A Surge of Kagans

In this week's edition of bizarre right-wing quasi-journalism follies, The Weekly Standard gets Kimberly Kagan to team up with "surge" plan creator Fred Kagan to write a cover story hailing the surge:

The new strategy for Iraq has entered its second phase. Now that all of the additional combat forces have arrived in theater, Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno have begun Operation Phantom Thunder, a vast and complex effort to disrupt al Qaeda and Shiite militia bases all around Baghdad in advance of the major clear-and-hold operations that will follow. The deployment of forces and preparations for this operation have gone better than expected, and Phantom Thunder is so far proceeding very well. All aspects of the current strategy have been built upon the lessons of previous successful and unsuccessful Coalition efforts to establish security in Iraq, and there is every reason to be optimistic about its outcome.

No word on why Robert and Donald weren't available to cosign the piece.

Comments

good grief, matthew, what is wrong with you? there is every reason to be optimistic!

what more do you need to know?

i must, someday, figure out how to express just what it is about the prose style these kagans all practice that is so irritating....

Posted by howard | July 3, 2007 5:28 PM

They too serve, who bravely write snarky comments online. Instead of reading articles by fat family Kagan, why not read dispatches from someone who is actually there?

Posted by MarineVet | July 3, 2007 5:46 PM

Is Mrs. Kagan dead?

Posted by Jim Henley | July 3, 2007 6:08 PM

Phantom Thunder? So the army is now getting its names from the WWF. Just swell.

Posted by Pinson | July 3, 2007 6:16 PM

Some articles that the Weekly Standard missed the historical chance to write:

* The Surge Into Moscow Is Working, by Napoleon Bonaparte

* A Fence Has Solved All Our Problems, by Andre Maginot

* We've Got The Indians On The Run, by George Custer

Posted by Michael | July 3, 2007 6:16 PM

Operation Phantom Thunder? Really? The Administration/Pentagon staff probably spent more time thinking up that name than planning post-war contingencies before this Iraq screw-up.

However, I do agree that Ms. Kagen is absolutely right. Of course things are turning around. At this rate, the war should be over by Christmas, 2003.

Posted by Lev | July 3, 2007 6:20 PM

WS is like Gen. John Reynolds at the Battle of Gettysburg. "Nonsense," he said, "the enemy couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-"

It was at this point he was fatally hit by a Confederate sharpshooter, earning himself a place in history as an eternal punchline and idiot.

Of course, had General Reynolds lived, he probably would have retracted his statement. Weekly Standard writers, though, not so much.

Posted by lerner | July 3, 2007 6:24 PM

Doesn't "phantom thunder" imply something that gives the appearance of force without actually being real?

Accident? Honesty? Freudian slip?

Posted by AlanC9 | July 3, 2007 6:47 PM

I like the fact that "preparations for this operation have gone better than expected." It's like preparing to cook a good, elaborate meal, and the trip to the grocery store "went better than expected."

"My god, this store has cumin! Nothing can stop us now."

How low do you have to set the bar so that "preparations" can go better than expected?

In all seriousness, Bill Kristol is not an idiot, whatever his flaws. He must know how it looks to have the authors of the Kagan plan evaluate its success so far. One can only assume he couldn't get anyone else to write something as optimistic.

Posted by Ryan | July 3, 2007 6:47 PM

So Operation Phantom Thunder is "a vast and complex effort to disrupt al Qaeda and Shiite militia bases?" Shouldn't we be beyond "disrupting" by now? Al-Qaeda and the Shiite militias around Baghdad are so entrenched that it takes 10,000 American troops to "disrupt" them. The Bush administration and the right used to create false expectations that we'd be able to "hold" cities and regions after "clearing" them. But now things have gotten so bad, the Kristols and Kagans have had to fake enthusiasm for "disrupting" and hold out the shiny promise of "clearing" for another time. Pretty soon, they'll be waxing enthusiastic about "defending" and holding out expectations of "disruption" in the next few months.

Posted by Ric Caric | July 3, 2007 6:47 PM

It’s not a secret that most historians and other experts in the field predicted hard times, and more specifically sectarian violence, to follow an invasion of Iraq. A review of the debate before the American invasion in 2003 shows that sectarian violence wasn’t simply feared by experts as a possibility but was feared as a necessary consequence. Faced with certain violence to follow an invasion and thus the need for the continued expenditure of funds even after the initial victory of toppling Saddam Hussein, it is upsetting that the United States, or really, the pentagon, insisted on going to war.

Today, the defense budget is $522 billion, largely due to the war in Iraq. To put this number in perspective, one needs only to know that it would take only $19 billion—a fraction of this year’s defense budget—to eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide. Recognizing the achievability of eliminating global hunger, the United States has publicly committed itself to this goal by signing the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, which call for cutting world hunger in half by 2015 and eliminating it altogether by 2025. Hence, by disengaging in the Iraq War, which has cost the United States upwards of $340 billion dollars thus far, the United States can begin to fulfill its international commitments and addresses, among other pressing world problems, the easily combatable one of world hunger.

Posted by Jessica | July 3, 2007 7:07 PM

I think the warheads are busy packing what remains of their support in amber for some future war.

Any operations in Iraq now are just meant to shore up the old backstab meme.

Posted by alphie | July 3, 2007 7:29 PM

Hey, that was General Sedgewick at the battle of Spotsylvania who said they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance. Let's not tarnish Reynolds here. Raynolds simply got himself shot without making any witticisms beforehand.

Posted by Steve | July 3, 2007 8:03 PM

Of course, the people who are going to Hold after we Clear are the current Shiite-run, anti-Sunni government and military of Iraq; but why spoil a good hallucination?

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | July 3, 2007 9:41 PM

Kagan's paragraph should really begin with the words: Once upon a time....

Posted by Rich | July 3, 2007 9:45 PM

"Clear and Hold" in a civil war?

Not that a phrase such as "clear and hold" was ever anything but a bit of the jargon of the pseudo-science of counter-insurgency, but you would think the propagandists would at least confine its use to counter-insurgency situations. If you buy into the whole concept of counter-insurgency, you're agreeing with the theory that the organized anti-government violence in a given country is caused by the adherents of some political or ideological cause or party. Clear these few ideology-based fanatics from a given region, and the "silent majority" who support the government will be empowered to hold the area for the government.

But if we admit that we're in an ethnically and confessionally based civil war in Iraq, how can we talk about "clear and hold" without the frank admission that our strategy, if actually carried out, amounts to ethnic cleansing? Maybe you could think about clearing the Baath Party structure from a given area, and not imagine that this would be genocide. Your imagining could be wrong, and you actually would have to ethnically cleanse an area if the local Baath Party wasn't really about any ideology, but was really the local militia of the Sunni in the area. But if we've got past imagining that this conflict is about the Baath Party, and acknowledge that we're in a three-way civil war of Kurd vs Sunni Arab vs Shia Arab, you can't even imagine "clear and hold" as meaning anything but killing or making refugees out of the people of whichever faction we decide to target for ethnic cleansing.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | July 3, 2007 9:57 PM

Ah, guys. Aren't you leaving someone out? That would be the Sunni insurgents of various stripes who are last I checked responsible for 90% of American casualties and probably well over half of Iraqi ones.

I suppose they are equating al Qaeda with them but really, how can you look at yourselves in the mirror. Well I guess the pay is good.

Posted by rapier | July 3, 2007 10:59 PM

Posted by Jessica | July 3, 2007 7:07 PM:"It’s not a secret that most historians and other experts in the field predicted hard times, and more specifically sectarian violence, to follow an invasion of Iraq."

Sorry? Most historians and other experts? All I have seen when asking is one Texan journalist. Which historians and experts would these be exactly?

Posted by Jessica | July 3, 2007 7:07 PM:"To put this number in perspective, one needs only to know that it would take only $19 billion—a fraction of this year’s defense budget—to eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide."

That is an utterly spurious figure. People are not hungry because of the American defense budget. They are hungry because of their corrupt and incompetent governments.

Posted by HeiGou | July 4, 2007 4:52 AM

Which historians and experts would these be exactly?

use google

They are hungry because of their corrupt and incompetent governments.

They are hungry, because the world's biggest arms dealers, i.e. the permanent members of the UN security council, the US being the top arms dealer, keep supplying those corrupt and incompetent governments.

Posted by novakant | July 4, 2007 6:08 AM

Posted by novakant | July 4, 2007 6:08 AM:"use google"

I'll take that as an admission you know of none and the claim was made up.

Posted by novakant | July 4, 2007 6:08 AM:"They are hungry, because the world's biggest arms dealers, i.e. the permanent members of the UN security council, the US being the top arms dealer, keep supplying those corrupt and incompetent governments."

Well no they do not. It is a little more complex than that. Those governments do not need anything the West makes to stay in power. The arms sales are their continued rule are separate issues. As Rwanda proved, even machettes are enough when it comes to genocide much less oppression. Having said that, the US arms exports have virtually nothing to do with those corrupt and incompetent governments. The US exports to democratic nations by and large and even those few long term allies that are not democratic, Saudi Arabia for instance are not noted for their hunger. Go to this site:

http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/output_examples.html#twenty

And compare US exports with Russian and Chinese exports. Find how many Sub-Saharan African countries get any American weapons at all.

Your equivalence is not just false, it is false to the point of dishonesty.

Posted by HeiGou | July 4, 2007 6:26 AM

“one needs only to know that it would take only $19 billion...to eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide.”

I'm glad that I don't "know" this because it's complete bullshit. It'd take a hell of a lot more than $19 billion to eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide. Oh, that sum of money might feed everyone in the world for a very short time, but I doubt even that.

That isn't to say that it's not the case that A) the wealthy nations of the world couldn't truly eliminate world starvation and malnutrition with only a small sacrifice of their collective GDP if they really wanted to; or, B) that a small fraction of the world's total military expenditure, particularly the US's, which is obscenely large, would suffice.

But to throw about a pitifully small number like $19 billion as enough to permanently eliminate world starvation and malnutrition is either dishonest or delusional.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | July 4, 2007 6:45 AM

Well if he means $19 billion a year on top of existing expenditures, that sounds fairly reasonable depending on how broadly you define malnutrition.

Posted by Bosh | July 4, 2007 8:17 AM

Sorry? Most historians and other experts? All I have seen when asking is one Texan journalist. Which historians and experts would these be exactly?

Does the National Intelligence Council count as experts?

"Based on two assessments made by the intelligence community in January 2003 and given to the White House, the report concluded that the invasion could spark internal conflict in Iraq, encourage al-Qaeda to boost terrorist operations and propel proponents of political Islam.

According to the report, US intelligence wrote in January 2003: 'A post-Saddam authority would face a deeply divided society with a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so.'”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5cf51f44-0b16-11dc-8412-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=17aab8bc-6e47-11da-9544-0000779e2340.html

Posted by Peter H | July 4, 2007 8:33 AM

"It’s not a secret that most historians and other experts in the field predicted hard times, and more specifically sectarian violence, to follow an invasion of Iraq."

Which historians and experts would these be exactly?

President George HW Bush?

"Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."
A World Transformed, 1998.

Posted by ajay | July 4, 2007 9:35 AM

I'll take that as an admission you know of none and the claim was made up.

err, no

false to the point of dishonesty.

well, no

Posted by novakant | July 4, 2007 3:52 PM