The Coming Swoon

Kevin Drum and Ilan Goldenberg raise some doubts as to how trustworthy David Petraeus' much-anticipated September report on the "surge" is really going to be. And, of course, they're right to. I'm not sure what else one would expect -- when people self-evaluate, they usually come up with positive accounts of themselves. Besides which, as long as Petraeus thinks what he's doing is working on any level, he's going to decide that he ought to exaggerate how well it's working in hopes of bolstering support. And, of course, if the war ever does end Petraeus is going to want it to be because politicians decided to end it despite his brilliant successes rather than because he failed.

At any rate, it seems safe to assume that the most recent round of congressional junkets has adequately previewed what we're going to hear in DC, namely some misleading spinning of the Anbar Awakening plus some unconvincing data about declining civilian casualties plus the usual screwed up political situation.

Comments

http://www.slate.com/id/2172904/nav/tap3

Hitchens shows why Yglesias will never be 1/10th the foreign policy writer that Hitchens is.

As the kids say, 'owned.'

Posted by JFD | August 28, 2007 1:52 PM

Technically, that's "pwned."

And it's good that Hitchens makes his distinctions between the 'three' wars going on in Iraq. Here I was thinking that Democrats wanted to end "the struggle of Iraq's Kurdish minority to defend and consolidate its regional government in the north."

Posted by TheF79 | August 28, 2007 2:01 PM

I thought it was "pwn3d." No?

Posted by Dungheap | August 28, 2007 2:07 PM

If we'd only revalue an FU upwards to a one year interval we could cut the occupation/war discussions in half.

Posted by steve duncan | August 28, 2007 2:08 PM

Hitchens is a boob.

There are many conflicts in Iraq. The ones he mentioned will all go better if we are not there.

We can hurt Al Qaeda in Iraq, but we can't eliminate it. Our very presence gives it life.

The Shia and Sunni can not compromise while we are there. There is no benefit to compromise, and there is partisan hell to pay if you do. Until we leave, sectarian peace has no benefit.

We can not guarantee Kurdish security forever. If we leave now, the Kurds will be a unified and coherent force in Iraqi politics while the Shia and Sunni are splintered. The longer we wait, the weaker their relative position becomes.

Posted by Njorl | August 28, 2007 2:13 PM

As the kids say, 'owned.'

Seriously? That's what you took from that rant?

The first front, Kurds, aren't a concern of the Shiite, Sunni, or AQW(hatever). They are however a concern of Turkey, the NATO ally oddly missing from the Hitchens' taint gazing. Talking about the Kurds and ignoring the Turkey issue is basically not talking about the Kurds. Maybe he was going to get back to it as war 4.

On the second front, there was no AQW until the US showed up. Good job, build a straw Al Qaeda chapter and then break it. I sure feel safer. I'm sure all the anti-AQW Sunnis are now our allies and think nothing but pure thoughts about America. They surely aren't contributing to the debacle that Hitchens agrees is front three.

So one front is about the same as before Saddam's fall, the kurds, but now we have to worry about Turkey attacking them. Another front was created and destroyed by the US, AQW, so we can somehow declare victory. And then one front that is a debacle.

Great article though, really.

Posted by crack | August 28, 2007 2:17 PM

Hitchens shows why Yglesias will never be 1/10th the foreign policy writer that Hitchens is.

For the second time today, I find myself utterly unable to tell whether a sentence is ironic or not.

If I had to respond to the Hitchens piece myself, though, I'd say, "Hitchens offers the same summary of the Iraq situation that anyone with the slightest interest in world affairs is already quite familiar with, only with a typically Hitchensian half-assed spin that there's some kind of parity between the Kurdish struggle for autonomy, the fight-against-Al-Qaeda-which-was-never-a serious-threat-except-in-GOP-talking-points, and the 800-pound gorilla of Sunni-Shia sectarianism."

Posted by James Gary | August 28, 2007 2:23 PM

the fight-against-Al-Qaeda-which-was-never-a serious-threat-except-in-GOP-talking-points

Forget I wrote that, and substitute what other posters on this thread have written about the USA and AQ-in-Iraq. They've said it better than my hurried thinking would allow.

Posted by James Gary | August 28, 2007 2:27 PM

Hitchens shows why Yglesias will never be 1/10th the foreign policy writer that Hitchens is.

Meaning, Matt's only drunk 1 day a week instead of 7?

As for the "Petraeus" report, don't we have it on good authority from Bush, Cheney, and the GOP generally that to say bad things about the war's progress just supports the enemy, indeed, is basically treasonous? Given that, the report pretty much is required to be upbeat, isn't it, or Petraeus should wind up in the brig, right?

Posted by Glenn | August 28, 2007 2:30 PM

i refuse to be tempted into reading hitchens, since he's proven himself a complete idiot on the matter of iraq any number of times.

instead, i'd rather, you know, write about what matthew wrote about: the white house version of the petraeus dog-and-pony show.

there's really only one interesting question about the report, since any of us could write the rest of it right now (as matthew suggests): will it mention 10 years to victory?

i'm betting no....

Posted by howard | August 28, 2007 2:30 PM

when people self-evaluate, they usually come up with positive accounts of themselves

I guess now that MY is part of the big-time media, he's allowed to let certain things slip down the memory hole, but this is ridiculous ... self-evaluate?

Umm ... have we forgotten already that it turns out Patraeus' report is not really going to be, um, his report but will be "co-authored" by someone in the White House?

No wonder people aren't picking up their pitchforks and demanding the bums be kicked to the curb. The people whose job it is to keep us informed manage to conveniently forget so much ... so how can us mere mortals who have other jobs we should be doing to earn our daily bread keep track of things?

Posted by DAS | August 28, 2007 2:40 PM

Yea, verily, when Pericles spoke and his words echoed through the millenia, it will be as a mere coughing fit compared to what we humans will hear When General Petraeus Gives His Report.

Shakespeare's immortal speech from Henry V rallying his troops on St Crispin's Day, this, this will be as an unhappy child's crying in a quiet church, compared to what gifts will alight our ears When General Petraeus Gives His Report.

When General Petraeus Gives His Report, music will cease to have meaning, even the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, were they to be combined into one godlike being, would be as the clanging of broken bells.

I merely weep for those who come after me, for they shall never remember what miserable gulley life was for us Before General Petraeus Gave His Report.

Posted by El Cid | August 28, 2007 2:45 PM

Ugh, the responses are so predictable.

The consensus among blogs such as this is that the "Iraq War" was some sort of giant clusterfuck that has gone horribly wrong.

But like past wars, this conflict has different theatres. Hitchens point is that we have essentially won one of the theatres - the total, absolute victory of the Kurdish situaton. He goes on to point out that without Saddam Hussein in power it was self-evident that AQ would try to turn the developing state into an ally; really, if you use the excuse of 'they weren't there before we got there!1!1!!!! OMG!Z BUSH AND LIEBERMAN ARE SUCH LOZERS!" you have to be against any of the non-religious extremist but still very fascist governments in that region being deposed; because by your logic, AQI would quickly try to fill up the vacuum.

As Hitchens understands, and as dunderheads as the people who responded to my post don't, this is inevitable. Recent reports show the Iraqi population turning violently against these foreign intruders - as they should. This is great news. So we are beginning to win theatre two.

It is only theatre three - Maliki and his idiotic governance - that still poses an issue, but that issue could be resolved without cutting and running after 4 years of trying to get to this point.

Posted by JFD | August 28, 2007 2:47 PM

Do not worry, JFD, all us unsophisticates who are unable to analyze the Iraqi situation regionally are truly going to be put in our places Once General Petraeus Gives His Report.

Interestingly, and not that I could understand anyone on the level of Brilliance of Hitchens, but if you were to actually read Hitchens' you might notice that nowhere in it did he suggest that the Kurdish region had ever been under any threat from Al Qa'ida, particularly not of any internal subversion, and it would have been a huge reversal of all of his previous arguments were he to have weakly suggested so.

Now, I know my approach isn't sophisticated like military analysts such as yourself, who go to the extraordinary length of actually remembering that there are maps and borders and regional variations in the Middle East.

But here is the text from Hitchens' article:

The forces of AQM do not care to tackle this real people's army, preferring to concentrate their attacks on the defenseless, and although there have been truck-bomb attacks in the Kurdish capital of Erbil and in the still-disputed city of Kirkuk, these are so far pinprick events. (Appalling to record, though, a recent and much-disputed incident near Erbil airport has led to a temporary suspension of some international flights to Kurdistan.

If anything, it seems like you might have gotten the opposite point from Hitchens -- he has always and consistently argued that the Kurdish region had factors about itself which inoculated it from the temptations of groups such as Al Qa'ida.

In addition, it may be crazy & fringe-y of me to notice, but the Kurdish of Iraq have in fact been developing their autonomy not since the start of this crazy clusterf*ck war, but since there was a U.S. patrolled autonomous zone starting with the first US-Iraq war.

Posted by El Cid | August 28, 2007 3:00 PM

What a stupid dodge.

" Hitchens point is that we have essentially won one of the theatres - the total, absolute victory of the Kurdish situaton" - how you go from that to me saying AQI threatened the kurds is truly unique. Your alma mater must be proud.

Posted by JFD | August 28, 2007 3:17 PM

El Cid (in an excellent version of what i was hoping to write back to JFD) makes an extremely important point: the idea that Kurdish autonomy is an outgrowth of this fiasco is your basic war-enabler lie.

as for another aspect of JFD's remarks: if it was so frickin' self-evident to the genius of hitchens that a small number of foreign AQ fighters would enter Iraq and try to take advantage of the situation, i'm sure he can show us exactly where he said that prior to april, '03.

meanwhile, the constant inflation of the problem of AQ in Iraq is typical of the war enablers; over here on the side of sanity, our complaints were that invading Iraq was a distraction from a focus on AQ, and that invading Iraq on a pipedream of liberation/flowers/install Chalabai/be down to 30K troops in september '03 with no actual plans beyond that was unspeakably stupid.

Posted by howard | August 28, 2007 3:19 PM

hmm, jfd believes that our grand and glorious adventure in iraq freed the kurds and he calls others stupid?

Posted by howard | August 28, 2007 3:21 PM

JFD,

Did you read the posts?

The Kurds were very close to an autonomous region before the fall of Saddam, the difference being that Turkey wasn't as spooked because Saddam was a counterweight. Now they are spooked. Saying we 'won the Kurdish' front is nice and all, but we could have accomplished this in much more efficient ways.

So either for fascists or for terrorists. Well done on that. Ironclad. No other option was available. We can't be for actually finishing AQ before starting Iraq, if that was an option I'd take that. Good thing you clarified. So, thinking that stopping AQW was not much of a victory since it was a mess created by the invasion is invalid because the invasion was necessary because Saddam=Greatest Threat to America. If we set those ground rules then Woo Hoo Hitchens is hawesome! Yglesias is teh l4m3r.

Posted by crack | August 28, 2007 3:26 PM

What a stupid dodge.

" Hitchens point is that we have essentially won one of the theatres - the total, absolute victory of the Kurdish situaton" - how you go from that to me saying AQI threatened the kurds is truly unique. Your alma mater must be proud.

JFD, the problem isn't El Cid, it's that when you said,immediately after your quote about the Kurds, that "it was self-evident that AQ would try to turn the developing state into an ally" it was unclear what the antecedent of "the developing state" was in your original post. I read it as (I think) El Cid did at first -- i.e., you meant the developing Kurdistan -- and it confused the hell out of me. I'm still not sure what you were trying to say, but you didn't say it very well.

No cheap shots about your alma mater, though, sorry.

Posted by Glenn | August 28, 2007 3:29 PM

the total, absolute victory of the Kurdish situaton. - JFD

I'm sure some dead Yazidis would disagree with you and Hitchens if they were alive to do so.

small number of foreign AQ fighters would enter Iraq and try to take advantage of the situation - howard

I dunno if Hitchens said this, but it was, in fact, part of Bush's case for war. Iraq was supposed to be a piece of flypaper in which we'd bog down AQ so that way they couldn't fight us over here. Meanwhile, we forgot to consult the Iraqis as to how they'd feel about having us turn their country into a quagmire in which to entrap terrorists (somehow I think it kinda undermines the argument that we were "liberating" the Iraqis ... but what they hey, consistency is a mere hobgoblin for small minds and those who possess, e.g., the mustache of understanding, need not be bothered by it) -- ever wonder why they didn't great us as liberators? -- and anyway it is insurgents/terrorists/whatever who are bogging us down rather than the other way around.

But let's not forget, like so many other aspects of the cluster$%#& that is Iraq, AQ in Iraq was not a bug but a feature.

Again -- what's the deal with the memory hole folks?

Posted by DAS | August 28, 2007 3:39 PM

Haven't I already heard General Petraeus declare the surge a success? I'm pretty sure I have. Not that we don't need to stay for another 9-10 years of course.

Posted by Jinchi | August 28, 2007 3:46 PM

One commenter here references Bush's "cut and run" refrain. I'm amazed that no one has pointed out that Bush's "cut and run" language is an admission that the US is losing in Iraq. This is true even though Bush projects "cut and run" onto Democrats.

"Cut and Run" is applicable only to losing situations.

"Cut" is short for "Cut your losses", and is clearly inapplicable to situations where gains exceed losses.

"Run" means you no longer have the option to walk away if you decide to withdraw. Obviously, if one is winning, the need to "run" doesn't enter the picture.

"They want to cut and run" means "We are losing".

Posted by JustMe | August 28, 2007 3:48 PM

What’s the big deal about Petraeus's September report? There is literally non-stop reporting on Iraq. What is the man going to say that we haven't already heard? What great secrets will he reveal? It is ridiculous. I for one do not welcome the prospect of Petraeus telling us how good things are in the Anbar province. It sounds safer than Newark.

The decider, Kristol, Kagan, other sundry victory-o-crats like our pal JFD above, have already decided Iraq is a smashing success. I mean just look at the Anbar province.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | August 28, 2007 3:49 PM

To clarify, I do not believe Iraq is a "smashing success". I believe that a stable state is far closer to being stable then conventional wisdom suggests.

Posted by JFD | August 28, 2007 3:54 PM

Ugh, there is a lesson in editing your posts before clicking submit. My apologies.

Posted by JFD | August 28, 2007 3:55 PM

So, since everything is peachy keen in Iraq, let's declare victory and bring the army home.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 28, 2007 4:10 PM

So, since everything is peachy keen in Iraq, let's declare victory and bring the army home.

Exactly. Winners get to "stop while they're ahead" as opposed to having to "cut" their losses. And winners get to pack up and leave at their leisure as opposed to having to "run".

What are the chances Bush or Petraeus will ever say,
"They want us to stop while we're ahead. But I say let's increase our winnings."

We've got a snowball's chance of even getting back to even.

Posted by JustMe | August 28, 2007 4:23 PM

DAS, the "flypaper" theory was a post-facto justification (one that hitchens, among others, endorsed); the pre-war justification was to keep using saddam and al qaeda near each other in sentences to pretend that it was all one problem.

jfd, virtually every individual and company that goes bankrupt assures us, right until the end, that they are much closer to success than the conventional wisdom would suggest....

Posted by howard | August 28, 2007 4:24 PM

Maybe I'm mis-remembering something, but I seem to remember the flypaper argument, if not that term, being used before the war.

Posted by DAS | August 28, 2007 5:20 PM

What has David Petraeus done to deserve this preemptive character assassination by lefty bloggers? Yesterday we read that the few paragraphs of his 20 year-old Princeton Ph.D. thesis (advised by Stephen Walt, of Walt & Mearsheimer fame) that Matt read were boring; today we read that Petraeus is going to lie during his Congressional testimony in September.

When did Petraeus become such an untrustworthy, political hack in the Left's eyes? After their Democratic Senators unanimously confirmed him for his current command?

Take a look at Petraeus's bio for a moment. Before his multiple tours in Iraq, he pulled shit hole tours in Haiti and Bosnia as well. He continued to serve after two near-fatal injuries that would have prompted men without his level of physical courage to retire from the military. If, after his long and distinguished career, Petraeus doesn't deserve the minimal level of respect to not preemptively accuse him of being a liar, how can you claim to respect anyone in the military? Perhaps you don't.

Posted by Fred | August 28, 2007 7:38 PM

What has David Petraeus done to deserve this preemptive character assassination by lefty bloggers?

Why do you beat your children?

And when did right wing trolls declare free speech a crime? Oh yeah, I forgot; 'liberal' which comes from the same root as 'liberty', and means virtually the same thing (liberty of thought), is BAD! Human thought and speech need to be restrained, or 'conservative', to be GOOD!

No one has assassinated the man's character. Nevertheless there are numerous reports such as this one in the Washington Post stating that Patraeus succeeded in having the forthcoming NIE report "softened" prior to it's release. The latter is supposed to represent the independent judgment of our government agencies, not General Petraeus' views.

Would you agree that it would be dishonest for General Patraeus to represent the NIE report as the judgment the intelligence community, or allow someone else to so represent the report without correcting them, if indeed those reports include the modifications of General Petraeus?

BTW, I read his entire dissertation. Did you?

Posted by JustMe | August 28, 2007 8:20 PM

let's see, fred, shall we? the actual track record on petraeus' previous watch in iraq was less than billed (weapons disappearing; security falling apart); he is clearly spending an enormous amount of time selling the "surge" in dog-and-pony shows; he is said to have played around with the NIE; and he gave a lengthy interview to hugh hewitt.

none of this is "character assassination;" rather, it's dealing with petraeus as a human being, not a god. amazingly enough, he probably wants to do things like advance his career, which is certainly his right, but we are entitled to look at the record and at his actions.

i'll repeat now what i said at 2:30: if the white house version of the petraeus report carries, in big bold letters, the notation that we are talking about "ten years," i'll be very surprised and impressed.

Posted by howard | August 28, 2007 10:50 PM

Guess Fred decided to cut and run.

Posted by JustMe | August 28, 2007 11:17 PM

It's funny watching you assholes tremble in fear. You know you've somehow lost the political battle yet again. Inept retards. Four years of sheer stupidity from the Administration and you're reduced to half-hearted bullshit attacks on Petraeus while watching the political sand shift under you as more and more Dems come back from Iraq saying things you don't want to hear. You don't understand what's happening, do you? Of course not. You're too arrogant and too stupid to figure it out. While you were basking in the glow of bullshitting about how you'd won, the Administration and its allies were working feverishly to make sure that at the least you guys would know you'd been in a fight.

Just like in 2006 the GOP was too focused on feeling sorry for itself to actually try to win. Now you guys are too busy patting yourselves on the back, throwing out lazy "arguments" against Petraeus and Bush, and it's going to hurt you.

No wonder we're still in Iraq when the best you guys can come up with is this boring shit.

Posted by chaos | August 29, 2007 8:35 AM

chaos - Just keep patting yourself and the GOP on the back for all of your wonderful accomplishments.

And how about Petraeus' most impressive accomplishments? For example beginning in June 2004, Petraeus became responsible for training of the Iraqi Security Forces. He "threw himself into the effort...for the next fifteen months" - http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/841519foreword.html

Oh what a success that has been!

Posted by JustMe | August 29, 2007 1:03 PM