Opposite of a Sound Counterinsurgency

Daniel Larison's takeaway from a post at The American Prospect:

Lost in the frequent back-and-forth over whether John McCain understands what the “surge” was or whether he knows when the Anbar Awakening happened (answers: apparently not and no) is the more basic point, made here by Matthew Duss, that the Anbar model has succeeded for the time being by pursuing the opposite of a sound counterinsurgency...

Reduced Violence in Iraq

To borrow from Obama, we've gone from an unacceptable level of violence up to a horrifying level of violence and now back down to an unacceptable level of violence. That's not a tremendous accomplishment. Yglesias:

If you look back to the summer of 2005, you'll see that few people at the time regarded conditions in Iraq as "good" or even acceptable. And yet things got so much worse over the course of 2006 and early 2007, that improvement in 2008 to bring us back to the kind of level of violence we had three years ago -- except with more walled-off and ethnically cleansed neighborhoods in place -- is now represented as a great triumph. James Vega has a forceful post up at The Democratic Strategist reminding us of how perverse this is.

And then you get things like today's newspaper headline "Bomb Attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk Kill Dozens". The essence of the "success" of the surge is that, as in 2004 and 2005, you only sometimes read about that kind of thing, whereas at its worst you read about it frequently. That's not nothing, but people should understand that even in its "better" state Iraq is very much a shattered society featuring an unenviable quality of life.

Global Warming and the Surge

On Global Warming, the political right constantly reminds us that correlation isn't causation. When you present evidence of rising temperatures and more greenhouse gases as proof of anthropogenic climate change, the right raises the possible influence of other factors such as solar variation and climate cycles. The left insists that rising temperatures occur in conjunction with greenhouse gases because both are related.

On the Surge, the political right ignores other possible factors and attributes the recent drop in violence to a greater troop presence solely because both happened at the same time. Here, the distinction between correlation and causation is practically nonexistent on the right. The left, on the other hand, notes the Sunni Awakening, the Sadr cease-fire, and other internal forces in Iraq.

I'm not using this comparison to prove that either side is right or wrong on either issue. I just think it's sort of interesting.

CBS Covers-Up McCain Error

Your liberal media at work:

Surge Fraud

I feel like I am stepping in front of an avalanche of Republican triumphalism here, but I have to dissent from the idea that the Surge has been a success.

Obama is being hammered by the right for refusing to acknowledge the success of the Surge, which they accept as an irrefutable truth. But I don't think the Surge has been such an undeniable success.

First, let's take a look back at Obama's judgment in late 2006 given what he knew then. Obama was highly critical of the Surge but stated that additional troops could help suppress the violence while failing to solve its root causes. We should also remember that, at the time the Surge was proposed, Rumsfeld had only recently announced his resignation and had not yet been replaced. Gates became Secretary of Defense in December of 2006 and Petraeus did not become the top commander in Iraq until January of 2007. Americans had not only lost patience with the war, they had lost confidence in the Bush Administration. There was no indication at the time the Surge was proposed that the Pentagon would dramatically overhaul its strategy and tactics in Iraq in conjunction with the Surge.

Second, Iraq cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Continued investment in Iraq comes at great cost, and Obama has consistently maintained that Iraq was a distraction from the more important war in Afghanistan.

On the Surge itself, there are two broad reasons to doubt its success: (1) the purported relationship between the Surge and reduced violence is speculative, at best; and (2) there is no evidence that the Surge has resulted in political progress.

Reduced Violence

In addition to the Surge, candidates for credit for reduced violence are the Baghdad Wall, the Sunni Awakening, strengthened Iraqi Security Forces, and the completion of ethnic cleansing.

While the Surge and those other factors may have contributed, I would suggest that the most likely reason for the reduction in violence in Iraq is the cease-fire called for by Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on August 30, 2007. Note that date: August 30, 2007. Here is a chart showing the number of violent deaths in Iraq from January 2006 through December 2007:


Here is the timeline for the Surge:

• January 10, 2007: Troop level at 132,000 when Bush announces surge.
• March 20, 2007: Troop level reaches 152,000 (approx. half of surge troops have arrived).
• June 15, 2007: Troop level reaches 160,000 and surge operations commence. "All the forces initially identified as part of the surge have completed their strategic movements into theatre in Iraq."
• August 2007: Surge troops expected to be operating at full capacity.
• September 2007: Troop level peaks at 168,000. Surge results disappointing.

While the drop in violence followed the Surge, it coincided more with the Sadr cease-fire. Additional troops from January to June appeared to have no impact. In the summer, with all Surge troops in Iraq and the Surge reaching full strength, violence remained at previous levels. In September, after the call for cease-fire by Sadr, the violence dropped dramatically.

Political Progress

As stated above, Obama was concerned that political progress would not be advanced by the Surge. He was probably wrong in stating that the Surge would hinder political progress, but there is no evidence that the Surge is responsible for political progress. Even if there has been substantial political progress, and the Iraq Study Group says there has not been, the political progress is not necessarily a result of the Surge.

Failure of the Surge

The American Conservative's Daniel Larison:

The argument over who was for the “surge” first misses several important points. It’s true that there were doubts about the efficacy of deploying additional forces into Baghdad, since it seemed to be no different from previous increases in the number of soldiers there, but the more significant objections were to the proposal that the “surge” be temporary and that this temporary measure would facilitate political reconciliation. The latter has still, for the most part, not occurred, nor was there ever much reason to expect that it would occur. Even the Pentagon’s own more positive report has little good to say about the Iraqi government. According to the administration’s standards, the “surge” has generally not yielded the results that it was supposed to yield–that’s normally what we call failure. Meanwhile, the GAO says that the measurements that the administration is using to show progress in Iraq are either flawed or show a less positive picture than the one currently being trumpeted.

Surge Makes All Options Better

Responding to David Brooks' Bush Paradox, Matthew Yglesias writes:

To its proponents, the surge is working so well that it sets the stage for years and years of further American military engagement in Iraq. And it's true -- the security gains of the past year do make the Bush/McCain strategy of perpetual military entanglement in Iraq look a lot more viable than it looked a year ago. But it's also true that the security gains of the past year make a strategy of leaving Iraq look a lot more viable than it looked a year ago.

Basically, when Iraq was hellishly violent, all possibly strategies seemed likely to lead to more hellish violence. The cliché was to start every discussion of Iraq by saying "there are no good options, but..." Now insofar as things look better, all options really do look better as a consequence.

RE: This should be fun (Bush's legacy)

A friend recently compared Bush to Lincoln. I laughed out loud. The Truman comparison is only slightly less ridiculous.

Andrew Roberts analogizes that both Truman and Bush will have left office with extremely low approval ratings and a foreign policy that has been judged a failure. He goes on to predict that, like Truman, Bush will be regarded as a great president. The analogy should be of no comfort to Bush's supporters. Truman was unpopular, and his foreign policy deemed a failure, because of the Korean War. Truman's handling of the Korean War is still considered a foreign policy failure. Truman is considered a great president because he was, in retrospect, successful in other areas. Surely Andrew Roberts, a historian, knows this. I can only assume he is being dishonest.

On to the merits. The article gives this pretty good summary of Bush's supposed positive legacy.

The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.

Hussein was an awful dictator whose removal from power is a good thing. No reasonable person ever denied that. It remains to be seen whether Iraq will become a liberal democracy. I would say the odds are still against that final outcome.

Even if that is the outcome, it came at great financial cost to the United States, with great sacrifice on the part of many soldiers and their families, and with great loss of life in Iraq. Will a liberal Iraq be worth it? Additionally, the disregard for diplomacy leading up to the war badly strained our international relationships.

The conduct of the war is nothing to be proud of. If we have a stable and peaceful Iraq, it will be in spite of - not because of - Bush's leadership. He went in with too few troops. He then stuck by Rumsfeld well after it was clear that Rumsfeld was not up to the task. The surge, the impact of which I believe has been overblown by the right in an effort to take more credit for recent progress than Bush or McCain deserve, was not even Bush's idea. Finally, he authorized torture and other abuses of power for which I will forever be ashamed of my country.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a no-brainer. I give Bush no credit for that. Further, instead of seeing that project through, he diverted attention to Iraq. The author credits Bush with "the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere," so why is Osama bin Laden still putting out tapes? Did Bush disrupt al Qaeda? Maybe. Smash? Not so much. I would expect any president to have at least overthrown the Taliban and disrupted al Qaeda. You don't get credit for doing the minimum.

In the article, Andrew Roberts says we should give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack after 9/11. According to Roberts, if there is a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center during the first year of a president's first term and none during the rest of his two terms, he has responded to the threat as well as possible. So I'm sure you can understand my surprise when he described Clinton's response to al Qaeda as ineffective. After all, there was an attack on the WTC in 1993 and no other successful attacks from Islamic terrorists on U.S. soil until after Bush took office. Roberts describes Clinton as refusing to act against al Qaeda. However, some conservatives accused Clinton of an attempt to "wag the dog" when he ordered strikes against al Qaeda in 1998. During the transition in early 2001, the Bush Administration reportedly had little interest in the Clinton Administration's strong recommendations for dealing with al Qaeda.

I'm fairly certain that, if there had been a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Andrew Roberts and the rest of the Bush apologists would have plenty of (good) reasons for absolving Bush of responsibility. They were preparing for such a possibility years ago by talking about how we have to succeed 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to succeed once. Even with our best efforts, attacks can still happen. What effective measures has Bush taken that any other president wouldn't have taken? I can't think of any. While I criticize his lack of attention to terrorism before 9/11, I don't blame Bush for 9/11 because I have no concrete reason to believe he could have prevented it even if he were paying attention. However, I'll give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack since 9/11 if he accepts full responsibility for 9/11. No, "But Clinton!" Full responsibility.

Bush's actual record is terrible. Port security remains neglected. The war in Iraq has been a drain on resources and a recruiting tool for terrorists. I'll conclude with former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora's comments to the Senate last week explaining how Bush's detention and torture policies killed Americans.