Moral Clarity

Kevin Drum, aiming for some kind of wanker prize, posts the following missive from "[a] member in (extremely good) standing of the VSP community":

One thing you might write about -- if only because nobody else has, I think -- is how that whole dust-up over the O'Hanlon/Pollack oped looks in retrospect. I mean, clearly they were on to something -- the relative quieting down of stuff that has taken place in Iraq over the last several months, etc. Completely debatable whether that was due to the surge, or is sustainable, or is deeply significant, etc. etc., but it's not like the caricature of them put forth in the blogosphere at the time -- as paid lobbyists for the Bushies, reporting back what they were told to after checking out a Potemkin village -- holds up, does it?

Well, of course, if you mischaracterize the critique that was made of them, then that fake version of the critique doesn't hold up well. Pollack and O'Hanlon concluded:

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

This, it seems to me, was deliberately dishonest. Part of the effort to confused people about the nature of the choice facing us, by doling the war out in bite-sized morsels. They also managed throughout the course of their op-ed to obscure the fact that the "surge" hasn't met its stated goals. It remains unclear whether or not they actually visited any portion of Iraq that wasn't a "Potemkin village" of sorts. For some reason or other, for example, they seem to have not noticed that Baghdad had become a network of walled-off ethnically cleansed cantons.

Clearly, though, the summertime decline in violence has proven more sustainable than I thought it would at the time. Equally clearly, Pollack and O'Hanlon have a good relationship with General Petraeus and came back from Iraq speaking from a set of misleading talking points designed to advance the political sustainability of the Bush administration's policies. I'm not shedding any tears for them.

Comments

Drum's endless pimping for all things Clinton has entirely pissed away the considerable amount of respect I used to have for him.

Posted by Petey | December 20, 2007 1:20 PM

If the war was a wrong course of action to begin with, and surely it was so, these kinds of discussions/controversies are sort of stupid, and actually quite bizarre and surreal given that a few hundred thousand people have died for the colossus blunder supported by the VSPs. They basically are saying that even though someone was murdered in cold blood, the assailant is so gracious to pay for a great funeral.

O'Hanlon and Pollack are the dancers on the graves of the Americans and Iraqis who were killed in this fiasco. And they want to us to appreciate their cool moves. Or at least their supporter,[a] member in (extremely good) standing of the VSP community wants us to.

Posted by gregor | December 20, 2007 1:32 PM

Jose Canseco turns out to have been right about steroid use in baseball. This proves he never took steroids himself.

Posted by Njorl | December 20, 2007 1:42 PM

I'm thinking that it's probably a good thing, a healthy sign, that I don't know this, but -- what's a "VSP"?

Posted by sglover | December 20, 2007 1:44 PM

They also managed throughout the course of their op-ed to obscure the fact that the "surge" hasn't met its stated goals.

I'm always astounded by Matthew's bizzare thoughts about the surge and its goals. In Matthew-world, anything that hasn't completely and totally succeeded yet is a failure. Progress toward a goal is completely irrelevant to Matthew; you've either met the goal or failed.

It's as if Matthew would fault sportwriters for "obscuring the fact that" the New England Patriots haven't yet met their goal of winning the Super Bowl.

Sometimes I just wonder what color the sky is in Matthew-world.

Posted by Al | December 20, 2007 1:48 PM

There's also the fact that at the time O'Pollahan were writing their op-ed, violence in Iraq was up, not down. The fact that violence finally went down in September does not let them off the hook for lying about violence levels before September. It's very reminiscent of right-wingers who claim that moonbats smeared General Petraeus by pointing out that, up until September, he was lying about violence levels in Iraq.

Of course, the lying has worked, strategically; because Saint Petraeus claimed falsely that the surge had reduced violence when it actually increased violence, he was able to portray September's drop in violence as part of a sustained decline rather than something sudden and unrelated to the surge.

Posted by M.A. | December 20, 2007 1:59 PM

VSP = Very Serious Person

Posted by right | December 20, 2007 2:01 PM

what's a "VSP"?

A Very Serious Person. In foreign policy, it usually denotes a Bush-enabling hack who thinks that shilling for various military actions proves his (or her) Seriousness, separating them from their pacifist arch-enemies, the Dirty Fucking Hippies (DFHs).

Posted by latts | December 20, 2007 2:03 PM

This, it seems to me, was deliberately dishonest.

How else do you expect the VSP's to claw their way back at the blogsphere's expense? The political goals of the Surge™, as laid out by Petraeus himself, are dead. Iraq is de facto partitioned, if not de nomine, and the Senate said they were fine with that back in September.

So, what exactly do the O'Hanlon types think they have going for them, here?
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | December 20, 2007 2:13 PM

For those not paying attention, the primary, stated goal of the surge was to give the Iraqi government time and opportunity to coalesce and do something. That hasn't happened, and there is no good reason to believe that it will happen in the foreseeable future, if ever. Anything else is propaganda, or deceit.

Posted by john o. | December 20, 2007 2:25 PM

The change in strategy from incompetently building a nation to encouraging warlordism means iraq is a far more manageble mess for the US than it was 6 months ago. We are learning to play faction against faction. This doesn't make the war a good idea or a success, but Afghanizing Iraq will make it far easier for most Americans to ignore.

Posted by Jim | December 20, 2007 2:57 PM

I thought it was a bad op-ed because it failed to take head-on the key critique of the surge -- that no political reconciliation had occurred. By concluding that in light of the military progress they had seen (which did turn out to be more real than I thought it would be) we should stick it out into 2008 and suggesting that the debate in Congress was "surreal," the op-ed made it seem like the idea of beginning withdrawal in short order was irresponsible.

OTOH, in interviews, O'Hanlon repeatedly stated that it was a close call and he understood the position of those who disagreed with him.

Matt, you are taking a rather narrow view of the critique of O'Hanlon and Pollack offered by you and others. It was not confined to the key issue of political reconciliation. It ranged across a whole host of other topics often personal, including the allegation that they were saying what they were saying to curry favor with candidates (particularly HRC).

You remain personal in your attack. Choosing to conclude that they were being deliberately dishonest because given the changed tactics which seem to be bearing some fruit, they saw the choice as whether to stay a bit longer. I agree that was the wrong way to look at it, but I don't think there is any reason whatsoever to conclude that the authors were being dishonest.

In short, I found the substantive response by netroots to the Op-Ed persuasive and the personal attacks and overreaction offputting and distracting from the more important issues.

Posted by Chunche | December 20, 2007 3:05 PM

The first comment reminds me of some saying about pots and kettles, but I can't quite remember how it goes.

Posted by washerdreyer | December 20, 2007 3:36 PM

The first comment reminds me of some saying about pots and kettles, but I can't quite remember how it goes.

Posted by washerdreyer | December 20, 2007 3:36 PM

They were painted as war critics who saw the light. That was the most dishonest part of the whole thing. Take that framing away, and their whole op/ed becomes another tired William Kristol/Faux Sunday cliche'.

Posted by flounder | December 20, 2007 3:39 PM

You remain personal in your attack. Choosing to conclude that they were being deliberately dishonest ...

Probably because they were, just as they were dishonest in portraying themselves as war critics who saw the light.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | December 20, 2007 3:58 PM

I think that others talking about Pollack and O'Hanlon are more to blame regarding the characterization of the authors than the authors themselves. (I too was very frustrated by Cheney and others mischaracterization of Pollack's and O'Hanlon's previous positions to make it seems like two war opponents had changed their minds.)

In the op-ed, they describe themselves as "two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq." That is accurate. They did both on several occasions harshly criticize the "handling" of Iraq. Pollack wrote a book in favor of invading. O'Hanlon expressed a fair amount of skepticism pre-war and then ultimately came out in favor of invasion in a Washington Times op-ed. I never heard either of them say that they were against the war in the first place (a la Bill Clinton and Holbrooke).

Moreover, that was not the issue over which Matt said they were being deliberately dishonest.

Posted by Chunche | December 20, 2007 4:08 PM

Doing a foolish or pernicious thing well doesn't ever make it wise so doing something foolish or pernicious less horrifically sure doesn't.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 20, 2007 4:25 PM

Man, you guys spend an awful lot of time trying to figure out the motives and intentions of a couple of half-assed hacks. I'll tell you one thing the Iraq conflict has taught us: If you take a thousand people and ask them their opinion, you will get a thousand answers. If you get too many similar answers, it means they're all reading from the same blog. Selective disregard of the facts, and deliberate concentration on alternate information, guarantees that no one will ever have the whole story right.

What really matter is the outcome. If we can defeat the enemies of freedom, here and abroad, it was worth the expense of blood and treasure. If we can't, then it wasn't. Is that simple enough for you?

Posted by MakDaddy | December 20, 2007 7:31 PM

If we can defeat the enemies of freedom, here and abroad, it was worth the expense of blood and treasure. If we can't, then it wasn't. Is that simple enough for you?

I don't know. If you can provide specific and measurable definitions of "defeat" and "enemies of freedom," we might be able to discuss the topic. Otherwise, you're just pounding the table.

Posted by James Gary | December 20, 2007 7:46 PM

"Afghanizing Iraq will make it far easier for most Americans to ignore."

Yes, that is correct that this is an intention. However, it's not sustainable.

Since the basic issues between Sunni and Shia have not been resolved, the lull in violence at the moment is irrelevant. Even if you assume that whole provinces of Iraq will become completely ethnically pure in each case, and that each province will be run by a specific tribe or warlord, that still provides no resolution to the problem of Sunni-Shia conflict as a whole.

Another problem is that there are national factions in Iraq. We have the Shia Dawa, the Shia SIIC, the Shia Mehdi Army of al-Sadr, plus the deposed Baathists, and a whole melange of Sunni insurgent groups, either affiliated or networked, not to mention Al Qaeda which remains operational.

All of these groups have national aspirations beyond the local interests of local warlords. And those aspirations are in HUGE conflict.

That is not going to be resolved by trying to partition Iraq into Sunni and Shia areas, or trying to reduce Iraq to warlordism.

Iraq in the end is NOT Afghanistan, however tribal it may be. But even Afghanistan gave rise to the Pashtun Taliban, the Northern Alliance and other national factions, which is why Afghanistan has had constant violence. Iraq will be worse because of the oil revenues.

Thus, the current situation of reduced violence is completely irrelevant to whether the war and occupation has been useful in any way.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 20, 2007 9:58 PM

Chunche: "By concluding that in light of the military progress they had seen (which did turn out to be more real than I thought it would be)"

No, it did not. The fact that there has been a lull in the violence is in no sense "military progress" - except in the very narrow sense of "reduced casualties" (which has only been in the last three months - otherwise 2007 has been the deadliest year for US forces in Iraq.)

US military strategy in Iraq did NOTHING to allay the underlying problems. It was not even the primary cause of the reduced casualties. Sure, Petraeus's concept of turning the Sunni insurgents into "welfare recipients" has had a local and limited effect. Virtually every such recipient of US cash has said that sooner or later they will be back at killing Shia - and US troops if necessary.

This is not "military progress".

The strategy also has had no effect on the Shia militias. al-Sadr is reorganizing his to be leaner and more effective. His stand down for six months contributed to the reduced US casualties - but was undertaken on his own initiative, and had nothing to do with US strategy.

US strategy has done nothing to allay the conflict between the Sunnis and Shia. The ethnic cleansing was under way entirely during the surge and has been mostly completed, except for a few enclaves in Baghdad surrounded by concrete - which is a ridiculous solution at best and also is not sustainable.

But the ultimate conflict over oil resources and the representation of the Sunni in the government has not even begun to be started. The Sunnis are still completely confident that they can battle their way back into - if not complete control of the Iraqi government - then a decent degree of power. This isn't going to be done by negotiations, but by guerrilla war until, as I've said before, exhaustion sets in on both sides or the serious power imbalance between the two sides is equalized somehow.

The Shia have no motivation at this point to compromise, and the Sunni cannot afford to compromise. And Al Qaeda has no interest in compromising by definition.

So the war will continue - and the US presence there will change nothing. The US occupation is in fact completely IRRELEVANT to the resolution of the main issues in Iraq - and is universally reviled by Iraqis, thus guaranteeing US casualties as long as the US occupation persists, no matter how many troops are in Iraq, whether more or less than now.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 20, 2007 10:12 PM

For some reason or other, for example, they seem to have not noticed that Baghdad had become a network of walled-off ethnically cleansed cantons.

It was always like that, wasn't it? Those aren't walls, they're monuments to the ancient gods, Concrete and Halliburton, right?

Posted by firefall | December 21, 2007 2:30 AM