As most of you dutiful news junkies already know, the U.S. Commander in Iraq General Petraeus is testifying this week in Washington about his assessment of the progress we're making in Iraq. It's been the conventional wisdom all summer that if there wasn't "Real Progress" in Iraq by September, Republican Congressmen would get freaked out and immediately back Democrats' timetable for withdrawal proposals, fearing for their own reelections. So it's always been the plan that Petraeus would report just enough progress to give certain Republicans the political cover to continue rubber stamping the president's Iraq policy. After all, surely if we stay in Iraq for just one more Friedman Unit, the Iraqi government will finally get their act together and we'll be able to withdrawal some troops, maybe, sometime, in a year, or two, or three, or ten, but only if Mr. President feels like it.
That being said, I'm interested in examining another piece of conventional wisdom: that even if progress toward political reconciliation has been pretty much non-existent, at least we're making military progress! Forget for a moment the fact that the WHOLE REASON for the surge was to give breathing space for political progress, has there really been significant military progress? There's been so much media ambiguity about the subject, it's hard for any passive observer to tell one way or the other. And obviously statistics out of Iraq are notoriously unreliable. However, it's worth noting that no independent assessment has been able to verify that violence has decreased from a year-to-year basis. In other words, in no month this year have there been fewer attacks, fatalities, etc. Assessments that claim things like "fatalities are down 75% from their peak" are cherry-picking data, conveninently ignoring the fact that violence ALWAYS declines in the summer because, as Tony Snow pointed out, it can get up around 130 degrees during Iraqi summers.
Yes there are potentially good signs from Iraq, like the infamous Sunni tribes in Al-Anbar Province that are turning against Al-Qaeda there. However it's important to note that while these tribes seem to be "with us" now, they were fighting against us just months earlier. Now by arming them, we're essentially arming both sides in a civil war because remember, the government we're ostensibly backing is majority-Shiite. And by empowering tribes outside the context of national reconciliation, we're basically giving up on the idea of any sort of unified Iraqi state.
This is in addition to a lot of other outrageous cooking of the books to allow Petraeus to announce even a modicum of good news. For example, many types of killing in Iraq is not even counted if they're not considered sectarian by the U.S. Military. The report everyone is waiting for on September 15 won't really be written by Petraeus but actually the White House Press Office, according to the L.A. Times. And the military won't release its secret numbers (much less the methodology behind them) claiming violence is down dramatically in August.
The bottom line is there is much reason to distrust pretty much everything General Petraeus has to say as he testifies this week. He may be a super-duper respected general, but he is essentially a political appointee who has an incentive to portray things in Iraq as better than they really are, just like any other Administration official. Unfortunately, chances are Democrats will again be intimidated by accusations of not supporting the troops and will capitulate again to "giving the troops on the ground more time to complete their mission." But what mission? How much more blood and treasure are we going to waste while the Bush Administration tries to save face until it can pass this disaster onto the next president?
That being said, I'm interested in examining another piece of conventional wisdom: that even if progress toward political reconciliation has been pretty much non-existent, at least we're making military progress! Forget for a moment the fact that the WHOLE REASON for the surge was to give breathing space for political progress, has there really been significant military progress? There's been so much media ambiguity about the subject, it's hard for any passive observer to tell one way or the other. And obviously statistics out of Iraq are notoriously unreliable. However, it's worth noting that no independent assessment has been able to verify that violence has decreased from a year-to-year basis. In other words, in no month this year have there been fewer attacks, fatalities, etc. Assessments that claim things like "fatalities are down 75% from their peak" are cherry-picking data, conveninently ignoring the fact that violence ALWAYS declines in the summer because, as Tony Snow pointed out, it can get up around 130 degrees during Iraqi summers.
Yes there are potentially good signs from Iraq, like the infamous Sunni tribes in Al-Anbar Province that are turning against Al-Qaeda there. However it's important to note that while these tribes seem to be "with us" now, they were fighting against us just months earlier. Now by arming them, we're essentially arming both sides in a civil war because remember, the government we're ostensibly backing is majority-Shiite. And by empowering tribes outside the context of national reconciliation, we're basically giving up on the idea of any sort of unified Iraqi state.
This is in addition to a lot of other outrageous cooking of the books to allow Petraeus to announce even a modicum of good news. For example, many types of killing in Iraq is not even counted if they're not considered sectarian by the U.S. Military. The report everyone is waiting for on September 15 won't really be written by Petraeus but actually the White House Press Office, according to the L.A. Times. And the military won't release its secret numbers (much less the methodology behind them) claiming violence is down dramatically in August.
The bottom line is there is much reason to distrust pretty much everything General Petraeus has to say as he testifies this week. He may be a super-duper respected general, but he is essentially a political appointee who has an incentive to portray things in Iraq as better than they really are, just like any other Administration official. Unfortunately, chances are Democrats will again be intimidated by accusations of not supporting the troops and will capitulate again to "giving the troops on the ground more time to complete their mission." But what mission? How much more blood and treasure are we going to waste while the Bush Administration tries to save face until it can pass this disaster onto the next president?
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