Are We Winning in Iraq?

Yes, we all hope that the Iraqis achieve some measure of peace after all we (and Saddam) has put them through. But does it even make sense to talk about "winning in Iraq" when we invaded the wrong stinkin' country in the first place:

www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

And if Al Qaeda (i.e., the Saudis) in Iraq really have been run out of the country by the Iraqi Sunnis, does that mean they've given up on attacking and murdering Americans wherever they find them, or are they just looking for more amenable working conditions?

Off topic, but, hey, Joe:

Did you hear that your Beltway cohort, "Dean" David Broder has announced that he will not write about the marital situations of any of the candidates henceforth? In other words, he is going to give Rudy a pass on his infidelities. This, after just two months ago writing that Hillary was "defined" by her marriage. Care to comment? Is your pal Broder a sexist pig or does he just want to not hurt the Republican?

So you take a limp-wristed jab at the right for premature triumphalism (not the triumphalism itself, mind you, but just the prematurity of it), and spend the rest of the time running down the anybody anti-war and all but calling for the DEMOCRATS to be punished for THEIR irresponsibility.

"The war in Iraq has been a disaster, the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made by an American President." Who supported it, Joe? Anybody you know? Who made it possible?

Success means steady progress toward a worthy goal. Problem is, no one knows what the goal is in Iraq. So how can we say we're achieving success?

Are we winning in Iraq? Without a good defintion of victory, whatever is happening in Iraq has no meaning whatsoever.

Whoa, Joe. A pullback in the surge is not the beginning of a withdrawal -- the surge was always meant to be temporary because we don't have enough troops to maintain it. You know this, so it seems dishonest of you to portray this as the start of a withdrawal. It's just what the surge always was, a temporary increase in troop levels. Given that those of us on the antiwar side believed we had too many troops pre-surge, this isn't very exciting.

It also doesn't mean, as you say, that there's less of a reason to defund the war. There's just as much reason as ever.

The bottom-up efforts to reconcile Sunnis and Shi'ites across the scarred Anbar/Karbala province border, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, quite possibly reflect an Iraqi exhaustion with violence that has to be taken seriously as well.

Oh, you mean the article where you deliberately left out an inconvenient fact (the "goat grab" was an abject failure, and had been reported as such) in what would be an appalling display of intellectual dishonesty, were you not so consistently intellectually dishonest that its simple expected of you.

And here is a clue. You weren't writing about any effort to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites -- all you do quote a US official who cited mass meetings of tribal leaders from Karbala and Anbar, and declared without any evidence that the meetings represented progress.

What all these meeting represent is a US public relations effort designed to create a Potemkin peace. We are now paying off the same people we called "terrorists" 11 months ago (the Baathist insurgents)-- and they have no intention of submitting to a Shiite majority government. Here is one good example, from a Baathist warlord to whom the US is paying $240,000/month to maintain an army of anti-Shiite terrorists...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331225411-110878,00.html

After we had settled again in his office, Abu Abed told me of his grand dreams. "Ameriya is just the beginning. After we finish with al-Qaida here, we will turn toward our main enemy, the Shia militias. I will liberate Jihad [a Sunni area next to Ameriya taken over by the Mahdi army] then Saidiya and the whole of west Baghdad."

Rather than tell the truth about what is actually happening in Iraq, you do your usual "on the one hand/on the other hand" routine so that regardless of the outcome, you can always say you were right. Its dishonest--and in this case, that dishonesty is in service of a policy that is inevitably going to lead to a far worse bloodbath than was necessary in Iraq.

The defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq--sneezed at by some antiwar commentators--is nothing to sneeze at

No one's sneezing at the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq.(r) They're just noting that Al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist before the invasion and that the brand "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is used mainly by dishonest jouranlists to conflate Iraqis who are resisting an occupation force with the terrorists who actually DID attack the US.

On the bright side, at least Joe didn't accuse anyone of wanting the US to lose. (Or if he did, he deleted it BEFORE publishing it - this time)

Before I begin a comment on this post, there's a question that I'd really appreciate your addressing. There is, in the blogosphere and in one on one conversations, a claim that the reason American causalities are down is because there are fewer American ground operations that meet up with Iraqi opposition. This is variously attributed to:

1) The use of aerial bombing instead of ground forces
2) Patrols avoiding contact with Iraqi forces either a) because they are fed up and are just trying to live through their tour or b) because they are being sent on patrols that avoid contact.
3) American forces have withdrawn to bases and are avoiding contact entirely.

Is there anything to this claim?

Now, wrt the post.

Premature, I think--in part because of the limits of the bottom-up strategy.

Start with the fact that there never was a bottom-up strategy. The escalation was designed to provide the breathing room for the top down strategy. That failed completely, so some new label had to be attached to justify the continuation of the escalation.

I still haven't heard anyone describe a plausible endgame.

And it is still the case that extending the occupation makes the endgame worse. This has been true for four years now. Things looked worse three years ago than they did four, worse two years ago than they did last year, and look worse now than they did in this regard. Strengthening the Sunnis by eliminating foreign-led forces makes the endgame bloodier.

And yet: The reduction of violence is real. The defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq--sneezed at by some antiwar commentators--is nothing to sneeze at.

There is no excuse for strawman arguments in the blogosphere. If you can't put up links to "some" commentators, then don't attribute views to them. There is, as I said above, good reason to believe that the enemy of the US's enemy was AQ in Mesopotamia (especially given some quotations from our "friends" in this endeavor. If the goal is the establishment of a shiite regime (which is the only plausible hope for stability) then defeating Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has made future prospects worse, not better. And, of course Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia didn't ever pose any kind of threat to the US.

possibly reflect an Iraqi exhaustion with violence that has to be taken seriously as well.

This is how all civil wars end. But there has to be a way for one side to give up and cede authority to the other. There is no authoritative side to concede to. And there won't be as long as the US remains there. The current government can't even enforce laws against murder, because the current government is neither sovereign nor sustainable without a US military presence. So regardless of how tired they are, the US remaining in Iraq has delayed any reconciliation. And, since the US never intends to leave, it is very difficult to see how this reconciliation can ever take place.

There is no question that the performance of the US military has improved markedly under the smarter, more flexible and creative leadership provided this year by General Petraeus.

As well as my questions above, by what metric? If a reduction in US casualties is the metric, well, then there's any easier way to attain that goal. In fact, there is and has been no mission in Iraq for years. How can performance improve if there is no objective to measure progress against?

And the withdrawal of U.S. troops is beginning.

Reading the linked article, this seems to be the predicted reduction in forces stemming from setting the maximum tour to 15 months. Without extending those tours further, there are no troops to replace them with.

The refusal of the antiwar movement--or some sections of it--to recognize these developments isn't helping its credibility.

Again, not linking to the "antiwar movement...sections" renders this sentence contentless.

Let me reassert the obvious here: The war in Iraq has been a disaster, the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made by an American President. It has weakened America's moral, military and diplomatic status globally. It can not be "won" militarily. The best case scenario is a testy stability, most likely under a Shi'ite strongman, who will be (relatively) independent of Iran and (relatively) independent of us.

And was not this goal at least equally attainable a year ago? How does the headline make any sense at all? How does "winning" even enter into the discussion here?

Also obvious: There are fewer votes now in Congress--and less cause--to cut off funding for the war than there were last Spring.

There may be fewer votes, but you've just documented above that there is no less cause. The war can't be won, the endgame is unclear, but will result in a Shiite strongman linked to Iran in some way. There is no reason to think extending the occupation will affect that conclusion one iota.

A renewed campaign on the part of the hapless Democratic leadership to cut off the supplemental funds will only increase the public sense of Democratic futility. It will also play into the very real, and growing, public perception that Democrats are too busy wasting time on symbolic measures (like trying to cut off funds for the war) and shoveling pork (the water projects bill) to pass anything substantive for the public good.

Sure, failing to cut off funds will increase the sense of futility. But if it is by passing only funding measures that contain timelines, then the "withdrawal" your talking about will accelerate.

Soldiers will rotate out, and not rotate in again (if, of course, the president follows the constitution). And they completely control the funding. One of the things that is most infuriating is the reiteration of the claim that they need a 60 vote majority to do anything. (Leave aside republicans not needing it for Mukasey.) That is simply not true in this case. The House originates funding legislation. And they can decide under what circumstances the occupation can be funded.

House democrats are also under increasing pressure from their constituents, who hate this war, and, in large numbers want it to end. They are at 11 points in the polls because they are expected to end this.

As for substantive bills, look to the Republicans. And start reporting on the obstructionist Republicans using every legislative maneuver they can muster to prevent popular bills from reaching the president's desk, starting with the minimum wage bill.

Too much time, and political capital, has been wasted fighting Bush legislatively on the war.

Almost no time or capital has been spent. The measures have been half-hearted attempts to placate the base.

I'm sure the President and the Republican Party are salivating over the prospect that Democrats will waste more time and capital over it this month...especially at a moment, however fleeting, when the situation on the ground seems to have improved in Iraq.

Ah, Joe "Concern Troll" Klein is back in business. Yes, I am sure that Norm Coleman and Susan Collins are salivating at an opportunity to head to Minneapolis and Portland to beat up Al Franken and Tom Allen up over Democratic attempts to end the war. I'm sure that John Sununu is slavering over the opportunity to really stick it to Shaheen. And those 16 resigning Republican Congressmen--why they may just change their minds when they realize that the Democrats are just handing them victory in November.

Democrats need to think this over very, very carefully before they proceed.

The thing they have to think over, in their craven, partisan and powerloving point of view is whether to continue to let the Republicans twist slowly, slowly in the wind by not using effective measures to end the occupation. The strategy they are currently implementing is to hang Iraq around the republicans' necks.

As long as they continue to vote in a bloc to support this most disastrous policy implemented by the worst president in american history, the republicans are looking at a disastrous 08. Or at least that is their thinking. But if they don't do more, the Democrats run an increasing risk of a backlash.

No one's sneezing at the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq.(r)

achoo.

As you note, AQII didn't exist before we showed up, and (for all intents and purposes) wasn't really affiliated with OBL and his gang.

More importantly, AQII was a small fraction of the insurgency, comprised primarily of non-Iraqis, with little popular support. "Defeating" AQII by negotiating (without the involvement or permission of the Iraqi government) a separate peace with the Sunni nationalist/Baathist terrorists -- and paying them off to temporarily stand down (giving them a chance to rest, reorganize, retrain, and retrain), was utterly irresponsible.

The Petraeus plan is a design for a mutual campaign of genocide between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. AWII wasn't really that much of a threat to Iraq's long term stability -- its people like Abu Abed who are the real problem in Iraq -- and all that Petraeus has done is guarantee a far worse bloodbath as part of a Bush regime public relations campaign.

he best case scenario is a testy stability, most likely under a Shi'ite strongman, who will be (relatively) independent of Iran and (relatively) independent of us.

One more point that would have been tangential above.

As I've said before, the prospect of an independent Iraq that permits US military bases that could target Iranian nuclear facilities and would provide support for Israel is dimmer than the presidential prospects of a married woman who carried on an affair with staffer, appointed that staffer to a patronage job after the affair was over, then carried on a still more public affair with another man, literally parading him around her city, before being tossed out of her government lodgings by a judge in the divorce case, and then moved in with a lesbian couple while finishing out her term of office.

Sorry. Tangents.

The point is that this putative iraqi government is impossible. If there is an independent government, there will be no bases. My deepest fear is that the real american policy is to keep the civil war going, in order to keep the bases in place. Because those bases is what this war was actually all about.

As I remember, we had "victories" in Vietnam, too...

I would say this:

We focused on Baghdad, and put more troops there. Since Baghdad is a tiny part, territorialy, of Iraq, it seems likely we can effect the violence there.

That means we have less troops elsewhere to commit "violence" against, it seems. So it is hard to separate spin from truth.

If sectarian violence has become reduced, and it was primarily a Baghdad phenomenon, then the same applies to it, as well.

The administration has a tendancy to claim as ours events not under our control, and to blame those which have little to do with the failures.

Given this, I'm going to stay away from anything because not only do I not know what is meant by "victory", I'm not sure that the current developments are just "noise".

As for the erosion of Al Queda, they've made two mistakes: they picked a side in a sectarian war and they treated their reluctant allies atrociously.

So a third of their misfortune can be laid at their own feet, and most of the rest on the Sunnis rejection of them. I'm sure our troops had an impact, but I don't think it's ours to claim, either.

So before anyone says "victory"! or claims we're "winning", they have to address these and many other issues with CONSENSUS voices. I DO NOT want to be fed crap generated by right wing "think" tanks...

Joe,

You do realize that the water projects bill passed last week was an authorization bill? Exactly zero dollars have been spent so far. The bill hadn't been authorized in seven years and includes a mere $2.4 billion for water infrastructure projects otu of $23 billion. According to the EPA's own estimate in 2000 there are over $180 billion in existing needs for water infrastructure. Perhaps these facts won't convince you that it is a necessary bill but to say it's a pork bill is distorting the truth to fit your narrative. And the bill needed 2/3 in both the House and the Senate to override the President's veto so there were quite a few Republicans (138 in the House and 34 in the Senate) who voted with Democrats on the bill.

BG:
I was wondering about that, too.

It's too bad that spin has replaced a consensus view on nearly every issue.

Now we've wasted the equivalent of half of a year's GNP on that idiotic Bush Doctrine, while Katrana, kids, and obviously others wait for a handful of pennies from these tax-and-steal Republicans.

Might not have had a diaspora out there numbering 215,000 Americans had Republicans spent less time on their treasured ideology. Bush cancelled a $753,000,000 ACE levee modernization project leaving just two GIS studies totalling maybe six million dollars because there "wasn't enough money" in the year preceeding the disaster!

Republican priorities place Iraqis and immegrants ahead of our own American citizens!

BTW, with the news that direct costs of this ridiculous war at $1,300,000,000,000 and double that when "inderect" costs are included, it raises the question again:

With 180,000 mercenaries and only 170,000 soldiers in Iraq, WHO is getting the lion's share of that money?

The CEO of Blackwater is all of a sudden one of the richest men in the world.

Is there ANY accounting of how much is going to the mercenaries? They earn FAR more in benefits and pay than our soldiers - and, obviously, the CEOs of these "companies" are suking out huge chunks for themselves.

I would like to see WHO is getting WHAT. Why is no one out there calling to account the spending on the Iraq war?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to improve the lot of our soldiers, increasing the attractivness of our Armed Forces?

With a suitably sized Armed Forces, couldn't we dispense with these blood suckers who owe nothing to anyone with soldiers who have at least sworn an oath to our country?

Seems to me there might be a cavernous crack in our country's fiscal oversight, and at the bottom of it are yet more corrupt Republican mechinations!

Good post Joe...
And outstanding comments from Jay and P Luk on your remaining problems.
In particular arming sunnis means worse/longercivil war, and being properly skewered by jay on the D's morality.
Still...good enough...my work is done here. Ill just tune in from time to time.
A Hodge AKA 80%

Joe Klein is a the rare liberal capable of looking at Iraq objectively and honestly. But like Robert Duvall's character in "Lonesome Dove," he's only "about half honest." After acknowledging U.S. successes on the ground, he hastens to shore up his credibility with the rabid left by calling the Iraq war the worst foreign policy mistake ever made by any president.

Really? A little history is instructive here. Actually, that honor should go to one of four candidates--coincidentally, all Democrats:

1) Woodrow Wilson at Versailles. His imposition of sanctions against Germany without ensuring her disarmament led directly to World War Two.

2)Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. He thought he could charm Stalin into cooperating. Big mistake.

3) Truman at Pottsdam. He amplified Roosevelt's mistakes. As a result, Eastern Europe endured 60 years of slavery.

4) Carter vs. Iran. He abandoned our ally the Shah, leading to an Islamist state that now threatens to go nuclear. Thanks, Jimmy. Nobel Prize indeed.

Going into Iraq in 2003 was not a mistake.

It was simply long overdue.

Let's not make the same mistake of waiting for Iran to oil-for-EU itself out of the Wilson-infested media glare, eh?

I agree that Democrats should stop pretending they are going to end this senseless war unless they are actually serious. They have not made a serious effort to end this war yet. We are still waiting for the first effort at that. My bet is they will never end it because they do not have the guts to do it. They are weak and indecisive and everyone knows it. They should just be honest with the American people and tell them all that talk about ending the war was simply lies they told to get our votes. In fact why don't they come clean and say they are going to keep on lying because they want our votes in 2,008 as well. At least we could respect them for telling the truth about something.

"...AQII didn't exist before we showed up..."

Ahem.

WRONG.

They were IN FACT in Iraq before we arrived, along the border with -- guess who -- IRAN.

Saddam harbored terrorists, domestic and imported, as SOP.

Anything MisStated to the contrary can likely be traced back to the same McGovernite scum that lost Vietnam from the flaming hills of Dewey Canyon 14 between medal tossing sessions and bogus tenured academic marvels.

Fake college war vets rule!

"....After acknowledging U.S. successes on the ground, [Say Joe Klein] hastens to shore up his credibility with the rabid left by calling the Iraq war the worst foreign policy mistake ever made by any president.

Really? A little history is instructive here. Actually, that honor should go to one of four candidates--coincidentally, all Democrats:

1) Woodrow Wilson at Versailles. His imposition of sanctions against Germany without ensuring her disarmament led directly to World War Two.

2)Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. He thought he could charm Stalin into cooperating. Big mistake.

3) Truman at Pottsdam. He amplified Roosevelt's mistakes. As a result, Eastern Europe endured 60 years of slavery.

4) Carter vs. Iran. He abandoned our ally the Shah, leading to an Islamist state that now threatens to go nuclear. Thanks, Jimmy. Nobel Prize indeed."

Excellent post.

Keep up the good verbs!

I'll take BOTH of you to task:

*Really? A little history is instructive here. Actually, that honor should go to one of four candidates--coincidentally, all Democrats:*

Really, let's just get a little MORE history!

1
The Treaty of Versalles was an armistice, and Germany was NOT subject to unconditional surrender as they were in 1945.

The US was not part of the League of Nations, which administered the Treaty, not Woodrow Wilson. In addition, Germany didn't rearm until after Hitler took power in 1933. With no stake in events, it was the Europeans who took the path of appeasement in the years leading to the outbreak of WWII.

2 and 3
Big Ridiculous. The Soviet Union and the remainder of the Allies stood across from each other over much of Europe. There were some that wanted to continue a confluct that had been brought to a successful conclusion following the defeat of Germany and Japan, and the deaths of over 60,000,000 soldiers of 35 countries.

Our allies didn't have the stomach for yet ANOTHER long, protracted war and most in the US didn't either.

I think YOU should blame the Soviet Union for the 60 years of communist rule, NOT the United States.

DON'T forget, you idiots, FDR successfully prosecuted the ONLY war in which the future of our country was truly at stake.

4
Backing the Shah, who was, incidentally, a "bad guy" in his own right, would have lead to civil war in Iran, and like Iraq and Vietnam, we couldn't have done a thing about it. Iranians hated the Shah's rule, in case you need to know...

Idiots. You guys seem to think the rest of the planet is a suburb of Richmond, politically.

Both of you are about as good at world history as you are at civil rights history - which is lamentably, totally, and absoluetely lacking!

Another emotional, DNC talking point, screed from Joe Klein about how much he hates Bush and is a lefty hack.

Yawn...

For the angry anti-war left there will not be a "Mission Accomplished" for them until there is total defeat of Coalition Forces in Iraq, the troops brought home, and a full-scale genocide is launched against one faction or another in Iraq giving Iran the justification to intervene and control a large percentage of the world's oil supply. What else would make the anti-war crowd happy? If any of the three happens, they will be able to finally happily crow from the roof tops as tens of thousands die, "It is George Bush's fault!". For the anti-war left, what could be sweeter? Ah, patriotism.

During the Cold War many if not all Pro-Soviet groups and members of the media in the US were receiving financial aid and support from the Kremlin in turn for anti-US agitation. Does the same situation exist today? If so, who is getting this aid to subvert the efforts of the US in the Middle East and who is supplying it?

"I would like to agree with the idea that violence in Iraq has decreased and that everything is fine," retired general Waleed al-Ubaidy told Inter Press Servce (IPS) in Baghdad. "But the truth is far more bitter. All that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq."

billireland is an idiot. Thanks, 53. All I should add is that Germany was largely disarmed after Versailles- its remilitarization only started in earnest after the European ex-Entente powers allowed Hitler to reoccupy the industrialized Rhineland in 1936. On bicycles.

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