« Coincidence? | Main | Shorter David Brooks »
March 26, 2008
The Patreus Gambit
It seems as though we're about to see if the gambit - the "Patreus Gambit" - that the right wing has made in Iraq is about to explode in our collective faces. One of the big victories that the "pro surge" crowd has won, imho, was the tamping down of news stories regarding Iraq - a dramatic victory by any measure. As you can see from the McClatchy graphic on the right, the number of news stories regarding Iraq have plummeted over 2007. This is a "victory" for those in the pro surge camp because one of their fundamental premises of their theory of Iraq is that the large number of "negative" news stories about Iraq is the principle reason why support for the war back here in the USA has steadily dropped since it was obvious we weren't going to have a cakewalk.
Now, it's always been a staple of the pro war crowd throughout the five year long campaign in Iraq. Long before the beginning, the crowd responsible for this disaster has been far more focussed on controlling the politically correct expression of support rather than actually - you know - focussing on such trivial things as accomplishing their stated goals. But now there's a rather distressing wrinkle. No one can deny that that the last year has seen a dramatic drop in the reporting coming out from Iraq. And yet here we are, standing on the precipice of some really nasty shit.
As has been repeatedly pointed out by those on the "let's leave Iraq now" side of the debate, military success was never the point of the surge and while the relative success of the surge from a military perspective is certainly welcome news, it's a pyrrhic victory without the corresponding political victories. And so I thought it was pretty ironic to find the article in Foreign Policy wagging its collective finger at the skeptics of "teh surge" proudly proclaiming, just a day before the current bruhaha, Iraq’s Unheralded Political Progress
Old. Fashioned. Politics. Well, what's currently going on in Iraq is certainly old fashioned. And I suppose that it can also be construed as politics. However, it's not the kind of politics that I think anyone had in mind.We’ve been hearing for months that the U.S. troop surge has been a security success and a political failure. But with little media fanfare, Iraqis may have just found the key to resolving their differences: old-fashioned politics.
Now, I take it for granted that the frothing at the mouth will continue to say that the reporting out of Iraq - in this case McClatchy - is the cause for the current situation. How that is possible is anyone's guess, but one can't educate political fools. However, I'm dying to hear Michael O'Hanlon's explanation as to why things went from "everything's coming up roses" to "fertilizer" in the span of a few days. Given that he's able to completely delude himself at every step of the way so far, while simultaneously whining that he doesn't get any good gigs any more, I have no doubt that he'll be able to put his extra special spin on the current POS. I just can't wait to hear what it is.
Regardless, what ever his and other's contrived explanations are, I'm betting that this is going to really suck for McCain, seeing as how he was just over there telling everyone that everything is coming up roses. The current situation may be over in a couple of days due to the fantastic performance of the Iraqi army - heck, anything is possible, I suppose. But my guess is that the Iraqis have pretty much had it up to here with all the shit that's been going on and really won't take "wait" for an answer any more - regardless of who they are. Which is pretty much the argument of those who opposed the surge all along - i.e. that we need to let the Iraqis settle this themselves, and that our being in Iraq, taking arbitrary sides in a civil war, was only going to make things worse. What appears to have happened is that rather than giving the Iraqis breathing space to work out their political differences - as Jason Gluck insists they have been doing to great success - they've been fuming and feeding their grievances to the point where they have finally exploded to the fore.
Given the current state of the US military and the shoddy state of the Iraqi military and given the nature of a civil war where you simply don't know what the fuck is going on in the first place and whom to back, I'm pretty sure that whatever success we can attribute to the surge is about to evaporate in the brutal summer heat of Iraq.
Posted by Azael at March 26, 2008 4:03 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.hellblazer.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3106
