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June 27, 2005


if you have always believed -- or, as I, have come to believe -- that Iraq is a central front in the war on terror

Why have you come to believe that?

Serious question: I would appreciate a more detailed update to your post explaining your reasons for coming to believe that. (I may then disagree with your reasons, of course, but at the moment I'm just staring at the conclusion and flailing.)

Can you say "Vietnamization"?

Jes: I can't speak for von, but I think that Iraq is now crucial to the fight against terrorism, because we made it one. It used to be a country under the control of a monster who, whatever else you might say about him, would never have let a group as uncontrollable as al Qaeda loose in his country. Now it's a terrorist training ground.

I think it matters immensely what we do there. I suspect that we have botched it beyond recall, and I am sure that, whether or not that's true, I do not trust this administration to do whatever good things might still be in our power.

I find nothing at all comforting in what Rumsfeld said. It all just makes me sick at heart.

Hilzoy right about my views.

Here was the thinking that lead me to endorse (grudgingly) and invasion of Iraq. Note that I don't cite any direct tie to the WoT; that came later, and only in the aftermath of the war (when terrorists started flooding into the country):

The United Nations' Security Counsel should endorse a U.S.-led attack on Iraq if Iraq does not fully comply with the U.N.-mandated inspections regime. The credibility of the Security Counsel is at stake; an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction will destabilize its neighbors; Iraq may share such weaponary with terrorists or other, rouge states; and Iraq's past violations of international law merit a response, however belated. In addition, even a minimally-democratic Iraq, with its educated and secularized population, will likely restrain the Arab street and serve as a counterweight to an increasingly radicalized Saudi Arabia. Indeed, in no other (so-called) rogue nation -- Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya -- are the advantages of military action so clear, and the risks of inaction so dire.

von: I wasn't trying to speak for you, but I'm glad I got them right despite that ;)

congratulations Iraq, here's a Republic, if you can keep it.

I wonder which senior Bush advisor it was who Ron Suskind quoted, saying "we create our own reality." We certainly have done so in Iraq, but not the way it was predicted to go. Despite the absurdity of the phrase "central front," we do seem to have created a terrorist training ground in Iraq.

I was close to the fence on the war, not because I thought Iraq was such a threat to our security but because of the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime. What tipped me to the "no" side was my concern that the Bush administration could not be trusted to handle the aftermath. Alas, I seem to have called that one correctly.

Sick at heart though we may be, we still face the question, "what now?" All I can think of is withdraw to Afghanistan and focus our efforts on rebuilding that country, where we at least still stand a chance of success. I would be happy to hear other plausible suggestions.

As I have written on other threads, I don't expect any such sensible action from the Bush administration.

Can we put away the Marcus Aurelius tone of rhetoric and recognize this for what it is? Rumsfeld is laying the foundation for declaring victory and going home relatively soon, regardless of what the actual state of affairs in Iraq is at that time. Mid-terms, after all, are coming up.

Given that this is roughly where I always thought we'd be, I'm OK with that. But anyone who thinks the Sec. of Defense is doing much more than that is crazy.

Our recruiting efforts are hampered by the possibility of getting blown up once you're shipped out.

Iraq's recruiting efforts are hampered by the likelihood of getting blown up as you walk down the street in uniform.

Anyone got any stats on the % of Iraqi army guys killed since we started the New Model Army? Bet it's a lot higher than ours.

Anyway, Von is 100% right about one thing: we've jumped in with both feet and now we're at the mercy of the current. My boy is 10 today; if the draft is going when he's approaching 18, to feed this war or one equally stupid, I may very well have to emigrate.

It must be terribly, terribly hard to send your son away to a World War Two. Sending him to a pointless war started by a fool of a president has to be a lot worse.

Hilzoy (and Von, since he agrees): Now it's a terrorist training ground.

But on what evidence are you basing this?

AFAIK, the majority of the resistence in Iraq is homegrown. But I'm uncertain about this, since I've seen no reliable statistics - I'm not even sure that there are any. What have you seen that suggests otherwise to you?

Jes: I can't speak for Von, but I'm listening to the CIA about such things.

Jes: More recent, and more comprehensive:






The assessment said the central role played by Iraq meant that, for now, most potential terrorists were likely to focus their energies on attacking American forces there, rather than carrying out attacks elsewhere, the officials said. But the officials said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries would soon have to contend with militants who leave Iraq equipped with considerable experience and training."

McDuff: but I'm listening to the CIA about such things.

Given the convenience of being able to dismiss the insurgency, not as a homegrown response to an unwelcome foreign occupation, but as a result of outside influence, how certain can we be that David Low isn't fixing his report to suit policy?

(Again, a serious question. I mean, it's not as if they haven't done it before.)

I'm aware that there is a difference between "Iraq can be - and we think, is - a training ground for terrorists" and the infamous "flypaper theory", but the two seem to come out of the same need to believe that it's not the Iraqis who hate the occupation and resist it.

Still, it would depend very much on what proportion of the resistence is foreign and what proportion is homegrown, whether Iraq can indeed be said to be "a central front in the war on terror" or just yet another aspect of it. And I have seen no reliable stats on that.

Ah - should have hit Preview. Thanks, Hilzoy. That's clearer.

we still face the question, "what now?"

"We press on to Syria," according to Victor Davis Hanson. (h/t to Chris Bray)

I was afraid that the answer would be pressing on to Iran. What was that Onion article about a year ago? Something like "Bush announces that the troops are to come home, via Tehran"?

Hanson wants Syria and Iran. And all we'll need is air strikes, which is convenient since we have no army left.

Foreigners vs home-grown guerrillas: Remember that this is Bush - why have one, when you can get the worst of all worlds? We'll have thousands of foreigners with cutting edge urban warfare experience, plus tens of thousands of really pissed off Iraqis, who've seen the the Bush Friends and Family plan kill their friends and family, and who really want to share their pain with us.

For clarity, Jes, I always thought the "flypaper" strategy to be bunk. (The better analogy would be to those Japanese Beetle killers that do a better job of attracting Japanese Beetles than killing them. If you have a Japanese Beetle problem in your garden, putting one up will only make it worse.)


a shame neither country has any navy to speak of.

anyone know the last time the US had a naval battle of any significance ?


I'd guess Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

Hm, from the cited Hanson article, he wants both to launch air strikes on Syria and Iran (after issuing them first with ultimatums, of course) and to "wean" moderate muslims from the terroristic tyranny of a pitiful few thousand extremists. Something doesn't quite fit together in the logic, there.

Then there's this poisonous little quote:

Right. Sensitivity and forbearance towards the naughty children of the Middle East. With air strikes. Got it.

Look at Bush's tuesday speech to be be his 'Johnson' speech.


this was always going to be the case, wasn't it? this was a war of liberation. that means, of necessity, that the oppressed people once freed will then get to chose their own future.

at this point, i favor partition. since lots of people will object, we will have to commit a kind of ethnic cleansing that would under other circumstances be a war crime. we will also have to prevent the Turks from invading kurdistan. we will also have to find a way to create some kind of economic future for the sunnis.

I'm fascinated by the way that the administration has moved to a whole new level in abusing the english language. Cheney's "last throes" will go down in history as a classic; but Rumsfeld's "trained" should be much more closely examined.

As an american, I assume that once a soldier has been "trained", he is ready to deploy into active duty. In a perfect world, this would mean he would understand the use of a number of weapons, have a basic grasp of the tactics surrounding the optimal use of his designated weapons system, understand the basic rules of the military, and be able to operate within a command structure thousands of miles from home. oh yes, and be loyal to that command structure.

apparently, a "trained" iraqi soldier meets a very different set of criteria from a "trained" american soldier. Once again, I recommend William Shawcross's Sideshow as an explanation of what can happen when american try to train soldiers who do not have that basic loyalty to their government.

Viet Nam is one analogy to our present situation; Cambodia may be a better one.

Naval Engagements:

I recall a battleship lobbing big shells from big guns into the Shuf Mountains of Lebanon. And of course Naval Aviation is still the Navy, so Gulf War I has to count for something. If we're at "war" right now, does not the encounter between AQ and the Cole in Yemen in 2000 count?

"Look at Bush's tuesday speech to be be his 'Johnson' speech."

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that Bush is gonna admit things ain't going so well in Iraq and maybe, just maybe, people should be enlisting instead of shopping. The setting may be a background to such a plea, one it seems he has managed to go four years since 911 without making. I'm not holding my breath though, just speculating wildly.


Gulf of Tonkin ?

Not that the engagement itself was of any great significance, but in terms of what flowed from it ...

No way, wd. The difficulties our folks are experiencing in Iraq are just tests of the President's resolve. He will re-affirm that resolve.

And maybe move the goalposts a bit, such that ratification of a constitution is the exact equivalent of complete victory for us. (This I think is a correct policy, and that we don't have, and have never had, sufficient 'funds' in our 'account' to honor the 'blank check' issued in Bush's second inaugural.)

I recall a battleship lobbing big shells from big guns...

was thinking more of ship-on-ship action (see my faux-lament that neither Syria nor Iran has a navy worth troubling over).

Rechecking my memory on Lebanon, I found http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF129/CF-129.chapter6.html>this description of the intervention, which is fairly readable.

Disengagement is always a tough proposition, and I have no confidence that this Admin can pull it off competently. While I noted above that I think allowing the various Iraqi factions to fight their way to an equilibrium of some kind is a good idea for us, I don't see an easy way from here to there. Maybe there will be an easy exit in 2007. If not, then expect the current mission to stretch past January 2009.

was thinking more of ship-on-ship action

Hot ship-on-ship action.

I wouldn't consider Tonkin, or the Cole attack, or that on the Stark to be significant as far as engagements go -- I'm thinking of multi-ship engagements here. Dunno if that is what Cleek was getting at, though.

I'm really amazed at the number of people who still, after 5 years, expect a Bush speech to be anything but content-free.

Me? I expect more of the usual facile slogans and empty platitudes, repeated endlessly.

I'm more interested in knowing whether the speech itself will explicitly encourage the notion that Democrats, liberals and reporters are to blame for the FUBAR in Iraq, or whether the post-speech spin will do that. With the whole country turning against him, Bush won't want to waste any time redirecting peoples' fury.


Yes, I don't know if it was the Shuf Mountains, but we shelled Jumblatt's encampment, a Druze leader (both then and in the current Parliament). As proof of the adage that politics make strange bedfellows, Jumblatt has been one of the foremost anti-Syria voices in recent times. What a difference a couple decades make!

(Now I'll check CharleyCarp's link to see if my recollection is correct.)

SCT has a point. It does sound to me as if we are preparing to withdraw and leave the Iraqis to fight the inevitable civil war, which could go on for a long time.

This will be covered with stories about how we trained the Iraqi army, gave them the tools and foundation, etc. But the fact is it will be bloody and the final outcome is unpredictable. My guess is they'll end up with a secular dictator less nasty than Saddam, but still no nice guy.

Other possibilities exist.

wd: Bush is gonna admit things ain't going so well in Iraq...

when pigs fly.

bush lack the "things ain't going so well" gene.

In a 3-way civil war (minimum estimate), my prediction of who comes out on top is a personality with an enormous will for power. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, with their talents for conspiracy, backstabbing, lack of conscience and popular manipulation are my candidates for the type of winner to expect. Nice guys finish last.

Bush is gonna say things are going swell, "...just a few dead-enders and Freedom Haters". maybe he'll say "some people" want us to fail, or to not even try. he'll warn about "emboldening the enemy". he'll mumble some nonsense about Social Security and how the Dems have screwed it all up. and then he'll bring up something completely tangential: Mars, the sex slave trade, hydrogen cars, etc..

I agree that Bush will not tell any sort of truth about Iraq. He may say something vague, like 'things can get tough, but we have to hang in there so that Iraq can be free', or something, but I truly don't think he has it in him to be more specific than that. I don't believe he has admitted anything more to himself, let alone us.

I think he may do the moving goalposts thing. I would support it, since while I feel absolutely no need to have a view on what we should do (since my view would be of no significance at all), I am pretty close to convinced that with this crew in charge, we can only make things worse.

But this is a terrible, terrible outcome, and the fact that I think it's the best one available is horrible to me. Civil war is awful, and I don't think partition could be done cleanly, especially since the Sunnis would in all likelihood end up with no Kirkuk and no oil. We can't really try to provide a better future for them, since we have approximately no ability to operate safely in Sunni territory. Keeping Turkey out would be very, very difficult, since the Turks view a Kurdish state as an existential threat to them; here it really doesn't help that the problems in the EU have made Turkish accession much less likely, thus removing one of the main carrots available, or that we have so completely squandered our diplomatic good will. And if that's not enough, consider that we might just end up where we started: with a dictator in place who might eventually go for WMD.


Posted by: hilzoy

You know, N. Korea might really like to sell some nukes to such a guy, to put the screws to the US. And for money, of course.

Also, somewhat o/t: I was thinking about what Rove said, and thinking: it seems pretty clearly an attempt to deflect attention from things. In addition to the obvious stuff -- Iraq, the Downing Street memos, the failure of the President's SS plan, gas prices, the collapse of Bush's poll numbers, etc. -- is there anything else coming up that Rove could be preemptively moving against? The one thing I could think of was: Thursday is the day when the rest of the Abu Ghraib pictures are due to be released. The ones that made grown Congressmen turn pale. Fwiw.

Could we possibly guess what the tangential carrot will be? They've been so...out of the box...that it's hard even to imagine what he'll come up with, but let's do try.

Current minority group to be cosseted: latinos. Last bone thrown to them: the anti-gang legislation, headed by Mrs.
Bush, of course. Proposing an amnesty or guest-worker program would piss off too many conservatives. Maybe a plan to finance ESL classes?

Evangelists and right-to-lifers are also beginning to mutter. The last big speech threw them some rhetoric, but no concrete projects. Maybe some impossible-to-enact amendment proposition?

And, more darkly, there's the possibility that he might do a disguised attack on the university liberals, by announcing simulteneously an increased funding program for students in targetted fields ("some service requirement") and his personal committment to "intellectual diversity."

What other Big Idea might come out of the blue?

Jackmormon: What other Big Idea might come out of the blue?

Invade Mexico?

Maybe some impossible-to-enact amendment proposition?

flag desecration is back on the burner.

"But the fact is it will be bloody and the final outcome is unpredictable."

And we will supply the 'good' side with significant arms and intelligence.

And out of the ashes will crawl a new generation of fighters blooded and trained in urban combat and embittered against he US and the west.

And in 20 years they will be the 'bad' side, and they'll be organizing terrorist attacks.

Good times, yeah?

Good times, yeah?

Big wheel, keep on turnin'...

...no, wait. Wrong rotational metaphor:

Fortuna rota volvitur descendo minoratus
alter in altum tollitur nimis exaltatus
rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!
nam sub axe legimus Hecubam reginam

Maybe the Republicans are right, and Democrats are too pessimistic. Where y'all see only another set of lies likely to come from Bush's mouth, I see opportunity: George Bush Iraq drinking game! Everyone choses a word or phrase that they think he'll say, and drinks every time he says it. I call "hard work."

I would call the stutter, but I still remember that night in college when I had a pitcher of beer, a rum and coke, and five Long Island iced teas. And then graded statistics finals the next day. I still don't know how I survived.

On a less alcoholic note, I think that what we're seeing is the opening barrage of Operation Blame It On The Liberals. This is not to say that there weren't shots fired beforehand, but that more and more Republicans are realizing that things aren't going well, that the current trends point to a bad place, and that the GOP is purely to blame. Under those circumstances, scapegoat early and often.

"And then graded statistics finals the next day."

Ah, how it takes me back...

I took the GREs while living in Israel, when my mind was so far away from academics and standardized tests it wasn't funny. I had planned to spend the night before studying -- I hadn't so much as thought about math in about 5 years, and it seemed like a good idea to try to reacquaint myself with the formulae for finding the areas of things, and so on -- but a friend I hadn't seen in months showed up at the door, gin in hand, just back from some desert or other, and, well, I got three hours of sleep and no studying done that night, and had this terrible hangover. Eek. I did beg some complete stranger at the test site to let me look at her math book for ten minutes, which helped a bit.

Ah, youth.

One of the things that went through my mind after Karl Rove's remarks last Wednesday was: doesn't he realize that there are Democrats (and even, gasp, liberals) serving in the armed forces?

There seems to be a kind of meme among right-wing Americans that says left-wing Americans don't join the armed forces:

Print this page E-mail this page

Civilization Watch
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC
By Orson Scott Card February 15, 2004

Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization

A little dialogue from Lewis Carroll:












Marriage Is Already Open to Everyone.








Marrying Is Hard to Do.








The War On Marriage











Marriage Is Everybody's Business.









Civilization Is Rooted in Reproductive Security.









Balancing Family and Society






America's Anti-Family Experiment








Humpty Has Struck Before.















The Propaganda Mill

























Loss of Trust












They Think They Have the Power.














(I would have liked the author of that to read this.)

There are left-wingers in military service -- I knew a few -- but they are, at least in the officer corps, vastly outnumbered by the right-wingers. (Most of whom, it should be noted, thought me appallingly left-wing; how things change.) I find it difficult to impute much political consciousness to the lower enlisted as a group; the NCOs appeared to me to be mostly right-wing, but I know of no actual data to back that up.

While there is some rhetorical satisfaction to be gained in the apparently-accurate rule of thumb that those who defend our country -- and Iraq is included in that mission -- are my own fellow-travelers, a more sober view is that the self-exclusion of the American left from uniformed service is bad for the country. And bad for the American left, too.

Jes: Could you please just do the cite next time? That's one looooong-ass excerpt.


Not going to gainsay that, but it's worth pointing out that the vast majority of military, as in the vast majority of any assortment of citizens, are hardly rabidly partisan or ideological enough to qualify for winghood of any stripe. It's a sign of the screeching volume of political debate that the participants often forget that the choice isn't boolean.


25% of the soldiers who served in Iraq self-identify as Democrats, vs. 30% independent and 35% Republican, according to an October poll. So I think it is more accurate to say that those who defend our country are Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Of course that type of statement would not serve the evil purposes of Karl Rove, so instead the guy vilely smears the quarter million or so Democrats who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Considering the administration Karl Rove works for lied to get us into a fraudulent war and in the process severely damaged the military to the point where enlistment goals can't be met, its pretty incredible that the man would continue to do further damage by personally insulting a quarter of the troops. Then again, nothing this administration does is really shocking anymore, is it?


True, but 'self-exclusion' glosses some history there. Campus unrest and dissatisfaction with the Vietnam conflict led students to demand that ROTC programs be discontinued, so the whole process of leading the nation into a war that became unpopular should also be acknowledged as a cause. It seemed that the armed forces had recovered quite a bit of ground, and had the administration not taken the course it had, it is possible that we would be looking at a much stronger, more diverse armed forces, especially since much of that diversity was brought in through reserve opportunities. Now, with the reserve system potentially broken, we have returned to a situation where very few people would even consider the possibility of reserve service because the deployment schedule is so overwhelming. One could argue that this was one of the costs of going to war and that as a nation, we should have been/be prepared to pay it, but I am reminded of Jefferson Davis' comments when, towards the end of the Civil war, when the conscription was introduced, how this was 'grinding the seed corn'.

During a recent visit to a naval facility, I was surprised to find that a rather high percentage of enlisted personnel (a small sample, to be sure, as my minders kept me from interacting with many folks) thought the Iraq war both hopeless and mistaken. These folks weren't left wing by any stretch, but they were decidedly unimpressed with the current strategy. (I was yet more surprised to find myself arguing with them against precipitous withdrawal).

If there's a way to "win" in Iraq, we're not going to find it with the same bunch of vainglorious idiots in charge.

I don't know who's really running the show, Bush or Cheney, but both of them clearly have no idea what they're talking about, no idea what's going on in Iraq, and no idea how to turn things around. Every single prediction they made was wrong. Every single thing they say bears no relationship to reality. When Rumsfeld admits the insurgency could last another 12 years, you know we're in deep doodoo.

Who's doing the long-range strategizing? Is anyone? Or are the next 3 years going to be like the last, and they're just hoping for a rabbit to jump out of a hat? When Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld purged the Pentagon, did they keep anyone who knows the difference between an actual plan and a castle-in-the-air wishlist?

If there aren't any people like that left in the Pentagon, what will our staying in Iraq accomplish?


Even the pro-war crowd is now admitting we're stuck in Iraq for the long run?

Great. Wonderful. With what army? If there's no draft, and no improvement in recruitment, what are we going to do? Rotate the same 150,000 troops in and out for the next decade? Hire more mercenaries? Establish a Foreign Legion?

We're stuck in Iraq for the long run? Great. Wonderful. What happens if we need a military response somewhere else? For that matter, what happens if we get hit with a few major natural disasters here at home, the kinds of things we need the National Guard for?

We can't internationalize troop strength. The Coalition of the Willing is reduced to wet kleenex already, and I don't see any new members signing up. On the contrary: the Bush Administration is working its usual magic with allies, now infuriating the Italians every chance it gets.

Blaming Democrats, liberals and the news media works great as a rhetorical device. Maybe it'll ensure the GOP keeps control of the Senate and House. Maybe it'll finalize the docilation of the news media; make every TV, radio and newspaper outlet another Fox News. Hey, maybe the RW commentariate will realize its wet dream of seeing Democrats and liberals actually charged with treason, burned in effigy, and "disappeared" to Gitmo.

But that won't make the situation in Iraq any better. Because Democrats, liberals and the news media are not the problem. The Bush Administration is the problem. And even if that wonderful day comes when there are no more liberals, Democrats and news media to say so, it won't change the fact that that is the reality.

What will staying in Iraq entail, and what will it accomplish?

Just in case anyone is still wondering whether Bush might admit that there are problems in Iraq: No.

"Faced with polls showing public doubts that the situation in Iraq is improving, President Bush will emphasize in an address on Tuesday night that there is a "clear path to victory" and urge Americans to maintain their resolve, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Monday. (...)

Mr. McClellan suggested that Mr. Bush would not signal any change in military or diplomatic strategy. Instead, he said, the president will emphasize that Iraq is making progress despite the mounting loss of life, and that the United States cannot allow the understandable concern about the violent insurgency to deter it from completing the job."

Anarch: Jes: Could you please just do the cite next time? That's one looooong-ass excerpt.

I am truly sorry. I thought I had excerpted three paragraphs. The length was a mistake. A pretty embarrassing mistake, and I cover myself with apologies.

Note to the ObWing team - any chance you could just delete it/edit it? I really never intended to cite such a looooong-ass excerpt!


On the strength of my comment of 2:18 pm yesterday, I call "resolve."

Hilzoy, I have to admit that I was a little nervous offering those odds, but thank goodness I can count on our President's strong resolve.

On Iraq:
  • All this violence stuff in Iraq is no big deal. The media makes such a big deal of everything! What is wrong with you media!
  • We will overcome this violence because our resolve is strong.
  • The President has a plan! It is a good plan and we will get it done with our resolve which is strong.
  • Also with our love of freedom. Do you love freedom? Discussion question: what's the best thing you love about freedom?

Our resolve? Strong!

What this country needs is steady leadership in times of change. Not intelligent leadership, not correct leadership, but steady leadership. Steadiness. Resolve. The resolve to keep doing what you are already doing, even if it is hopelessly boneheaded and wrong.

Giblets is angry! (Steady Leadership edition)

Trust Fafblog!

For the drinking game: I call "some people" (as in, "some people may say that Muslims are not capable of living in freedom", or some such figment of his imagination.)

darn it, hilzoy, you took my idea. I guess I'll settle for "some people's" more pretentious cousin, "there are those".


"Even the pro-war crowd is now admitting we're stuck in Iraq for the long run?"

I'm not sure what pro-war crowd your talking about with that 'even', but the pro-war crowd around here was talking about a multi-decade commitment before the war began.


ObWi, where three's a crowd...

CaseyL- I think you really pegged it with your Posted by: CaseyL | June 27, 2005 03:03 PM comment.




I think Bush will be delicate about saying all Democrats are traitors, but he will be clear in implying that we are too wimpy and weak willed to be trusted in wartime.

Funny, Seb, that isn't what the pundits were saying. Or, for that matter, the Bush Administration. (Please don't make me drag out those quotes from Cheney and Rumsfeld again. You must have read them.)

I also don't recall anyone talking about maintaining troop strength through a decade-or-longer effort ... whoops! My bad, I do remember now: we were going to have lots of help from the Coalition of the Willing. And from the 140,000- strong Iraqi security forces.

Well, I guess those prognostications are... 'no longer operative.'

Hey, Seb? What do you think? Will there be a draft? More mercenaries? Or a "Enlist for Fast-track Citizenship!" Foreign Legion?


The Daily Show last night had a blisteringly funny montage of the various ways in which the Administration's predictions have been shown to be, um, optimistic. Rumsfeld's testimony, in particular, nearly gave Jon Stewart an infarction.



Which pundits? I specifically remember Andrew Sullivan, for example, talking about a long term commitment.

There won't be a draft because a draft wouldn't fix anything and because it would be very unpopular. When something is both unpopular and unuseful it doesn't typically get far in politics. There should be a marked increase in pay to shore up recruiting efforts. That might require a tax increase which would be unpopular, but at least useful--in contrast to a draft.


If Bush had put some comparable effort into 'marketing' his vision for Iraq as he has the effort to change Social Security maybe more of the country would be backing him? ...then again maybe not.

9/11 is the only selling point that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has ever had, that was fine for Afghanistan but it just doesn't cut the mustard for Iraq. The country now realizes this and we see it mirrored in recent polls, but Bush, the administration and his die-hard supporters just don't get it and perhaps never will.

Iraq as the central front on the war on terror?

Is this flypaper redux, because to the extent Iraq is breeding terrorists, it is almost exclusively due to our presence there. Nothing like circular logic -- we must stay there because we must fight the terrorists we breed by our presence there.

We generate more terrorism threat by our ongoing presence than we eliminate.

Without our presence, Iraq devolves into a much more open civil war -- they are already in such a war, except that we are doing the fighting for the Shia against the Sunni. No wonder the Shia would like having us around for at least a little while longer.

There are already adequate security forces in Iraq to maintain order -- they are called the militias of the Shia and Kurds, which are already being incorporated into the Iraqi security forces. As awful as that might be for stability in the country, it is a trend that the Iraqis intend to implement no matter what we do.

The regime that is being created is Iran-lite, for all the good that does us.

The war is a failure of policy, and our continued presence does not repair nor lessen the failures. Pretending we need to stay as its the alleged front on the war on terror is simply another wrong-headed excuse for avoiding admission of the failure.


A tax increase? From this crowd? Good luck with that! Seriously.

ted kennedy's public takedown seems to have knocked loose a good-defense-secretary tactic or two. in addition to saying the iraqis are gonna be fighting the insurgency, he's been discussing the fact that sunnis shouldn't be killing their countrymen, and iraq's borders need to be secured. two years late, but hey, it's still the right way to be thinking!

Seb is apparently convinced that sane conservative bloggers are in charge of government policy and not the Bush administration. Interesting policy view.

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