(Update 2x)How the Surge Is Working Even When It Cannot Possiby Do So
By Mona
Sooo. McQ thinks thinks neocon Kimberly Kagan — whom he either does not know or fails to acknowledge — is the wife of neocon surge architect Fred Kagan (of the American Enterprise Institute), is a reliable voice to assess the “success” her husband’s lethal folly, which she does today in the WSJ. As a spousal duo they both also recently defend the Glorious Surge in The Weekly Standard.
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Absurdly, in one breath McQ admits that in Iraq a military solution alone is insufficient, and that this explains why Republicans in Congress are abandoning Bush on Iraq:
For the most part they understand the fact that we’re making progress militarily. But they also understand that isn’t enough. The most oft heard question they get from their constituents when they go home is “why are we making such an effort on behalf of the Iraqi government when it is making no similar effort on its own behalf?”They have absolutely no answer for that, and it is that strategy for which they demand change. They, after all, have upcoming elections to win.
And yet in the next, he laments, my emphasis:
When Gen. Petraeus makes his report in September I anticipate hearing that great progress has been made militarily. But I also anticipate a “no change” to be the report about the political realm. If that is the case, there will be a virtual war in Congress about funding Iraq, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see enough defections among the Republicans for the Democrats to have their way. And given what I expect to be excellent militarily progress by that time, that would be a damn shame.
To sum it up: per McQ, on the one hand military progress isn’t enough, but on the other, a lack of political progress (which he concedes is essential) would make it a “damn shame” to stop feeding troops into the meatgrinder. Well, that is all so sensible an analysis I can understand why anyone parsing the situation that way thinks Kimberly Kagan is a reasonable source on matters military, that her own arch-neocon husband hatched. I mean, The AEI, The Weekly Standard, all the necons’ track records on Iraq have been so briiiilliant! Why stop heeding them now, especially when a devoted wife stumps for the awesomeness of her husband’s bloody mess?
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UPDATE: Oooooh. It is a matter of “fetishes,” declares the sage Rich Lowry, my emphasis:
The surge has succeeded in reducing sectarian killings in Baghdad and civilian casualties overall, but at the cost of increased U.S. casualties and without the Iraqi legislative accomplishments that were established as “political benchmarks.†Those benchmarks shouldn’t be fetishized.
Cuz yanno, arming Sunnis as we are now doing is really cool. No way will that ever backfire and see that arsenal turned on us and the Shia. Stop these strange fetishes, you dirty hippies. The Surge (genuflecting) is working, because the Pony Fairy told me so. I hope McQ gets Lowry’s memo; this concern with political “benchmarks” is truly so much blather, when We have a Mighty (shhhh, exhausted) Military. Benchmark, schmenchmark — long live the endless Great Surge and Occupation!
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Update II: Eric Martin elaborates on Lowry’s “jumbled strategy” and what the NR pundit takes to be a “fetish”:
Now, if the political benchmarks can be implemented and the implementation can lead Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to forge a political bond and cease fighting, then at least this advocate of withdrawal would have a different position (assuming our continued presence would be required after such a political resolution, which is not entirely clear)..Those are two enormous “ifs,” though, and neither has a very good chance of breaking the right way, let alone both. Faced with those prospects, it’s no surprise that Lowry would rather talk about some unrelated event that has actually occurred, and pretend that the deus just exed from the machina.
Yes, it will be a shame if we have “surged” more death to Americans and Iraqis only to find that all the fetish and *cough* non-fetish *cough* “ifs” are nonsense on stilts.
Comment by Sam Davis —
July 11, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
America as an imperial power is an idea totally foreign to its first principles. Somewhere along the way, long before W, our political class forgot about that.
Teddy Roosevelt stole the Panama Canal. Woodrow Wilson intervened in a squabble between inbred cousins (British King, Russian Czar, German Kaiser). America put down rebellions in Cuba and the Phillipines when the locals objected to not getting the independence they’d fought for.
The solution is not who sits in the Oval Office, because barring Ron Paul or Dennis Kuncinich getting nominated and elected, the new occupant will have no more qualms about continuing American imperialism than any other president. Worse still, if a Democrat, likely she or he will be high stealth about it, so few notice the reality.
Not to mention, of course, the continued assault on individual rights and civil liberties here at home, a natural accompaniment, according to James Madison, to nationalist-imperialist government.
No, the solution lies in the willingness of individuals to first change their own lives in a fundamental fashion, with the cumulative cultural effect of this change ultimately cleansing the political process.
Part of that will be the recognition that we’ve just given government too much darn power and too much access to resources — and that, just as the founders knew, it has gotten way out of control.
The American federal government today more nearly resembles the Roman state under Augustus Caesar than anything else – a predatory wolf hidden by a thin blanket of sheep’s wool. Who sits in the Oval Office and in Congress is irrelevant until a more fundamental cultural change is made.
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 11, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
If you’re interested, I take apart Lowry’s sophistry here.
-E.M. Blogwhorester
Comment by Fledermaus —
July 11, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
Ah yet another Kagan. With apologies to Tommy Franks, they must be the stupidest fucking family on the face of the earth.
Comment by Grant Gould —
July 11, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
America as an imperial power is an idea totally foreign to its first principles. Somewhere along the way, long before W, our political class forgot about that.
“Forgot” is such a fascinatingly exonerating word, Mr. Davis. A real political class never allows itself the luxury of believing that its potential power has an outer limit.
Comment by Leo Strauss —
July 11, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
Who is zooming whom, one has to ask actually. In a “normal” society, the lunacy of what is being peddled would have consequences for those responsible for such disasterous outcomes.
After they work overtime to prove Rumsfeld, the military and ultunately Bush failed them, their final card of course is to say the “American people” failed their historic responsibility.
And from their perspective, why shouldn’t they? What consequence has any of them suffered, including Lowry?
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
July 11, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
Yup. Conservatism cannot fail; it can only be failed.
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But if the American people fail, it will only be because they were stabbed in the back by the evul libruls and the evul librul media.
Comment by Alex —
July 12, 2007 @ 5:44 am
Darling, it’s a beautiful pile of skulls! And I’m sure you’ll get it to look like a pony in the end.