Matt Yglesias

35 Responses to “Over There”

1. Why oh why Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 9:01 am

   I don’t know anybody who thinks the doves lost the argument over whether invading Iraq in the first place was a good idea or not. I guess some pundits in DC are still arguing.

2. kid bitzer Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 9:19 am

   doomed to lose?

   only by not showing up for the game.

   it’s simple: the goal of the surge was always and only to facilitate political progress. there was a list of objectives for what needed to happen in iraq vis a vis power sharing, revenue sharing, etc..

   that *was* the surge: a list of political objectives.

   none of it happened.

   the surge was a total failure.

   but, of course, in bush land, you take your total failures and call them a heck of a job.

   look, if you let broder and brooks write the history, then of course the “doves” (realists in this case) are doomed to lose.

   but the pushback is easy: the surge met none of its own stated objectives.

3. rapier Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 9:25 am

   My crackpot theory is that Nixon was impeached for losing the war in Vietnam. Not only was he impeached, there was a devastating bear market in stocks in 73 74.

   There are many who say the war was the correct policy and that we could have won it. If by 74 most Americans disagreed the thing is that nobody was prepared to accept our defeat there. Make no mistake, the Paris Peace Accord was a total defeat for the US and everyone knew it.

   My theory is that the defeat brought on a severe drop in the social mood. Social moods being cyclical phenomenon which are causal in stock market and economic cycles. One response was that the political market demanded someone pay and Nixon was the one.

   Which is a long winded way to say that Bush did absolutely the correct thing with the surge. Thus delaying a defeat and muddying the waters about what victory or defeat were. Still the failure of the Iraqi invasion and occupation is intimately entwined with our economic predicament and Bush’s status as one of the most hated presidents of all time.

   Bush’s motivation for the war was to bring about the exact opposite. A victory would have brought him stupendous popularity and a bullish social mood which would lead the economy higher. That such a victory was impossible escaped him entirely. His and the neo conservatives vision was really a reaction against the cycles which were working against America. A reactionary final gasp. A full blown embrace of American empire and hegemony at the very moment that whole project was slipping away.

4. El Cid Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 9:38 am

   The purpose of THE SURGE was to prevent any change in U.S. policy in Iraq after the 2006 elections and the ‘Iraq Study Group’.

   It succeeded 100%.

   The ethnic cleansing in progress was allowed to finish itself out, walls were constructed, and no change whatsoever occurred in U.S. Iraq policy other than calling everything involved “THE SURGE”.

   Petraeus and company knew that was their goal, and the recent coverage reconstructing their hearings before Congress brought the exact moment they had defeated their true enemy — U.S. political momentum to change Iraq policy.

5. cleek Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 10:05 am

   Yes, the “surge” … failed to meet the stated political goals. However, the outcome of drastically reduced violence is good enough to deem it a success overall.

   only if you think there’s nothing wrong with our indefinite occupation.

6. Skeptic Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am

   I see the surge as a quick IQ test. Anyone who thinks the surge succeeded is either a blithering idiot, fundamentally dishonest or pig ignorant.

   Here’s what really happened: The United States increased troop numbers in Iraq slightly. The numbers were well within the ranges of American troops in Iraq prior to this.

   Said troops sat around masturbating. or they might as well have for all the good it did anyone.

   Meanwhile, in other developments, the Shiites went on to ethnically purge Baghdad. ie, the Battle for Baghdad took place under American noses, and the Shiites killed or drove off enough people to capture the city for their ethnic group and radical religious movement.

   In Vietnam terms, its as if we let the Khmer Rouge take over Saigon and cleanse the city.

   Now, on to Anbar. US forces in Anbar had been beaten like rented mules. We’d completely lost control of Anbar. So how many surge troops wound up there? Zero.

   That’s right, the surge didn’t touch Anbar. Zero troops, nothing, nada, zip all.

   So what happened in Anbar? Well, basically, the bad guys won. The Bad guys were composed of two factions: Ex Baathists and Religious fundamentalists. The Baathists didn’t need the Fundies any more, so they started slaughtering them.

   Then, because they’re smart, they formed ‘awakening councils’ and signed up for US cash and weapons. We paid them, they promised not to blow us up. But they didn’t make any promises about Baghdad or the Shiites. So the ‘official government’ of Iraq is pretty scared of them.

   In Vietnam terms, its as if we let the NVA occupy the South Vietnamese provinces to purge the Vietcong, and then we started to pay them.

   In short, not only is the surge not a victory, but its a codscock sham covering the most shameful and incompetent failure of occupation since pre-roman times.

   Of course, some people will eat a bowl of shit if you tell them its ice cream.

7. Skeptic Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am

   Oh great, now the swiveling quiff’s have decided to ‘prove’ the surge is really a victory by running around and moving the goal posts.

   Yeah, so…. the increase in troops in Baghdad was pretty significant? So what were all those troops doing when Sadrists and other radical Shiites were busy ethnically purging Baghdad and killing every Sunni who stood still? What, were they sitting there with their eyes covered? Were they hiding? Were they helping? Violence diminished in Baghdad because one faction, the Shiites, simply ran out of the other faction, the Sunnis to kill.

   But I really love the defense in depth. If you can’t defend the proposition that the surge was a military success, then go and claim it was “a set of changes in policy, with troop increases only a small part.”

   I swear to god, in a hundred years, historians will look back in shock and awe, as the stupidest world leader in recent history seemed to have lead the stupidest nation. It’s pathetic. If this was 1972-75, you’d all be celebrating victory in Vietnam.

8. Skeptic Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 10:49 am

   Jim W,

   Given that it’s currently painfully obvious that Americans can’t even fix their own problems – There’s still a big hole in New York after 9/11, New Orleans still hasn’t been rebuilt years later, the economy is in the shitter as a self inflicted wound, and Halliburton’s main accomplishments seem to be corrupt incompetence… why do you think that we’ll be any good at fixing up the Iraqi’s damage.

   Seems to me that if America wants to do the Iraqi’s a favour: Put 100 billion dollars in a reconstruction trust fund and let someone honest like the Swedes or Canadians administer it, and then get the hell out. As it is, all those reconstruction dollars funnel pretty quickly into the pockets of corrupt incompetent American contractors.

9. onceler Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 11:32 am

   I do not understand this one. In what way was staying, spending a ton more $$, and achieving no political reconciliation whatsoever, better than simply making an orderly exodus? We’d be OUT of there by now! But we don’t get to see the impact of that, we only hear of the more narrow interpretations and viewpoints about the decrease in sectarian violence.

   but even a marked decrease in sectarian violence is hardly even the beginning of a refutation to the larger argument that the war was foolish, wasteful, unnecessary, and ultimately a lost cause long before it began. the ’surge’ has changed none of that, and it still won’t produce anything like the ‘victory’ that McCain, Lieberman, and the other over-grown babies in our gov’t claim we can leave without.

10. rmwarnick Says:
    February 13th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    It can’t be said often enough that 2007 was the bloodiest year of the entire Iraq occupation. More U.S. troops and air strikes equaled more dead people on all sides. Not security– that came about because we paid off Sunni sheiks and 100,000 insurgents.

    Now the Iraqis are waiting for us to leave so they can have a three-way civil war. But that’s no reason to stay, because the anti-occupation insurgency will re-start if it looks like America is going to renege on the agreement to withdraw all forces by December 31, 2011. That’s ALL forces, not just “combat” units.

11. cleek Says:
    February 13th, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    However, if the surge (again, by this I mean the whole package of changes in strategy, in addition to more troops in Baghdad) is indeed responsible for drastically lowering the level of violence, then I don’t see how you can be opposed to it,

    i’m not really “opposed” to the surge, i just recognize that it simply failed to do what it needed to do. lowered violence is great for all involved, no doubt. but we realllly need to get out of there, and if we can’t because the peace the surge has created is too weak to stand without us holding it up, then all we’ve done is guaranteed we’ll stay.

12. TT Says:
    February 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    Jim W,

    “My concern is first and foremost with the Iraqi people, who have suffered incredibly from this war.”

    The problem is that the war’s architects and backers, both within the government and without, do not care about the Iraqi people. They never have. What they care about is winning the PR war in Washington against the real enemy, the hated Democrats and liberals. Look at Charles Krauthammer’s column today. They are working overtime to build the Stan In The Back narrative – regardless of the fact that the most crucial issues pertaining to the long-term stability and survivability of Iraq (the oil law, the Kurds, re-settling internal and external refugees, re-integrating the Sunnis into the ISF, Police, and the government) are nowhere near resolved, and probably will not be without violence.

13. TT Says:
    February 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Sorry, that’s STAB in the back. (Who the hell is Stan?)

14. Skeptic Says:
    February 13th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    One last time: The decline in violence in Iraq was largely unrelated to the troop escalation known as the surge.

    The only overlap is that apparently the Shiites of Baghdad became quite skilled at using American troops as their stalking horses for cleansing Sunnis. The notion that we had even a backhanded role in ethnic cleansing is not something to be proud of.

    The simultaneous adoption of standard counterinsurgency tactics may have had some impact on its own, during this period.

    But the real reason for the reduction of violence was simply the consolidation of power by various constituents within the Iraqi polity. They were clearing their own house. We weren’t making an impact.

    In many ways, the alignments and consolidations were not particularly in American interests. The re-establishment of the Baathists under subsidized awakening councils, the domination of competing groups of fundamentalist Shiites, the ascendance of Iran in Iraqi and Persian gulf politics, and the isolation of the Kurds all suggest potential future Iraqi strife and the eviction of American power.

    In other words: America got pwned.

    Sitting around like lepers in a brothel congratulating each other about the potent success of the surge, while our dicks fall off, is not something to be proud of.

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