Good Question

Barack Obama has a good question:

Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also wants a quick end to the war. On Friday, he said: ""We still don't have a good answer to the question posed by Sen. (John) Warner the last time Gen. Petraeus appeared: How has this effort in Iraq made us safer and how do we expect it will make us safer in the long run?"

Matt Stoller observes, however, that Democrats are hardly on the same page over this and many are moving with worse framing. At the end of the day, however, though the tactical ins-and-outs of the surge are interesting in an academic sense, they're only really relevant if you agree to ignore the strategic issues that Obama is raising.

Comments

Or, as I keep saying, someone could pick up Bush's "defining moment" description of Maliki's failed Basra attack. But I guess that's gone down the memory hole.

(Al! Great to see you! Tell the kiddies about how Maliki defeated Sadr.)

Posted by John Emerson | April 5, 2008 7:00 PM

Those questions about the merits of the policy in Iraq should be asked of Bush, not the man he nominated, and the Senate unanimously confirmed, to implement that policy. I can't imagine any Democrats would have been happy if the GOP Congress had called in Gen. Clark and asked him if bombing the crap out of Serbia was "making America safer".

Posted by Juan | April 5, 2008 7:01 PM

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

Posted by idiotic | April 5, 2008 7:36 PM

Gen. Clark and asked him if bombing the crap out of Serbia was "making America safer".
Remind me Juan, how many U.S. soldiers were killed under General Clark's command? How much money did we spend in Bosnia and Serbia?

Posted by bjd | April 5, 2008 7:38 PM

"...the strategic issues that Obama is raising."

Okay but what *about* the tactical issue here namely that there hasn't been a political solution in Iraq and if all those fellows in boots picked up and went home right away they'd all start killing each other again.

(Armchair generals deal in tactics Linus. We deal in logistics here. Let's talk about that salamander story on NPR instead.)

Oh yes. I saw a Sierra newt in Oregon Creek a week or two ago. I didn't know it had poisonous skin. It was by the gold I wanted. I didn't touch it though. The next day I fell in the river. It was cold.

Posted by Linus | April 5, 2008 8:49 PM

In case somebody hasn't noticed, they were killing each other last week with the ASSISTANCE of the assholes in boots over there - until Iran called it off.

Now Maliki has even frozen the raids he swore to keep doing.

His credibility is on a par with Borat at this point.

Read this article about the REAL problem Petraeus is going to pose:

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/05/wiran105.xml

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 5, 2008 9:06 PM

And it's not just Obama who has a problem with patriotism. "This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what's wrong with America than what's right," Klein said. Blaming Republicans is not the cure

The Democrats still stick with their maxim that there is no such thing as sedition, or undermining military morale with hysterical, or overpublicized atrocity allegations. In this, they welcome the "dissent" of figures like Castro, Brezhnev, bin Laden, Soros, Jane Fonda - and embrace it as their own "patriotic dissent".

Gen. Clark and asked him if bombing the crap out of Serbia was "making America safer".
Remind me Juan, how many U.S. soldiers were killed under General Clark's command? How much money did we spend in Bosnia and Serbia?
Posted by bjd

You pose a non sequiter. If the question is simply if each action in war makes us "safer", the notation of the casualties or money cost associated with it - is irrelevant to answering the question.

And, it is really not the question to be asking in each battle in a larger war. In WWII, we could have been made "safe enough" by making a separate peace with the Nazis, and just gone after the "menace of Japanese carriers and torpedo bombers". Nothing we did fighting the Japanese Army or shipping mountains of supplies to the Soviets or invading on D-Day "made us any safer".
But as part of a grand strategy to defeat the enemy, all those actions ultimately made us safer.

Leftists in the present war with Radical Islam act as if a few leaders of AQ, the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor strike force, are the only problem.

And, if Binnie, like ADM Yamamoto, is just "brought to justice through his ACLU lawyers and the 'majesty' of American courts" - why, problem solved!! in Lefty minds.
However, this isn't nursery school, but grand strategy, that goes far past involving just Binnie and the "9/11 Victims" as the involved parties.

Posted by chris ford | April 5, 2008 9:22 PM

A real test for Obama now - the Zionist power configuration and military-industrial complex want to "bomb. bomb, bomb Iran..." and is he going to challenge the Big Lies the lick-spittle Petraus is going to spew? We know opposition from Reid, Pelosi, Hillary, Bayh, and Feinstein will be weak and/or nonexistent, so...

Posted by Trevor | April 5, 2008 9:27 PM

A real test for Obama now - the Zionist power configuration and military-industrial complex want to "bomb. bomb, bomb Iran..."

Any attempt to get out of Iraq will run up against the Israel-uber-alles crowd, who saw the war from the very outset as a way of keeping a large U.S. ground force in the M.E. as an insurance policy for Israel. That's what this war has been about from day 1.

Posted by kafka | April 5, 2008 9:49 PM

Ford, the lunatic Ku Klux Klan member, says that all this is part of some "grand strategy."

Yeah, and the strategy was enumerated by Chancellor Sutler as follows: "I want EVERYONE to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"

"Radical Islam" - what a joke! These morons can't threaten any Western or Eastern nation at all. They can't even knock off the countries they're actually pissed about - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf States, that fucktard crowd in Israel...The best they've been able to do is take over a meaningless Third World loser of a country - Afghanistan - after the Russians did what we've done in Iraq - interfere. And maybe they've made some headway in the shit-holes in Northern Africa.

This is a "war"? I've fought more bitter wars against bed bugs, Ford, you moron.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 5, 2008 10:11 PM

"However, this isn't nursery school, but grand strategy, that goes far past involving just Binnie and the "9/11 Victims" as the involved parties." Chris Ford)

Chris, dear, your "grand strategy" is expanding the Judeo-American New World Order, more Nazi Wars of Agression, more blood orgies of Islamic enslavement for Blood Money and to make the world safe for Apartheid Israel. You're the enemy, puss, the scrofulous foe of Truth, Justice, and The American Way.

Posted by Trevor | April 5, 2008 10:21 PM

Juan has a point, asking a general to justify the policy chosen by civilian leadership for him to implement (let alone the history of the policy he inherited from before he was put in charge...) makes little sense. I'm not sure it's a 'good question' in the first place, but even if it is, it's being asked of the wrong person.

Back to the issue of 'good question' though: How does doing anything "make us safer"? How are people supposed to answer whether having done something "made us safer"? Is there a standardized measure of 'Gross Safety' that one can measure at any given time, so as to observe its increase? Is General Petraeus supposed to peek into the alternate-universes in which we didn't invade Iraq, observe "dude, now I see, we're Less Safe in those universes", and report those results back to us?

What kind of adult expects this question to be answered and whines when it is not? "Tell me how I'm safer!! Tell me precisely!!!" My goodness.

Posted by Sonic Charmer | April 5, 2008 10:24 PM

Richard Steven Hack - Do you really think that the most militant of the Islamists or whatever you want to call Al-Qaeda and the Taliban really want to _take over_ the near and far enemy? Or is it more likely since many of these men are perverse engineers that they would be happy enough to have succeeded in sticking a bloody fucking acorn in the gears? I think those cats are smart enough to know, you know, don't argue with success.

Posted by jimmybiscuit | April 5, 2008 10:29 PM

Juan has a point, asking a general to justify the policy chosen by civilian leadership for him to implement (let alone the history of the policy he inherited from before he was put in charge...) makes little sense.

Definitely true, but the problem is that the Bush administration has, from the moment they appointed Petraeus, tried to portray him as the authority on Iraq policy. So we get the conservative talking points that the Democrats must have voted for the surge when they voted to confirm Petraeus, or that Petraeus's testimony was proof that we should continue Bush's policy, or that pointing out that the surge has failed is attacking Petraeus.

The point was that, since Bush is hideously unpopular, the administration seized on Petraeus as a person who was unknown to the public and popular with the media, and tried to give him the burden of arguing for Bush's policy, because no one will believe Bush. The MSM and the Republicans have bought into this, and so, apparently, has Petraeus himself. With Bush having politicized Petraeus's office and turned him into a spokesman for Republican policies, the Democrats can't afford to pretend that he's an apolitical figure.

Besides, Petraeus's politicization of his office goes back to 2004 when he lied in the newspaper about Iraq "progress" in order to help Bush get re-elected. Since he acts as a Republican operative, and the Bush administration treats him as a Republican operative, why should the Democrats play along with the MSM's idiotic belief that he's an objective source?

Posted by T.B. | April 5, 2008 10:42 PM

How does doing anything "make us safer"? How are people supposed to answer whether having done something "made us safer"? Is there a standardized measure of 'Gross Safety' that one can measure at any given time, so as to observe its increase?

Well, you can say something like, "Before we fixed this bridge, there was a danger that it would collapse. Now we're safe from that danger."

Or "Before we rebuilt these levees, there was a danger that they would breach in a hurricane and the city would flood. Now we're safe from that danger."

Or "Before we finished off Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda in the caves of Tora Bora leadership, there was a danger that they would escape to the Pakistan border and reorganize themselves, eventually carrying out more terrorist attacks against our allies and perhaps eventually us. Now we're safe from that danger."

At least, we could have said those things if we'd done any of those things. As it is, it's fair to ask what specific threat our adventures in Iraq are currently protecting us from (and to tell a convincing story about how). That's how adults deal with policy. Expressing extreme skepticism about knowledge of other possible worlds in this context, that's adolescent. My goodness indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld.

Posted by Matt Weiner | April 5, 2008 10:54 PM

"Besides, Petraeus's politicization of his office goes back to 2004 when he lied in the newspaper about Iraq "progress" in order to help Bush get re-elected."

If this characterization of Petraeus's op/ed (and the motives behind it) were remotely true, you'd figure at least one Democratic Senator would have refrained from voting to confirm Petraeus to his current command in the Spring of 2007. The reality is that the Democrats knew he was an honorable officer with three decades of service to his country under his belt, and that he had loyally implemented the policies of both Republican and Democratic presidents. The Democrats also assumed that his mission to reduce the violence in Iraq and provide space for political reconciliation would be an abject failure. Democratic partisans only had the reason to start slandering Petraeus by impugning his motives and credibility when they realized he might be able to report real progress from Iraq.

Posted by Juan | April 5, 2008 11:15 PM

Democratic partisans only had the reason to start slandering Petraeus by impugning his motives and credibility when they realized he might be able to report real progress from Iraq.

we're still waiting for that progress, b.t.w..

any day now would be fine.

Posted by cleek | April 6, 2008 12:30 AM

you'd figure at least one Democratic Senator would have refrained from voting to confirm Petraeus to his current command in the Spring of 2007.

The complicating factor here is that the Democratic Senators are a pack of pussies.

Posted by roar | April 6, 2008 2:37 AM

Those questions about the merits of the policy in Iraq should be asked of Bush, not the man he nominated, and the Senate unanimously confirmed, to implement that policy.

Yeah, that's going to happen.

Congres: Bush! Get your ass down here and explain what's going on in Iraq.
Bush: Suck a bag of dicks.
Congress: ...

They can't get ex-white house officials to show up and testify, the treasury secretary blew them off because he had non-refundable tickets to China, and you think they're going to get the President to show up for some Q&A?

Posted by daveNYC | April 6, 2008 2:38 AM

We should stop putting unrealistic expectations on the government. It's ridiculous to assume that spending kazillions of dollars and walking around barefoot in airports is going to remove all risk from our lives. Total safety is an illusion in the first place, and to the extent the government is going to make us "safe" at all, I for one would prefer to concentrate on things that represent genuine risks--like weak levees in New Orleans, or drunk drivers who kill ten times more Americans every year than have died in the Iraq war since it started in 1991.

One thing we can say, though--it's extremely unlikely that Iraq will be starting any more wars of aggression or developing any more wmd's for the forseeable future.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 6, 2008 2:45 AM

Obama has many good questions, it is the answers that are lacking. I think it is a reflection on 20 years spent trying to reach consensus.

Posted by hiro | April 6, 2008 5:54 AM

One thing we can say, though--it's extremely unlikely that Iraq will be starting any more wars of aggression or developing any more wmd's for the forseeable future.

See, now that's an attempt to explain how the war has made us safer. Unfortunately, there's a quick response -- Iraq didn't have any WMD's and was in no position to start any wars of aggression even before we invaded.

Posted by Matt Weiner | April 6, 2008 7:02 AM

T.B.: You make good points and I'm sure you're right re: how the administration has used Petraeus. So we have the administration using Petraeus to advance its policy in a fallacious way, and we have war critics trying to use Petraeus (in this case, the fact that he can't or won't answer a question like how invading Iraq "made us safer") to denounce Iraq policy in an also-fallacious way.

Matt Weiner:

Well, you can say something like, "Before we fixed this bridge, there was a danger that it would collapse. Now we're safe from that danger." [...]

But this argument doesn't go anywhere if it is met with the kind of simple denial ("no, we're NOT safer!") we get from war critics. Suppose someone says: 'But I don't think there was a realistic danger that the bridge would collapse.' How can you "prove" that there was, unless the bridge or one exactly like it actually did collapse? Suppose someone says: 'Ok maybe there was a danger, but you haven't reduced the danger that it would collapse at all.' How can you "prove" that you have? Trying to meet a determined skeptic's criticism still ultimately requires appeals to hypotheticals, counterfactuals, and alternate universes (at the very least, in the form of statistics). And if the skeptic persists in his denials ("you still haven't proved we're any safer"), there is nothing more that can be said: it is and will remain a difference of opinion.

Like the Iraq matter.

Now you might respond that, with enough engineering equations and statistical analysis, the bridge-safer-maker might be able, after a long and exhausting technical talk in front of other experts augmented by a series of published papers, to build a fairly sound case that would convince most of the experts (if not laypeople like Congressmen, who generally have no such technical expertise) that the bridge was unsafe before and/or became safer. If so, that is only because the soundness of a bridge is, after all, a fairly straightforward physics/engineering problem that can be subjected to objective, mathematical analysis.

Warfare, however, is not a straightforward engineering problem, and no such analysis or measurement of a war's "safety-increasing quotient" (or whatever imaginary thing you guys fancy could be measured to gauge how "safe" we are) is possible. A lot of Iraq-invasion criticism is tacitly premised on the notion that it is or should be thought of like an engineering problem, which is a big part of what often makes such criticism so silly.

Or "Before we finished off Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda in the caves of Tora Bora leadership, there was a danger that they would escape to the Pakistan border and reorganize themselves, eventually carrying out more terrorist attacks against our allies and perhaps eventually us. Now we're safe from that danger."

Suppose I say (in that hypothetical): "That's a wild exaggeration. There was no such danger in the first place. The idea that there was such a danger was scare propaganda promulgated by warmongers. Also, we may have finished off OBL and AQ leaders, but new ones will take their place, and they are more dangerous etc., and now their recruitment has increased. So no, I insist that finishing off OBL and AQ leadership has not made us safer for the reasons you cite. So tell me really how it made us safer?"

At that point you might think, and say, that I'm wrong, but in reality there is no objective counterargument you could possibly make. You would never be able to "answer my question" to my satisfaction. There is no measurable-number you could possibly point to in order to prove me wrong. That is precisely why it is silly to act otherwise, and to expect these questions to be "answered" the way one could answer objectively a question like how much shear stress a bridge could withstand.

As it is, it's fair to ask what specific threat our adventures in Iraq are currently protecting us from

It's fair to ask, but I think you already know the answer your opponent would likely give: protecting from the threat that Al Qaeda or a new-Saddam element takes over Iraq and its oil resources (which they can then use to fund a lot of hi-jinks). The issue is not that your question "hasn't been answered", but that you reject the answer for various reasons. That's fine, and you may be right, but at that point both sides are at an impasse, so what exactly further do you want, especially from General Petraeus of all people?

Posted by Sonic Charmer | April 6, 2008 9:01 AM

Unfortunately, since national service does not make a lot of money, Jews tend to shun it. Their choice, but it breeds military ignorance. On awesome display with Matt Weiner.

At least, we could have said those things if we'd done any of those things. As it is, it's fair to ask what specific threat our adventures in Iraq are currently protecting us from (and to tell a convincing story about how). That's how adults deal with policy.

No Matt, sometimes in war, we keep things from the public and discuss what is going on and why it is keeping us safer behind closed doors in the Congress - so the American public and Muslim radicals do not know the complete strategy, what the real blunders and weaknesses of our forces are, and what great successes have been concealed so enemy Muslim radicals do not catch on. What the Administration has said is not adequate, Bush is a terrible communicator...and he cannot talk about the global war on radical Islamists too freely or specific things we are doing in out of the way places...However, what we do know is:

Our forces have turned AQ's decision to make Iraq the Central Front of terror ops has been a horrible error for them. Same with elements of Quds Force. We have whacked over 25,000 bad guys and have 50-55,000 in prison in Iraq, and another 4,000-5,000 uncovered in N Africa, Europe, ME from intelligence we got out of Iraq. Terrorists have alienated Shia and Sunni and developed a terrible reputation. We uncovered the AQ Kahn Network, stopped Libya's A-Bomb program. Obviously, we stopped Iraq's nuke program in the 1990s, and by invading, we stopped Saddam's plan to resume developing nuke weapons and long-range missiles and nerve gas production once Sanctions were dropped. (As for UN Inspectors, the only reason they were back in after 5 years was because the US had an invasion force ready to go after Saddam refused past dimplomatic requests to allow Inspectors back).

Iraq didn't have any WMD's and was in no position to start any wars of aggression even before we invaded. Posted by Matt Weiner

Saddam had planned to see Sanctions end by 2002 and resume WMD work immediately. His debriefings and those of his inner circle confirmed that. 9/11 and Bush's railing against Iraq stopped the work France, Russia, Lefty/Human Rights NGOs bleating about how Sanctions were "genocide", and China were doing to end Sanctions. One faction to get oil concessions, the other to stop Sanctions=Mass Murder.

In return for light casualties as wars go, but massively higher costs that were expected, we landed square in the middle of the Old Caliphate and proved we could wreck any Muslim country except maybe Pakistan in 3 weeks with precision munitions. (And that is salutory. We can destroy the while modern infrastructure of an Arab country, leave them isolated and block their borders, and just not bother to go in and occupy - but wreck them so good leadership will not stay in power. Making other nations less eager to push it like Saddam did..) We got an intelligence windfall from documents and high-ranking officials. We then got an intelligence windfall about Iran and AQ's machinations from interrogating captured terrorists and insurgents 5,000 miles away from the nearest ACLU lawyers. We blundered, but in so doing proved that "secular democracy" is out of Arab's reach, and learned that we can not repeat the 2 catastrophic Bremer Decisions again. We have learned a lot about tribalism, and finally using that to our advantage and repeating the fruits of such knowledge in other Muslim lands that harbor terrorists and supply Jihadis. KSA and Jordan turned against violent Jihad and now go after radical Islamists who profess support of terror, with vigor.

Total safety is an illusion in the first place, and to the extent the government is going to make us "safe" at all, I for one would prefer to concentrate on things that represent genuine risks--R Powell

Agree. And I hate the Bush morons that go out and tell us we can be "perfectly safe" and cost is no object. And the morons in the FBI and Homeland Defense fortunate not to fuck something up daily in their jobs repeating the 9/11 Moron Chant: "We Heroes have to be perfect every day. The terrorist only has to be lucky , once."
(Yeah, our perfect heroes in intelligence and law enforcement! And what if the "evildoers" are lucky once and blow a plane up with an uninspected shoe or unleash a "dirty bomb" in a Western City? Does that end Western Civilization?)

I would like to see someone come up with DoD estimates of the American casualties from war with Pakistan or putting a radical Islamist Gov't in control of it's nukes and professional military, cutting off our troops in Afghanistan from supplies - if Our Black Messiah invades looking for 6 or so AQ people hiding out there.

Posted by chris ford | April 6, 2008 9:14 AM

protecting from the threat that Al Qaeda or a new-Saddam element takes over Iraq and its oil resources (which they can then use to fund a lot of hi-jinks).

But anyone who thinks that al-Qaeda might take over Iraq is a gibbering moron. There are no facts supporting the idea that it might. And there's no reason to think that a new Saddam would be any more of a threat than the old one (which, as the Duelfer report and others reveal, was no threat at all).

You're really promulgating an extreme skepticism here, where one person says up is up and the other one says up is down and there's no way to resolve it. But there are facts out there, and they can be used to support arguments. When you can't find facts to support your arguments, or when your arguments are easily refuted, that's probably because you're making bad arguments.

Posted by Matt Weiner | April 6, 2008 9:35 AM

Re: Unfortunately, since national service does not make a lot of money, Jews tend to shun it.

What an idiotic statement. Jews may not tend to go into the military but they do go (in large numbers) into other types of social service. There are a lot of Jews in the Peace Corps for example, there were a lot of Jews in the civil rights movement and other activist movements in the '60s, and there are plenty of Jews doing things like building charter schools in the inner city, building hospitals in Africa, etc.

Isn't Chris Ford the guy who argues that Jews were behind Soviet Bolshevism? How can Jews be _simultaneously_ idealistic communists and money-grubbing capitalists? Chris Ford needs to make up his mind.

As for his remarks earlier in this thread- Jane Fonda was wrong about what she said and when she said it, but the fact is that we were fighting for an evil cause in Vietnam and it's a good thing that we lost. Castro isn't any more our enemy than we have chosen to make him, and he has done a lot of good for Cuba as well as having made some mistakes. Both Castro and the North Vietnamese were infinintely morally superior to people like Chris Ford and the kind of oligarchic capitalism that they would like to impose on the third world.

Posted by Hector | April 6, 2008 9:35 AM

Matt Weiner writes:

But anyone who thinks that al-Qaeda might take over Iraq is a gibbering moron.

That's a great, convincing, objective, adult argument and I think you know it.

Anyway, it doesn't change my point: this is a difference of opinion on which neither side is likely to budge, not a case where your 'good' question 'hasn't been answered'.

And there's no reason to think that a new Saddam would be any more of a threat than the old one

So? You're mixing issues; your question at that point in the conversation was 'what specific threat our adventures in Iraq are currently protecting us from', not whether such a threat was 'more of a threat' (whatever that means; is there a Threatness-Index that can be measured, like the Safety-Quotient?) than Saddam had been through 2002. Anyway you're proving my point precisely: I gave you the likely pro-Iraq-garrison answers to your 'how is this making us safer' question, and your entire response is to say "is not!!!". Impasse.

But there are facts out there, and they can be used to support arguments.

What 'facts' are you using to imply that the Iraq garrison is 'not making us safer', exactly? Because if you really want to continue this then we can have fun in the other direction: you practice your wonderful arguments that it's 'making us less safe or at most no safer' and then I'll practice saying "you're wrong, yes it is!!!!".

Posted by Sonic Charmer | April 6, 2008 10:03 AM

Sonic, I don't have time to explain the difference between Sunnis and Shias, which is a big part of why al-Qaeda has no hope of taking over Iraq; but if you want to see some facts about how our occupation of Iraq is not making us safer, read this piece by Spencer Ackerman based on military debriefings of 48 members of "al-Qaeda in Iraq":

So what brought Mr. AQI to Iraq? At the mosque, he met a man who could tell Mr. AQI just wanted to belong to something. That man told Mr. AQI he had something Mr. AQI needed to see. Very often, according to Colonel Bacon, it was an image from Abu Ghraib. Or it was a spliced-together propaganda film of Americans killing or abusing Iraqis. The narrative that weighed heavily on Mr. AQI, Colonel Bacon said, was that it was his "religious duty go to Iraq," where he would serve as "an avenger of abused Iraqs."

But Iraq wasn't what he thought it would be. Mr. AQI wasn't an infantryman, where he'd bravely stand and fight Americans, he was pressured into being a suicide bomber. Nor were his targets the Americans he wanted to hit -- they were the Iraqis he came to avenge. According to Colonel Bacon, in some cases, Mr. AQI was happy to be in American custody, where he would no longer cause Iraq any more pain.

Let that sink in for a moment. For Mr. AQI has a lesson for us. Counterfactual conditionals are always problematic, but in all likelihood, according to MNF-I's own profile, if the United States. were not in Iraq, Mr. AQI would be back in his taxi in Algiers or Jedda. Were it not for Abu Ghraib -- which, of course, never would have happened had we not invaded -- Mr. AQI would never have felt that it was his religious duty to kill Americans. And were it not for the war, thousands of Americans and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive, right now, and all without a propaganda windfall that spikes terrorist recruitment for the extremist lurking around the mosque trying to generate new Mr. AQIs. And what is true of our foreign-born Mr. AQI is all the more true of the perhaps 95 percent of AQI that's Iraqi Sunni. Not one of them would have any reason to be a member of AQI if George Bush did not give him one.

Now, as you point out, your side is free to keep shouting "Yes it is yes it is," but that's your problem, not a problem with the idea of reasoned arguments based on facts.

Posted by Matt Weiner | April 6, 2008 10:25 AM

A real test for Obama now - the Zionist power configuration and military-industrial complex want to "bomb. bomb, bomb Iran..." and is he going to challenge the Big Lies the lick-spittle Petraus is going to spew?

Sounds right to me! I think we'll get a strong earlier indication of whether or not Saint Barack is just a speechifying nitwit, or whether he'll actually show some backbone if he becomes president. And if it turns out to be the former case, maybe all those moronic Obamabots who crowd this blogsite will finally start to recognize that Obama has absolutely no intention of voluntarily withdrawing from Iraq if elected.

And our friend "Chris Ford" must really be happy these days that Bush finally removed another one of those damn "Lefty Jew" lawyers who's been trying to interfere with our glorious military triumph in Iraq. I'll even bet that Admiral William Fallon was a life-member of the ACLU and everything...

Posted by RKU | April 6, 2008 10:48 AM

Sonic, I don't have time to explain the difference between Sunnis and Shias,

Nor would it be relevant to what I'm saying if you did. But thanks for at least deigning to weigh whether to "explain" the difference between Sunnis and Shias to li'l ol' ignorant me.

if you want to see some facts about how our occupation of Iraq is not making us safer, read this piece by Spencer Ackerman

Just did. Made some fair points but didn't convince me. I still assert that it's 'making us safer', on balance. Those not-making-us-safer things Spencer mentioned simply don't outweigh the making-us-safer things, according to my calculations.

Now what? Where can we possibly go from there? Are you bored of this naive and silly way of arguing foreign policy yet?

Now, as you point out, your side is free to keep shouting "Yes it is yes it is," but that's your problem

Well, it's a problem for either side as long as we both keep trying to pretend that the Iraq debate is occurring along some sort of strictly objective/engineering dimensions such as 'whether it's Making Us Safer'. It is not and never has been! And I think you know it!

Look, the fact is that neither side in this debate has come to their conclusion after sitting down in a cloistered corner of a public library with a slide-rule and an HP-15c and reams of books about Iraq and 'the difference between Sunnis and Shias' and an open laptop navigating to Matthew Yglesias's archives and Spencer Ackerman articles and - with those resources arrayed at their side - thereby doing a long collection of carefully detailed calculations, finally coming to the 'Eureka!' moment where they conclude "Aha, yes I see now, it's [making us safer/not making us safer], and therefore I shall [support continuing the policy of having a garrison in Iraq/argue against it]!" Yet for the 5+ years that this endless debate has persisted, people (on both sides!) have for some reason felt the need to pay tribute to the pretense that such things as 'whether it makes us safer' truly do, or should, guide everyone's views.

If anything, the causality goes in the opposite direction: some people oppose having troops in Iraq, therefore they are understandably attracted to and enjoy putting forth (oh so objective-sounding) arguments such as 'it's not Making Us Safer'; others are in favor of continuing the garrison and thus feel the need (because of the objective/engineering pretense everyone subscribes to) to defend it on grounds that it 'is too Making Us Safer'.

But in neither case is this how anyone forms their views about these things. Indeed, this is a point that I believe Matthew Yglesias has made in the past on this very weblog. So if you and he want to go on pretending that Obama's is a 'good question' - and carry on the engineering pretense yet more - be my guest, but don't kid yourself about what you're doing.

Posted by Sonic Charmer | April 6, 2008 11:15 AM

Chris Fraud is a stinking vile degenerate anti-Semite and racist. Disgusting beyond disgusting. Hideous beyond hideous. Degenerate Chris Fraud, rot in hell.

Posted by Jennifer | April 6, 2008 11:18 AM

Now what? Where can we possibly go from there? Are you bored of this naive and silly way of arguing foreign policy yet?

Well, yes, but the problem with this:

I still assert that it's 'making us safer', on balance. Those not-making-us-safer things Spencer mentioned simply don't outweigh the making-us-safer things, according to my calculations.

is that you resolutely refuse to cite any facts in support of your contentions, not that the concept of 'making us safer' is problematic. In other words, the problem is with you, not with the concept of making us safer.

I do appreciate the acknowledgment that there's no objective support for your position, though. Bye now.

Posted by Matt Weiner | April 6, 2008 11:35 AM

you resolutely refuse to cite any facts in support of your contentions,

What contentions? I was playing devil's advocate by showing you (in broad, summary terms) what the likely response of a troops-in-Iraq supporter would be, the point being that this is a silly and fruitless dimension along which to conduct the debate.

Note I haven't actually said here whether I support continued military presence there, and in truth I'm fairly ambivalent on the subject.

I do appreciate the acknowledgment that there's no objective support for your position, though

Again, what "position"?

But you're right: there's no objective support for the proposition that our having troops in Iraq 'Makes Us Safer'.

Nor is there any objective support, however, for its negation.

People simply hold one view or the other, and assert it, repeatedly and loudly. And that is to be expected as long as people insist debating Iraq along these (ill-defined) lines, because again, whether such a thing 'Makes Us Safer' isn't a coherent, well-defined, measurable concept. If you think otherwise you certainly haven't demonstrated otherwise here. Best,

Posted by Sonic Charmer | April 6, 2008 11:48 AM

In return for light casualties as wars go, but massively higher costs that were expected, we landed square in the middle of the Old Caliphate and proved we could wreck any Muslim country except maybe Pakistan in 3 weeks with precision munitions.

That was not proven in this current war -- I mean, if you expand it past the lunatic restriction that this applies only to the "Old Caliphate" or Muslim countries.

It has been proven over and over and over and over again and there is no leader in the 3rd world unaware of this reality. No one is shocked by the prospect that the U.S. could end many nations.

Only frightened little boys who continually scream that someone doesn't appreciate their Sgt Rock military families enough or who freak at the Jew hiding under their bed believe that this was somehow just now established.

Posted by El Cid | April 6, 2008 12:29 PM

Matt Weiner: "...there's a quick response...".

And, like most quick responses, it's wrong. I'm delighted to see someone besides me citing the Duelfer Report. Everyone commenting on this subject should read it. Among other things, it said that Saddam's top priority was ending the sanctions, which given the Total/Fina/Elf deal in 2002 was, with a fold-job by the Security Council, a fait acompli; and that with the end of sanctions Iraq was "six months away" from deployed, rocket-launched wmd's. The hard part was already "in the can". They wouldn't be deployed to Manhattan, but they would make Iraq damned near invasion-proof, and back in business on it's consistent path to dominating the fulcrum of the world economy.

And then there's the unprecedented challenge to the emerging post-Cold War international security architecture represented by an aggressive, genocidal police state being able to defy seventeen Chapter VII Resolution...

And the prospects of what kind of mischief Saddam's presumptive heirs Itchy and Scratchy might get up to with pals like Abu Nidal...

One could go on, but the point of course is that if you want to get into a "safer or not" debate, you can't just assume that only your arguments have an objective base.

We know the downsides of what we did. We don't know the downsides of what we didn't do, but from what we do know I don't see how we'd be safer with Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq unless we're only going to define "safer" in terms of having to worry about enemy tanks on 5th Avenue.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 6, 2008 12:45 PM

what has the iraq war done to our military's capabilities to "keep us safe?"

Washington Post:
Senior Army and Marine Corps leaders said yesterday that the increase of more than 30,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has put unsustainable levels of stress on U.S. ground forces and has put their readiness to fight other conflicts at the lowest level in years.

In a stark assessment a week before Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is to testify on the war’s progress, Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said that the heavy deployments are inflicting “incredible stress” on soldiers and families and that they pose “a significant risk” to the nation’s all-volunteer military.

[...] “I’ve never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today,” said Cody, who has been the senior Army official in charge of operations and readiness for the past six years and plans to retire this summer.

[...] The nation needs an airborne brigade, a heavy brigade and a Stryker brigade ready for “full-spectrum operations,” Cody said, “and we don’t have that today.”

Soldiers and Marines also lack training for major combat operations using their entire range of weapons, the generals said. For example, artillerymen are not practicing firing heavy guns but are instead doing counterinsurgency work as military police.

Posted by dj spellchecks | April 6, 2008 4:04 PM

"with the end of sanctions Iraq was "six months away" from deployed, rocket-launched wmd's."

Bullshit. Total bullshit.

From the time the inspectors declared Iraq free of WMDs, there would have been a monitoring program that would have insured that Saddam would NEVER have nuclear weapons.

More Powell bullshit.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 6, 2008 9:32 PM

dj spellchecks is right--we need a bigger Army and Marine Corps is we're going to continue fighting in the Greater Persian Gulf. Barack Obama, for one, has called for an increase of about 90,000 infantry troops. Wonder why.

RSH may claim to know more than Duelfer, but no one believes it except RSH. Of course, no sensible people I'm aware of think Iraq was going to have nukes any time soon. The missiles Duelfer cited were to be chem-tipped, and would have made any serious enforcement of further sanctions damned near impossible even if the Security Council was going to support them, which seems like fantasy given what we know about the Iraq plans of Permanent Members France, Russia, and China. In the long run, there is less reason to believe Iraq's nuke development could have been controlled than Pakistan's, North Korea's, or Iran's.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 4:20 AM

More Powell bullshit.

Iraq had little to no chemical weapons capability, and what little they had or could develop would have absolutely zero effect on US capability to invade at any time.

Second, Pakistan was never under ANY control, so citing that as a problem is stupid. North Korea WAS under control until the US reneged on the deal it made with North Korea. And Iran doesn't have and very likely never had a nuclear weapons program. The NIE last year provided ZERO evidence for that. Any evidence adduced is easily explained by the likelihood that Iran has a "nuclear weapons database program" - like every other significant military on the planet. That is not a nuclear weapons DEVELOPMENT program.

Finally, Iraq's nuclear monitoring program was developed by the IAEA and was going to be more than adequate to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, long run or short. Failure to comply with it would have meant military action which would have prevented it as well.

Powell as usual is completely full of shit.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 7, 2008 8:45 AM

Read Duelfer on what capacities Iraq had--the "six months" time line came directly from Duelfer's mouth. Nobody who went into combat in Iraq was ever as dismissive of the potential impact of these weapons on our forces as you. You'd launch "military action" based on "failure to comply", but at a time of the enemy's choosing rather than ours. There was ALREADY failure to comply, and hundreds of thousands of our kids sitting in tents will little to no protection. This is armchair generalship at its absolute worst.

Your faith in the ability of the "international community" to control proliferation is, based on the record, touching. But it doesn't produce any more confidence than your predictions about the any-minute-now-forever strike on Iran.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 10:10 AM