Politics First

It turns out that training soldiers isn't very helpful unless you're sure the trained soldiers aren't going to turn around and shoot at you once the training's done:

But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

Of course the media refuses to report the good news -- many of the people we're training don't attack us!

Comments

The Great Orange Satan made them do it!!

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | May 27, 2007 11:06 PM

For those that haven't a clue, the above was a bit of snark in honor of The Great Orange Satan's fifth birthday.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | May 27, 2007 11:08 PM

It turns out that training soldiers isn't very helpful unless you're sure the trained soldiers aren't going to turn around and shoot at you once the training's done...

Typical liberal distortions. The Iraqi sergeant had no intention of shooting at our soldiers; he was going to bomb our soldiers. It's not like we trained him to do that.

Posted by dj moonbat | May 27, 2007 11:45 PM

As Robert Fisk has noted for what seems like years now, the line 'insurgents in Iraqi police uniforms' is worthy of a brush Occam's Razor. Obviously, the soldier-insurgents don't have quite that much front.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 28, 2007 1:50 AM

I'm not at all clear what your point is: We're training people, the insurgency is covert, mind reading technology is really, really primative as yet. Of course some of the people we train are going to be enemy moles. The only way to avoid that would be to not train anybody.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 28, 2007 7:37 AM

The trouble with the whole neocon mindset is that they have little or no use for any instrument of government except the military. So it's no wonder that training the military becomes a top priority for them.

Posted by ESaund | May 28, 2007 10:40 AM

"So it's no wonder that training the military becomes a top priority for them."

That's a remarkably stupid claim.

Look, the duely elected government of Iraq is under attack by an armed insurgency with outside support. If we are to be able to leave without said government falling, it has to have a military capable of taking up the slack. That means training.

Opposition to training is, then, opposition to the only circumstance which would make leaving politically acceptable to people don't find a genocidal civil war in Iraq politically helpful.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 28, 2007 11:04 AM

But 80% of the Iraqi people support us! They freely elected their government! The insurgency is the work of a few Iran-and-Syria-backed bad apples! The US media is blowing an isolated event all out of proportion! The problem is imaginary! We're winning!

Posted by James Gary | May 28, 2007 11:31 AM

Hm, how's this work? Oh, yeah. Adding exclamation marks at the ends of claims makes them sound absurd! But it has nothing to do with whether they're right! They can be right or wrong and it still comes across as stupid! The Sun rises in the East! See what I mean!

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 28, 2007 12:19 PM

In short, "Adding exclamation points to the ends of sentences isn't an argument!

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 28, 2007 12:20 PM

Okay, here's what I don't understand. We've been training the Iraqi for for - what? - 4 years now? And they're still not trained? How long does it take?

Posted by Jan Lewis | May 28, 2007 12:36 PM

The infiltration of the Iraqi police and state security forces has been evident for 8 Friedman units or so, even back when Rumsfeld was claiming that there were already hundreds of thousands of already-trained and loyal such fighters.

The reality, of course, is that we've fired the gay translators, so nobody really knows the allegiances of the so-called trained Iraqi troops. Some have tribal loyalties, some family loyalties, some religious factional loyalties, some Baathist loyalties and a few who are arguably al Qaeda, and thus our "enemy."

It is unbelievable that this constitutes the key element of our "policy." And it is more incredible that anyone believes it has a remote chance of "success."

Posted by patroclus | May 28, 2007 1:45 PM

"the only circumstance which would make leaving politically acceptable to people don't find a genocidal civil war in Iraq politically helpful"

Is there any circumstance that guarantees that continued American presence will prevent a genocidal civil war?

Posted by clamflats | May 28, 2007 2:32 PM

"Of course the media refuses to report the good news -- many of the people we're training don't attack us!"

Matt, why not a post on how U.S. troops just rescued 41 tortured Iraqis from an Al Qaeda hideout?

How about just one post, on Memorial Day, giving credit to the troops for this? If you could waste a post on DLC slag, why not spend one on this? For old time's sake, for all the Dalton men in harm's way, why not acknowledge that these troops did something good, in the war you once supported?

Posted by Fred | May 28, 2007 2:33 PM

"...why not a post on how U.S. troops just rescued 41 tortured Iraqis from an Al Qaeda hideout?"

And, to put it in perspective, a post on the total number of Iraqis who have been tortured, murdered, and dumped by the roadside? The problem with cherrypicking the "good news" from Iraq is that any positive statistic one cares to quote is overshadowed by an avalanche of negative ones.

Posted by James Gary | May 28, 2007 2:54 PM

Regarding Fred's post, I am beginning to believe that the purpose of our invasion of Iraq was exclusively to provide new material for writing Memorial Day articles. I mean, what else is there?

Sure, it may have been the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States, but surely thats worth a few made for teevee movies right?

Posted by Thunderlips | May 28, 2007 3:00 PM

Fred, not to pile on, but...
Every US taxpayer has always supported the war and the US troops there.
What many of us, including the soldier in Iraq, are not are "believers in the mission".
I appreciate stories about American heroism and successes, like the 41 rescued Iraqis. I don't need those stories to prove our soldier's worth or to continue my support of them.

Posted by clamflats | May 28, 2007 3:30 PM

"And, to put it in perspective, a post on the total number of Iraqis who have been tortured, murdered, and dumped by the roadside?"

And along with that, a post on the total number of Iraqis who were tortured and murdered and then dumped in mass graves by the previous government of Iraq, the reign of which was ended by American (and other Coalition) troops? Or does that not fit your paradigm?

Posted by Fred | May 28, 2007 7:46 PM

Right on, Fred. I'd like to see some yearly average figures to see who's really better at killing Iraqis. My bet is "insurgents," but knowing Saddam, he might just give 'em a run for their money.

The good thing about this kind of argument is that it's not just some ideological pie fight. This is a question that can be decided by hard, cold facts.

Posted by vg | May 28, 2007 9:08 PM

If we are to be able to leave without said government falling, it has to have a military capable of taking up the slack. That means training.

I'm sure that someone could graph the point at which that becomes possible, given the percentage of Iraqi troops who don't desert, aren't killed, and whose enthusiasm isn't bound up with moonlighting for the insurgents.

How about just one post, on Memorial Day, giving credit to the troops for this?

How about you get your own fucking blog?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 28, 2007 10:51 PM

The good thing about this kind of argument is that it's not just some ideological pie fight. This is a question that can be decided by hard, cold facts.

Well, except it won't. The Lancet controvery in a bunch of ways scared the hell out of me. The methodology was standard, it just happened to churn out an unacceptable result. Later studies by the DOD came out with similar results (although they were repressed in the age of "we don't do body counts", we do, we just don't tout them). The odds of dying violently in Iraq spiked upwards by a factor of 80 after the invasion and the most likely way you were going to die was U.S. airstrikes.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 28, 2007 11:14 PM

Saddam killed about 300,000 in 20-something years. That's about 15,000 per year. In the 4+ years we have been there, sstreet violence has claimed well over 100,000 lives. That's over 25,000 per year. Furthermore, under Saddam, if you weren't a "troublemaker", then you probably had a job, a decent education, electricity and sanitation, some semblanc of opportunity, and daily street-level security that allowed, for instance, your wife to go to the market without you having to kiss her goodbye as if she might never come home alive.

In many ways, the daily fear associated with living in Iraq is worse than the actual violence. Insurgents might kill you, but FEAR of insurgents prevents you from LIVING.

Which is why a majority in the Iraqi Parliament has asked us to leave. Sometimes the Hatfields and the McCoys just need a good old-fashioned blood-letting before they can move on with their lives. Let them have at it.

Posted by Jello | May 29, 2007 11:01 AM