Tunnel Vision

Andrew writes that "McCain insists on not revisiting the decision to invade and occupy Iraq." Instead, "He wants a debate solely on the surge. I can understand why; but I doubt it will work."

I'm by no means sure it will fail. A certain notion of can-do pragmatism is deep in American political culture, and that kind of forget the problems of the past let's roll up our sleeves and talk about what's working now attitude has a certain appeal. But it shouldn't work. And the reason it shouldn't work is that a given military strategy doesn't just "succeed" or "fail" in a vacuum, it needs to be understood in some kind of strategic context. If you understand the war as a giant mistake which created a large problem that's now in need of a solution, that creates one set of ideas about what counts as a solution. If you understand the war as an opening salvo in a campaign to use the U.S. military to remake the Persian Gulf, then working becomes a very different matter.

That said, the politics of the war will depend, crucially, on the actual situation. Surge proponents presumably think things will get better and better, whereas skeptics are inclined to see these stormclouds on the horizon and wonder if it's about to start pouring again. Thus you have two different political strategies built in large part out of different substantive ideas about how events are likely to play out. There's just no way to do the political analysis without adding a substantive analysis.

Comments

How about if the Dems keep mentioning the $2-3 trillion plus that aWol's bogus war is costing and the opportunity cost of same?

Wait until next fall when Americans learn that their European vacations have broken their budgets.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | February 28, 2008 4:45 PM

I agree with Hedley. The issue of war strategy may hinge much more on how the US economy is managing over the next few months than anything likely to happen in Iraq. A trillion here and a trillion there goes a long way.

Posted by Jake | February 28, 2008 4:50 PM

I think we can say that both McCain and Obama will have to retool or "nuance" their central conceits about Iraq. Events on the ground will certainly have an effect but irrespective:
Obama has already begun to pivot away from any sort of withdrawal timetable (he has rejected but not renounced) and will go on to more strongly stress the need for "smart" patience in Iraq.
McCain has the easier time of it, he must simply drop the 100 year war formulation, which he has begun to do, and then he can politely acknowledge that Obama has moved to his position.
At that point, as you rightly point out, Americans will be tired of Obama's repeated claims to superior wisdom in 2002 and will require a more specific expression of Obama's wisdom in the current mess.
Obama has avoided this so far because he has managed to keep Clinton on defense over her AUMF vote, a vote she must minimally regret for Dem politics.
McCain has no such restraint and Obama's tactics simply will not do in the GE.

Posted by JTHB | February 28, 2008 4:53 PM

What's actually going to happen is that this will pivot on the economy. The fundamentals of the election are that the Dems are at a distinct advantage, and that making it about the war is going to end up paying diminishing marginal returns. As Hedley says, in so far as Iraq will be pivotal in the election, it will be with respect to how it ties in to the economy.

That said, once Obama (or Clinton... hey, it could happen) is elected, if there are more than a token number of troops in Iraq, the Republican candidate will end up running on a "get the US out of Iraq now" platform.

Posted by Tyro | February 28, 2008 4:59 PM

with respect to that last paragraph of mine, I am referring to 2012, of course.

Posted by Tyro | February 28, 2008 5:02 PM

JTHB:

How does McCain simply "drop" the 100 year war forumaltion? His attempts to finese it simply haven't been politicaly credible.

Look, come November, the electorate will be looking for a candidate to responsibly end our engagement in a costly war they very much do not like. With that in mind, the candidate whose position is that the war was misguided in the first place will be far more appealing than one who months previously was talking about a centuries long "comittment".

Furthermore, past actions speak to judgement and help predict future decisions. An electorate with no stomach for anymore wars in the Middle East will find Obama, who opposed the Iraq war from the start - much more appealing than McCain the war's greatest cheerleader. Particularly when they're inundated with adds showing McCain singing "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran".

Posted by WillieStyle | February 28, 2008 5:04 PM

The main reason that it shouldn't work is that McCain's Iraq message basically amounts to "Trust me - I know what I'm doing." Having been disastrously wrong in the past tends to undermine that message, so it's not the sort of thing that can be easily dismissed as water under the bridge.

If McCain is able to get away with it (and I think there's a good chance that he will), it'll be because a significant percentage of Americans simply ignore the actual substance of what politicians say, and focus on the image of a speaker in assessing his/her credibility. So, an old, white, military man will be regarded as more credible than a younger, black lawyer, even if the military man is spewing obvious nonsense. At least McCain is only 5'7" - that should help a little.

Posted by N | February 28, 2008 5:18 PM

The odd thing is Obama IS talking about the future. He's using the past as a way to convince people McCain has no credibility when it comes to the future of Iraq. The old man can complain all he wants, but as long as Obama manages to slip in something about not trusting the one who drove the bus into the ditch to get us out of it alongside his calls for a pullout, McCain will be helpless to change the subject. It'll become even worse as the surge ends and things start to get ugly once again. McCain's real problem is tying his campaign to something so unstable. It's a huge gamble.

Posted by NHCt | February 28, 2008 5:23 PM

Some perspective please.

What McCain ought to be discussing is Muqtada's decision to play opossum as a measure of the surge's strength rather than patting himself on the back every 20 minutes for supporting the surge.

Absent Sadr's cooperation, the surge, McCain's support of it, and the Iraq clusterfvk in general would now look like total folly.

As to Mr. Obama (who (credit to McCain)apparently forgot that al Qaeda is indeed already in Iraq), he needs to desist from the I-told-you-so campaign sloganeering and start accepting that 25 million-plus lives hang in the balance of his withdrawal ultimatum. And then there's that whole oil dynamic....

Finally, the larger point that needs to addressed is not who said what when, but whether our being in Iraq now and in the future-independent of why or how we got there-is in the US' geopolitical interest.

I just dont know.

Posted by resh | February 28, 2008 5:29 PM

How does McCain simply "drop" the 100 year war forumaltion? His attempts to finese it simply haven't been politicaly credible.

On the contrary, McCain can simply ask Obama to name the date when he will end our military presence in Iraq. Not the date when he will "start" to withdraw troops, or the date he will withdraw our "combat brigades," but the date when he will have all our military personnel out of the country, PERIOD. Obama will then sputter and choke, change the subject, point to the sky and yell "Look, a flying saucer!" or do anything else he can think of to avoid answering the question, and McCain will have made his point that Obama hasn't committed to ending our military presence in Iraq any more than McCain has.

Posted by Mixner | February 28, 2008 5:29 PM

Let's be honest here. What Democrats need to keep a laser focus on is ensuring defeat for Bush's war in Iraq. That will put an end to American imperialist military adventures for at least a generation, and it will destroy the Republicans' claims to be "strong on national security". Once that's off the table, then we can crush them election after election on health care, economic inequality etc. Even if Obama gets us UHC, we can always argue in subsequent elections that we need to make the benefits more generous, and make the tax system more progressive.

But the first step is end this surge business and let Iraq collapse on top of Bush and the Neocons' pretensions about the uses of American militarism.

Posted by Emily | February 28, 2008 5:31 PM

Telling people to forget the immediate past is asking them to act stupid. It serves the conservative elite if people are easily led.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | February 28, 2008 5:37 PM

I know I'm going to be crucified for saying this, but what if John McCain is right?

I was against the war from the start. I never thought there were WMD or connections to Bin Laden. I agree that invading Iraq was a strategic blunder. Not only poorly executed, but inconceived.

However, having said that, none of that constitutes a way forward.

If the surge has stabilized the situation in Iraq and circumstances are steadily improving, then couldn't signaling withdrawal be a major risk? I can see both sides to this. Perhaps signaling withdrawal with prove to be the final impetus to the various factions (particularly the Sunnis) to do the serious negotiation and compromise needed for reconciliation. Alternately, signaling withdrawal could further stall any further progress that is being made because some factions know they may be able to secure the upper hand when the Americans leave (I'm thinking about the Shi'ites here). It's not at all clear to me what the result of signaling withdrawal with be.

Incidentally, if pulling the troops out of Iraq led to further chaos, ethnic violence and even genocide, would a President Obama intervene to stop it? And if so, wouldn't that be even more costly in the long run than simply remaining for a few extra years?

I do not claim to know the answers to this question, but I do know that this debate will not be clearcut come the fall campaign. Obama will claim that McCain is the candidate of "100 years of war" and McCain will claim Obama is the candidate of "surrender" and will promise "victory with honor."

Posted by Tim K | February 28, 2008 5:38 PM

What Democrats need to keep a laser focus on is ensuring defeat for Bush's war in Iraq.

It's nice to see someone say it so bluntly. Usually Democrats try to dance around the issue. But we see it here very clearly: the Democrats' main purpose must be to ensure that America is defeated.

As Glenn Reynolds would say, these people aren't "anti-war", they're just on the other side.

Posted by Al | February 28, 2008 5:44 PM

Tim K, I would defer to the rule of, "if they are consistently wrong on every single thing they've claimed for the past 6 years, they will be wrong about the issue tomorrow, as well."

Posted by Tyro | February 28, 2008 5:44 PM

Tyro:

Except John McCain hasn't been consistently wrong about this. He argued that the invasion was poorly executed from the very beginning and advocated escalation (in other words: the surge) consistently from 2003-2007. He supported the surge even when it looked it like it failing, even though it's obviously proven successful in reducing the level of violence.

Once again, constantly returning to the disastrous blunder of invading Iraq is not a solution, is not a plan, is not a way forward.

Posted by Tim K | February 28, 2008 5:48 PM

Emily,

Forgetting for the moment about the harm "ensuring defeat" would be for America (not to mention, Iraq), that would be a political disaster for Democrats. If Obama wins, he will be too cautious to pull all American troops out in, say, a year. We'll still have troops in Iraq when he's running for re-election. In 2012 people will associate "Bush" with Iraq as much as they associated "LBJ" with Vietnam in 1974, which is to say not so much. Obama wouldn't be ensuring Bush's defeat, but his own.

Of course, Obama is smart enough to know this, I'm sure. Which is why "anti-war" Dems such as yourself are going to continue to be disappointed.

Posted by Juan | February 28, 2008 5:49 PM

If people believe that Obama and Clinton don't want to pull our troops out of Iraq, then it would be the logical thing for McCain to attack their credibility on this issue and then himself credibly advocate pulling out of Iraq, since this would win him huge amounts of popular support, driving Independents and Democrats to his side.

Since it does not look like McCain has any intention of taking this stance out on Iraq, I can only assume it is because he knows that Obama and Clinton's position on the issue is unassailable.

Republicans are stunning clueless regarding how large a portion of the electorate wants us to leave Iraq. McCain is likely less so but is also aware that he wouldn't have any credibility on running on a platform of pulling out of Iraq, while Obama and Clinton do.

Posted by Tyro | February 28, 2008 5:50 PM

Tim K,

I think what Resh said is correct. Obama needs to move away from I told you so stance and be more specific as to how we will deal with the situation. I also think he needa to propose a Marshall plan. We all know that the reasons why Iraq is not doing well is because the occupation has been an utter failure. The Iraqis have no electricity and running water, etc. By failing to invest the infrastructure we lost the goodwill of the Iraqis. I don't hear McCain focusing on nation building. Obama needs to hit him with that because what good of staying in Iraq if we fail to address the infrastructure issue.

Posted by Micheline | February 28, 2008 5:51 PM

Tim K,

I think what Resh said is correct. Obama needs to move away from the I told you so stance and be more specific as to how we will deal with the situation. I also think he needs to propose a Marshall plan. We all know that the reasons why Iraq is not doing well is because the occupation has been an utter failure. The Iraqis have no electricity and running water, etc. By failing to invest the infrastructure we lost the goodwill of the Iraqis. I don't hear McCain focusing on nation building. Obama needs to hit him with that because what good of staying in Iraq if we fail to address the infrastructure issue.

Posted by Micheline | February 28, 2008 5:52 PM

He argued that the invasion was poorly executed from the very beginning

He most certainly did not! Retroactively speaking, though, he claimed he did.

Posted by Tyro | February 28, 2008 5:53 PM

"If people believe that Obama and Clinton don't want to pull our troops out of Iraq, then it would be the logical thing for McCain to attack their credibility on this issue and then himself credibly advocate pulling out of Iraq, since this would win him huge amounts of popular support, driving Independents and Democrats to his side."

Tyro,

That would be the "logical" thing for McCain to do if he were a political opportunist on Iraq (like Hillary has been), but of course, the opposite is the case. McCain supported the surge when it wasn't popular, because, as he said then, "I'd rather lose a political campaign than lose a war". For McCain, winning the White House isn't worth sabotaging the war effort in Iraq. There was a time when Democrats felt the same way -- politics stopping at the water's edge, and all that.

Posted by Fred | February 28, 2008 5:57 PM

Micheline:

I very much agree with the thrust of what you are arguing, I think those are very reasonable suggestions for Senator Obama. His statements so far don't seem to be very open to what you are talking about. He daily criticizes the "12 billion dollars a month" bring spent on Iraq that could be spent on social programs. That certainly doesn't sound like he's open to a massive "Marshall Plan" sized investment in nation-building. I think the dilemma for Obama is that the more cautious (thoughtful and responsible) he begins sounding on Iraq the more he will risk provoking the ire of anti-war Democrats like MoveOn.org, the Netroots, and other actvists.

Posted by Tim K | February 28, 2008 5:59 PM

I'll let those claims of McCain not being an opportunist to stand on their own, for the amusement value of the rest of us.

To a degree, McCain does have an inner foolishness with compels him to be more concerned about "image" rather than practical policies, but at the same time, his job is to get elected. If any Republican thinks that the Democrats aren't credible on their claims of ending the war in Iraq and wants to ride a wave to victory, all they have to do is outflank the Democrats on that score. Since the Republicans aren't doing so, it's pretty much a sign that they know that pivoting in that direction just isn't credible.

Though if you are right, Fred, McCain has NO business being president, because it shows he's willing to actively work against the interests of the American people for his own personal vanity. NOT cool.

Posted by Tyro | February 28, 2008 6:04 PM

Tim K. we're in a quagmire in Iraq. Of course the situation will deteriorate when we leave. The gov't only exists because of U.S. support.
The point is, will we go broke trying to keep soldiers in Iraq for target practice or will we remove our troops and try and negotiate an end to the ethnic violence that is sure to come.

Posted by D. | February 28, 2008 6:27 PM

So, in other words, defeat is inevitable so the US may as well sue for peace now (or surrender as McCain would say) and cut its losses. You could be right, but it doesn't sound like a winning argument.

Posted by Tim K | February 28, 2008 6:30 PM

"Let's be honest here. What Democrats need to keep a laser focus on is ensuring defeat for Bush's war in Iraq. That will put an end to American imperialist military adventures for at least a generation, and it will destroy the Republicans' claims to be "strong on national security."

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Jesus, Emily. Can you be any more of a frickin' ideologue? First of all, your "Bush's war" rhetoric completely ignores the fact that half the weasel democrats were in the tank with Bush's martialism (Hillary, Edwards, Kerry-we see you), and the other half were too damn scared to do anything about it. And NEWSFLASH! time: congress controls the war purse.

Secondly, your plan to deliberately lose the Iraq war for the sake of political gain or to ensure an isolationist policy in perpetuity is one of the more mindless comments I've ever read.

Maybe we should just ask the soldiers to start shooting each other and everyone else they see in Iraq so your moveon.org campaign can make inroads at the ballot box. If the slaughter is bloody enough, maybe you can select Michael Moore as SOD.

Posted by resh | February 28, 2008 6:38 PM

The Iraq "War" is over. We can keep our military there to play regional cops or not, but the number of people who need us there are far outnumbered by the people who want us to go away. We dont have our military occupying the bad neighborhoods of our major cities until "crime is over", so why do we think we should stay there until "civilization" is re-established?

It is not the right or the responsibility of the United States to make Iraq civilized, even though we will always be responsible for destroying their civilization.

It is the right of the Iraq people themselves, and they deserve the society they will build. We too deserve the society we have fostered in the United States.

Posted by So | February 28, 2008 6:50 PM

I can only assume it is because he knows that Obama and Clinton's position on the issue is unassailable.

I wish.

Both plans are drawn heavily from the Baker plan and envision a scenario where we try a stealthy sort of occupation. Both of them take pains to point out that of course we need to have troops to guard our embassy and that sounds great except our embassy is a ginormous Crusader Castle taking up a huge chunk of Baghdad and requires litteraly thousands of troops to guard it. In addition, all the state dept and CIA inside need protection and in the short run that has to be Blackwater. We haven't even got into military advisers yet, and the kind of bullshit line that has been in past American foreign policy. I do believe they both intend to shuffle those deck chairs on this imperial wreck for awhile at least before they call it quits.

Posted by ed marshall | February 28, 2008 7:00 PM

"There's just no way to do the political analysis without adding a substantive analysis." -Matt

There is no need for analysis. The answers are already known to everyone because there are laws that everyone except America agrees to. America committed a crime invading Iraq. Now it has to get its soldiers out of Iraq and start paying reparations. There is no legitimate option to keep our army there trying to fix something or still trying to steal something. If saving face is important, we can still get away with blaming it all on Bush.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 28, 2008 8:10 PM

"Now it has to get its soldiers out of Iraq and start paying reparations"

Who should we make the check out to, Gary? The elected government of Iraq that doesn't want us to leave? Saddam's widow? Whoever deposes the elected government after we leave before it can defend itself?

Posted by Fred | February 28, 2008 9:14 PM

Sully's quite openly misogynous.

Posted by burning flock | February 28, 2008 9:20 PM

I'm for Emily, who is, of course, right. America won the war it could win - it defeated Saddam Hussein. It will never win the war of Bush's vanity - which is all about the discrepancy between Iraq reality - an Islamic republic dominated by people who more or less adhere to Ayatollah Khomenei's vision of government - and the lies of the warmongers, who have successfully completed the first phase of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad.

But to make that laser clarity even more laser like, Obama has to challenge McCain in terms of cost. Is McCain proposing to spend 200 billion dollars in Iraq next year? Is he proposing to spend 200 billion dollars in 2010? Anybody who looks at the figures of the Iraq project, aka Bush's "I'm an idiot, but I want my CEO Middle Eastern party just like Daddy" project, will of course notice that each year is radically more expensive than the year before. Staple McCain's balls to the 200 billion dollars forever price tag in Iraq, remind people that meanwhile, al qaeda is really not only centered in Pakistan but quite comfortable there, due to the Republican administration's appalling betrayal of American interest in letting Osama bin Laden and his core group escape in 2001, and keep hitting him on the head with the figures. You know the drill: the GOP is composed of American traitors at the top, and the idiot fringe wants to bankrupt America.

Even in yahooland, aka Dixie, they will understand, when gas cost 4.00 per gallon at the pump, exactly who the enemy is, here.

Posted by roger | February 28, 2008 9:22 PM

Fred wrote:
Who should we make the check out to, Gary? The elected government of Iraq that doesn't want us to leave?

Is the Iraqi government of one mind on this subject? I note that according to this article, opinion polls and military-conducted focus groups in Iraq show that large majorities of Iraqi citizens from all ethnic groups think the situation would be improved by a U.S. departure.

Posted by Jesse M. | February 28, 2008 9:39 PM

The surge is working?

I guess if you mean arming 80,000 Iraqi Voluntary police (IVPs) who are Sunnis/Wahabists so they can defend themselves as a positive thing....then OK. But in the long run, truthfully all you have succeeded in doing is arming 80,000 Wahabists.....

...I'm sure that arming the minority (Federalist Papers refers to them as "factions") will bring a long term peace.

And of course, these guys are motivated to do this by an American paycheck.....what happens when the money dries up (because it will)....and these guys want their money.....

Civil War (cont'd)

-Lovestedt

Posted by Lovestedt | February 28, 2008 9:57 PM

Tim K, if you want to know why normal people don't believe that the surge is working, look at Rich Lowry's National Review cover piece from 2005.

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war. Our counterinsurgency has gone through the same stages as that of the Brits five decades ago: confusion in the initial reaction to the insurgency, followed by a long period of adjustment, and finally the slow but steady erosion of the insurgency's military and political base.

We were hearing exactly the same things in 2005 that we're hearing now, and that's because the violence levels were the same as now, the strategy was the same as Petraeus's (and without Petraeus's shame of causing a spike in violence that lasted until Sadr called his cease-fire), and we were again told that there was no Iraq civil war and that if we pulled out everything would go to pieces.

The moonbats, who said that the occupation was itself fueling the civil war and that temporary drops in violence weren't solving anything, were right; the "we're winning" crowd was wrong. Since the situation now is exactly the same as in 2005, except with more money wasted and more Iraqis killed, why should we believe the deja vu crowd who tell us once again that if we just stay a little longer, Iraq will become magic pony land?

Since Al Qaeda barely exists in Iraq (AQI is not the same thing at all), McCain wants us to stay in Iraq, thereby killing more Iraqis and handing a victory to Al-Qaeda. And we know this won't work because the failed Petraeus strategy was tried already.

Posted by T.B. | February 28, 2008 10:09 PM

Why bother caring what Andrew Sullivan thinks? Right now he has a post up comparing the Clinton campaign to Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees.

Posted by mad6798j | February 28, 2008 10:25 PM

"Tim K, if you want to know why normal people don't believe that the surge is working,..."

Just curious: is John Murtha part of the "normal people?" I know he used to be back when, well, you know....

Posted by resh | February 28, 2008 10:27 PM

T.B:

It's one thing to disagree, but to not even grant me the status of a "normal person." That's pretty low.

I stated that the surge has worked in the sense that violence has been reduced. That's not in dispute. I don't think anyone thinks the surge is a permanent solution. There is no military solution in Iraq. Everyone recognizes that long-term stability in Iraq depends on the political accommodation between groups in Iraqi society. The disagreement is on whether pulling troops out now, or continuing with a robust force, is the better plan going forward.

The truth is you or I do not know what would happen when US troops start to leave en masse. We just don't.

Posted by Tim K | February 28, 2008 10:34 PM

There is no possible way the US can remain in Iraq. It is completely impossible.

Sooner or later - and by sooner I mean within the next two years - the Iraqis are going to either dissolve into total civil war - with both sides shooting at the US - or they are going to form a coalition government oriented around Iraqi nationalism rather than Shia domination and then demand the US get out.

There is no third alternative.

The result will be either that the US goes voluntarily - or it goes involuntarily. The latter could result in a massive spike in US casualties and/or the loss of an entire US army, and the loss of most of the US military physical assets in Iraq as a result of a hasty evacuation under fire.

Read my lips: According to most analysts with a brain, the "surge" has not worked. Nothing the US has done in the past year has made the slightest difference in the underlying Iraqi situation, except that the US is now paying 100,000 Sunnis not to shoot at US troops - which is not relevant to the underlying situation.

The US told the Sunni insurgents that they could get back into the government - this was by all accounts either a lie or a fantasy. The Sunni are now seeing it as such. Diyala province is on the verge of an "Awakening" revolt against the US because of this.

The reality is that the Shia will not let the Sunnis back into the government, and the Sunnis will not let the Shia dominate the government. Until some group can convince each side to form a coalition government - however fragile - on the basis of what's good for Iraq as a whole, this situation will not get better.

And that means it will continue to ramp up and down in violence until - as I said repeatedly months ago - either exhaustion sets in or one group - presumably the Sunnis - manages to match the other group in force capability, thus forcing the other group to compromise.

And the bottom line for the US in that case is that any "legitimate" or smi-legitimate Iraqi government is going to demand the US get out.

And since the US is there for the oil and force projection, it will not get out.

And that will inevitably result in the results I've described above.

I don't see any other way this will resolve itself unless the next Administration agrees to remove US troops at an accelerated rate regardless of events on the ground.

The primary priority for the US must be the security of the US forces in Iraq and the economic impact of the war on the US. And that means abandoning whatever fantasies the neocons have of running Iraq as a puppet state forever.

The US broke Iraq. It's going to stay broken - or not - regardless of anything the US can do. Anybody who thinks the US can do ANYTHING to change that fact has a serious issue with DMT consumption.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 28, 2008 10:36 PM

By my rough count, the comments here are running about 5:1 sensible. This is encouraging.

On the other hand, Matt's post--"If you understand the war as a giant mistake which created a large problem...", is consistent with the 20% here who base their judgments about the war almost entirely on ahistorical, politicized rumor, gossip, and misinformation. In real terms, the war has been a "large problem" since 1991. We have certainly made "giant mistake(s)" in trying to bring it to a reasonable conclusion, but a self-administered defeat would make the mistakes made so far look like like child's play.

Iraq has by far the most legitimate, representative government in the Middle East minus Israel and Turkey. When it asks us to leave, we will certainly do so, but I don't see a shred of evidence that that's likely any time soon. Trying to run a war based on opinion polls is absurd. Trying to base important policy judgments on the kind of wacky polls taken in Iraq these days is suicidally absurd. Fred's question above is instructive--even if people think surrender is our best option, there's no "opposition" that's remotely coherent, representative, with a plan or even rudimentary infrastructure for governance, and any chance of actually taking power to whom we could surrender.

After Tuesday, with Hillary out of the way, Obama will be free to pivot and explain why he's asking for 96,000 additional infantry troops in our military establishment. I'm pretty sure it's not to beef up our presence in Germany.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 29, 2008 2:03 AM

Powell man you should read this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan

I don't know why Powell you insist on calling leaving 'surrender,' as if we'd be driven out by an opposing army. We're caught in the middle of a sectarian struggle for power (which we're probably simultaneously both fomenting and tamping down), with Saddam gone and no WMD in sight and a long period in country, why stay in our present form?

If answering, please try to avoid false dichotomies and strawmen.

Also, take the time to read the link above.

One thing I will say, the longer Maliki stays in power, the more I'm beginning to admire him, he's definitely a real leader with an actual popular base, not an invented leader like that jackass Chalabi.

Finally, with Obama hammering on about the costs of the war, I seriously doubt the guy wants to stay around, McCain-like, forever.

Mixner should also read the link, and Mixner your McCain = Obama on Iraq is just silly. McCain would keep way more troops there for way longer, the mere fact that Obama would leave some residuals behind is not the exact same thing.

Posted by mike | February 29, 2008 2:40 AM

If Obama wins the general election, all daylight between him and McCain on Iraq will disappear. In fact, a President Obama's first choice for Defense Secretary would probably be McCain. It would be the ultimate act of political Ju-Jitsu: let McCain ask for whatever he needs to win. Obama would follow that immediately with proposals for tax increases, citing paying for the war as a key rationale. Republicans would find it impossible to argue against the tax increases without seem to oppose funds for the war. And Obama would be off: ceding day-to-day responsibility for the war to McCain, while focusing on getting his neo-Mondale domestic policies enacted.

Posted by Fred | February 29, 2008 2:42 AM

Ok Mixner and Powell (and now Fred I guess), go here:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/

Now scroll down a bit, and read this:

"Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

Now go here:

http://johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/fdeb03a7-30b0-4ece-8e34-4c7ea83f11d8.htm

Why are you guys maintaining that McCain = Obama on Iraq?

Posted by mike | February 29, 2008 2:46 AM

"Why are you guys maintaining that McCain = Obama on Iraq?"

Because Obama isn't stupid. If he were elected President and actually implemented that withdrawal policy he posted on his site for his fans, and turned an steadily improving situation in Iraq into a withdrawal in defeat, Iraq would become a black hole that would suck in his Presidency. It wouldn't be worth it to satisfy the MoveOn.org crowd and the Kosmonauts. Obama would tell them that himself. He'd say that he understood exactly how they felt, and he once felt that way too, but things look different from the Oval Office. And do they want him spending the next four years in a storm of recriminations about Iraq, or would they rather him work on getting them free health care, free college tuition, government subsidized back rubs, or whatever other Santa Claus policies they demand.

Posted by Fred | February 29, 2008 3:05 AM

Wow Fred, Obama really IS a political genius, everyone merely ascribes their positions to him.

Posted by mike | February 29, 2008 3:22 AM

Thanks for the links, mike.

--On Steiglitz, this must be taken as an example of a partisan, if expert, economist putting the worst possible spin on the data. Using his method, could we find numbers big enough to describe the cost of winning the Cold War? I've been a proponent of military reform for decades, and am fully aware of the extent to which we waste money. But nothing is more expensive than losing a war. By any reasonable calculation, our current total defense spending, which is in the 4.5% of GDP range, is about half of what we spent in losing Vietnam, and about 20% of what we spent to achieve a tie in Korea.

--I think Bush should have put on a war surtax in 2002, expanded our infantry forces as Obama now proposes to do, and sent twice as many troops to Iraq in 2003. I am on record as saying so at the time. That horse has left the barn, but I approve of Obama's strategy to win by re-deploying most of our "combat brigades", which amounts to about half the troops in Iraq, while re-defining our role more in terms of supporting the elected Iraqi government and less in terms of using our troops as traffic cops and security guards in Baghdad. I think Fred's proposal re: McCain to DoD is terrific.

I support Obama in large part because I believe he's too smart to accept a self-administered defeat in the world's most crucial geostrategic location. Iraq has been an area of vital national interests at least since Jimmy Carter made that official US policy three decades ago, and it's importance has only grown since. We didn't start this war, but must win it. This is not something we're going to be able to do with satellites and cruise missiles.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 29, 2008 3:30 AM

I have to second Mike.
Obama's ability to be all things to all people is simply amazing.

Posted by WillieStyle | February 29, 2008 7:26 AM

For those who think a U.S. withdrawal would create an enormous increase in violence and chaos, what do you think of the point made by Juan Cole here?

McCain argues that violence is down in 17 of 18 provinces. That argument itself suggests the irrelevancy of the US to Iraq. There are no US troops to speak of in the 3 northern Kurdish provinces, or in the southern 4 provinces from which the British have largely withdrawn. There are few US troops in most of the 8 provinces where Shiites predominate. There was no troop escalation or "surge" in the Sunni al-Anbar province. So if violence has declined in 17 of 18 provinces, US policy cannot possibly have anything to do with most of that. General Petraeus has had significant successes in Baghdad, though at the unfortunate (an unintentional) cost of further turning it into a Shiite city from which most Sunnis have been ethnically cleansed. But Petraeus is doing the practical work of trying to make a bad situation better, and makes no claims for success in the political realm in Iraq.

Likewise, what do you think of the arguments about the likely consequences of a U.S. withdrawal in this Atlantic article from 2005, which suggests a withdrawal would be beneficial for Iraq overall?

Posted by Jesse M. | February 29, 2008 11:08 AM

Jesse:

--I think Professor Cole vastly, and characteristically, underestimates the various ways having a capable US military force on the ground affects the behavior of others, including but not limited to our enemies.

--I think Nir Rosen lacks objectivity, military expertise, historical perspective, and a sufficiently broad geopolitical point of view. Other than that, he's a great reporter.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 1, 2008 6:56 AM