Dems or Reps give a rats-pattooey about the Iraqi people (I’ll give you the benefit of doubt, suspend belief, and assume that you do.) The Dems under Bill wouldn’t have killed a million Iraqis, half of them children, out of great concern for them. The Reps don’t seem much interested in helping the two million refugees they’ve already created by letting a few of them into the U.S. who fear being killed if they stay where they are.</p>
<p>Anyone who really believes that by bungling or design, this administration had created such a perilous situation for the Iraqi people should be in favor of more competent people running things.</p>
<p>Who ever heard of such a thing? Well, the AEI has put a million lives at risk, but let’s keep them in power because they make us feel good about ourselves when we read their op-eds?</p>
<p>John Burns has been saying that there may be unimaginable sectarian violence following a US pullout from Iraq for a very long time now. It’s no secret, just as it’s no secret that there has been massive sectarian violence for the last several years.</p>
<p>John Burns also says (as recently as yesterday) that Iraq is further away from political progress today than at any time since the invasion and that the calculation may well be that we are simply delaying the inevitable unimaginable sectarian violence at a cost of US lives and treasure.</p>
<p>Here’s the crux of the problem. It is not in the interest of any Iraqi “faction” to reach a political settlement. Every political faction in Iraq believes they have more to gain from a winner take all end-game than settling for a piece of the current pie. Whatever legitimate leadership may have existed in the early stages of the occupation (Sistani, for example) have been marginalized by the rise of sectarian militias, both within and without the government.</p>
<p>conyat, interesteddad - I thought it was W’s great sin that he didn’t listen to the experts. You all aren’t going to fall into the same tar pit are you? Of course the NY Times is pretty rightwing by say Code Pink standards and Brookings has always been a hotbed of neo-cons so I guess it is OK to dismiss anything that comes from that direction.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that the world’s best military with 30,000 more of our fine men and women in Iraq is whacking many more moles than they whacked before the escalation in year five of the Iraq occupation. I never had any doubts that a larger whack-a-mole force would whack more moles.</p>
<p>The issue is much more fundamental. What is “victory”? Are we any closer to “victory”? And, how long will it take to achieve “victory” and at what cost. Or, in short, what are we doing in Iraq now that a WMD-free Iraq has beeen confirmed, Sadam has been overthrown, a Constitution has been adopted, and a freely elected democratic sovereign government has been established?</p>
<p>Those were the goals enumerated in 2002. There was never any goal of perpetual whack-a-mole. The superb US miitary has achieved every objective established pre invasion. They’ve performed astonishly well; we owe every brave soldier a debt of gratitude. </p>
<p>Time to bring 'em home and give 'em a hero’s welcome. Mission Accompished.</p>
<p>Well as long as we are using John Burns (who has been there long enough and who has shown that he can be objective), here are some of the reasons that he has cited:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Potential escalation into a regional conflict, thus erupting the entire Gulf region into war with the resulting world-wide recession/depression due to disruption of energy sources.</p></li>
<li><p>Cede a portion of Iraq to al Qaeda:
</p></li>
<li><p>A more lethal al Qaeda:</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The so-called Al-Qaeda in Iraq is made up simply of old Baathists. According to the U.S. military (granted, a very poor source for reliable information), fewer than 5% come from abroad, and as there was NO Al-Qaeda in Iran before Bush started promoting and recruiting for them, you have to ask who in fact they are.</p>
<p>Today, the U.S. military announced that we’ve armed them further with $90 million in military equipment. </p>
<p>AS for mass killing of civilians, MECA reports that the Sunni tribesmen being armed by the U.S. are holding up and confiscating medical equipment and medicines being shipped from Amman to Baghdad through Al-Anbar. Thousands of civilians are now dying every month as a result, a specific result of U.S. military “strategy”.</p>
<p>Again, we could stop the Maliki charade and set up a long-term protectorate, if we really cared about the civilians. Or support the two million refugees for a generation. Or allow half a million at least into the U.S. next year. It’s crocodile tears, and virtually every major Democrat and Republican has them.</p>
<p>I think probably not true too, but that’s what the U.S. military says. So what else is new? Wouldn’t be the first time they’re wrong. You have a better source?</p>
<p>Anyway, John Burns is missing the U.S. caused “bloodbath” going on right under his nose. All he has to do is visit a hospital in Baghdad and see the thousands of deaths occurring as a result of the U.S. arming the Sunni tribals. Same thing happened when Clinton murdered the million people, half of them children, although in his case, it seems to have been intentional. </p>
<p>Not that it matters. It is a rare politician who sheds a real tear for the poor Iraqis. $44 billion in reconstructing aid squandered. $90 million in arms “disappeared” today (likely U.S. aid to Al-Qaeda). We keep sending our “Dick Morris suicide death squads” ("so they won’t shoot at us here.)</p>
<p>Actually, I have never heard the military claim that al Qaeda in Iraq is made up of Baathists (quite the opposite, actually), but check out the reporting of Micheal Yon who is an independent journalist and has been embedded with the troops. He interviews the leader of the 1920s Revolution Brigade of former insurgents who have now joined forces with the US to fight against al Qaeda.</p>