In other words, where you insert details of how you foresee failure, I was adding relevant points about the surge strategy that could forestall that failure. My addition of those details was for the sake of informing readers who may not be aware of them since it’s already been established that the actual surge strategy has not been communicated well to the readers of this blog and others.

My main concern is with maintaining perspective and not letting individual details dominate that.

I’m also obviously aware that repeating the details or looking at one fairly positive piece of reporting doesn’t magically make things better. However, since you noted that rose colored glasses have been harmful to our perspective, I’ll also point out that putting blinders on and refusing to see whether or not progress really is possible would be equally disastrous.

You present a vey nice picture – IF all the parts fall into place. The progress by the Iraqi government shows no signs of it, and, as you yourself state, it’s an essential part of the overall picture.

What you are really saying, it seems, is that we should just keep on indefinitely until the gpvernment piece starts to move, too. That’s a huge gamble, as it may not happen for years and years if even in our lifetime.

In the meantime, we have to tackle the question of just how long can we stay and how much more we can invest in the gamble (lives, casualties money and civic strife in the US).

You appear to be focused on a distant goal, without any apparent accounting on pragmatic capabilities or the cost.

Avoiding possible negativity, BTW, is how we got into this mess in the first place. We shouldn’t ‘sell’ an unfounded rosy picture. Neither have I, ever or anywhere, dismissed the positive as necessarily biased. It’s just an incomplete presentation.
We need a reality check, encompassing all the considerations and facets.

And by the way, I KNOW what the goals of the surge are. Repeating them won’t make them come magically true.

Yes, the political reconciliation at the national level is all important. However, part of making that more likely is to establish law and order (or at least some semblence of it) at the local level, and to move forward with reconstruction projects without having the progress sabotaged by insurgents.

It’s not an either-or of dealing with details and big picture, it’s both; progress in one aspect depends on progress in another. Individual Iraqis have to buy into peaceful political solutions, and they can’t or won’t do so as long as they are completely unable to go about the business of living. Also, part of the surge security strategy is to show that the US is not siding with Shiite militias (which the previous ROE forced us to do) which should help build some goodwill with the Sunnis. Without that step, the Sunnis had no reason to believe that the political process was ever going to be fair to them and their natural reaction to that was to fight.

I also don’t see how discussing the surge in only one aspect, tamping down on violence in parts of Baghdad, is very helpful in assessing the effect of the surge for the future of Iraq.
If a major goal of the surge was to provide the Iraqi governemtn breathing space to achieve progress, then, while the tactic has some success, the goal has
been entirely missed.
The news from the Iraqi government is mostly about which faction is currently boycotting or threatening to boycott deliberations, not even mentioning their planned vacation.

As we breathlessly anticipate the official September military assessment, let’s keep in mind all the factors involved. Focusing on each detail, one at a time, loses sight of the foest for the trees.
What does the decrease in Baghdad violence mean if it’s not accompanied by porgress on any pther front? How does the increased violence in surrounding areas affect the overall strategy? How do we manage all the military problems across all of Iraq in the face of an overtaxed military force?

The subject of the post, AQ, is another important issue. Iraqi style AQ is a threat to stability, as are all the AQ spin-offs around the globe. WE need a larger perspective there, too.

Always, we come to the bottom line. What are we capable of doing, in the face of huge problems that decidedly need attention, but which may simply be too big for one country, the US, to resolve?
We need to settle on priotities here instead of squabbling about details.

Second, I’d have to disagree with the logic that Sands’ trip in April made more sense or gave more useful information than a trip in July. The surge troop deployment began in Feb and the 82nd had only recently arrived when Sands traveled, yet he makes sarcastic remarks about how the surge wasn’t working. To his credit, he does state some positive factors and he quotes the guy who basically said, “check back in three months and we think you’ll see real signs of progress”. Totten’s the one who’s now reporting on that progress, but because you think he’s tainted you minimize it. Is only bad news valid? Is there not journalistic integrity in reporting good and bad? If one’s life is not at risk, then one’s reporting is inferior?

Live From Baghdad
Earlier this year, British journalist Phil Sands was embedded for almost a month with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad. In this exclusive extract from his diary, he recounts a week of confusion, kidnappings, bombings and boredom, providing a critical look at life on the ground from the occupier’s point of view.
By Phil Sands

If you can read this and still say that Totten’s posts aren’t heavily bias/slanted when they were in the same area and dealt with the same people. Sand’s piece is sober and honest, Totten’s piece borders on Kristols latest op-eds.

Domjas – IraqSlogger has a great map detailing the shifting violence and “ethnic cleansing” of Baghdada.
http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3703/Patterns_of_Sectarian_Violence_in_Baghdad

As for the flight, I took him to be displaying a bit of machismo (he does seem a bit prone to that, but that’s a personal issue not political spin) in downplaying the corkscrew landing (basically saying that other journalists must be sissies). I don’t really see the relevance to whether or not the surge strategy is having a positive effect- don’t think anyone expects a commercial runway in Baghdad at the moment.

As you say yourself, everything depends on everything else.
Speculations then, are part of the deal if there needs to be a decision re what to do politically as well as militarily.

We slowly rolled into the market area. Smiling children ran up to and alongside the convoy and excitedly waved hello. It felt like I was riding with a liberating army.

Were they throwing flowers and chocolates at the troops. His word choice brings back the “we’ll be greeted as liberators” BS. He makes light of the “ghetto” just to the South of him. And we’ll never go into Sadr City. I wonder where the mortars that rain down on the GreenZone come from, maybe Sadr City?

The funny thing about the steep corkscrew dive is that I couldn’t feel it. Anyone who says it is scary, as some journalists do, is talking b.s. If you can’t look out the window or see the instruments in the cockpit, you’ll have no idea if the plane is right-side up, flying in a straight line, upside down, sideways, or even spinning into a death spiral. I’m not sure how the others knew when to put on their helmets. Perhaps someone signaled. No one could hear anything over the roar of the plane through their ear plugs.

The landing was smooth and felt no different from an American Airlines touch down in Los Angeles. The back of the plane opened up onto the tarmac. Light like a hundred suns blinded my darkness-adjusted and dilated eyes. I could barely make out the dim shape of military aircraft behind us amidst the pure stunning brilliance. My first view of Baghdad looked exactly as I expected it would – like another world.

Getting from BIAP to the IZ (the International Zone, aka the Green Zone) is an adventure all by itself. First you haul your gear to a bus stop that feels like Crematoria. Then you get on the bus and ride for 45 minutes to an army base. Then you get off that bus and wait an hour to catch another bus. Then you get off that bus and wait for an hour to catch yet another bus to yet another base. Then you wait in the sun yet again – and by this time you’re totally fragged from the heat – and take another damn bus to a helipad.

All this takes hours. You will be no closer to Baghdad than you were when you started. There are no short cuts.

2) His account of his stroll with the 82nd is pure fantasy. He claims not one injury, not even a torn fingernail. I must say thankyou CS, I forgot what real emmeded journalist are like, this refreshed my memory of the likes of Steven Vincent and Phil Sands. Totten is to Laura Ingrahams as the two mentioned in the last sentence are to Weiskopf. Vincent was a 100% supporter of this war till Shia death squad militia members killed him in Basra. Graya’at is just another cakewalk without injuriies??

This was all purely defensive. The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead.

A car approached our Humvee with its lights on.

“I can’t see, I can’t see,” said the driver. Bright lights are blinding with night vision goggles. “Flash him with the laser,” he said to the gunner. “Flash him with the laser!”

A green laser beam shot out from the gunner’s turret toward the windshield of the oncoming car. The headlights went out.

“What was that about?” I said.

“It’s part of our rules of engagement,” the driver said. “They all know that. The green laser is a warning, and it’s a little bit scary because it looks like a weapon is being pointed at them.”

We slowly rolled into the market area. Smiling children ran up to and alongside the convoy and excitedly waved hello. It felt like I was riding with a liberating army.

Graya’at’s streets are quiet and safe. It doesn’t look or feel like war zone at all. American soldiers just a few miles away are still engaged in almost daily firefights with insurgents and terrorists, but this part of the city has been cleared by the surge.

Before the surge started the neighborhood was much more dangerous than it is now.

“We were on base at Camp Taji [north of the city] and commuting to work,” Major Jazdyk told me earlier. “The problem with that was that the only space we dominated was inside our Humvees. So we moved into the neighborhoods and live there now with the locals. We know them and they know us.”

Lieutenant Lawrence Pitts from Fayetteville, North Carolina, elaborated. “We patrol the streets of this neighborhood 24/7,” he said. “We knock on doors, ask people what they need help with. We really do what we can to help them out. We let them know that we’re here to work with them to make their city safe in the hopes that they’ll give us the intel we need on the bad guys. And it worked.”

First, the surge troops were gradually deployed in a ring around Baghdad in order to cut off supply lines and keep flight to other areas to a minimum.

And second, perhaps even more importantly, the strategy involves having our troops among the civilian population and helping with reconstruction projects as well as security. The idea there of course is to make people feel that they can buy into an actual reconciliation plan, and as has been discussed recently the best that we can hope for in the short term is localized reconciliation and rebuilding governance from the grassroots up- with the hope that the national government will then also be able to make progress on the tougher issues.

Again, I’m not saying that all of this will work, but it’s frustrating when people speculate on how the insurgents are probably just hiding out without even considering whether or not the current strategy might address that.

At the bottom of the kettle there is always the growing and seething unhappiness of the public. It can’t be ignored, because if it boils over, we could see the return of the civic ugliness during the VN war.

No matter which part of the Iraq adventure I look at, I see only mine fields in every direction.

Funny, Rudi, usually you criticize people who haven’t gone to Iraq; since you can’t do that with Totten you seem to be reaching for other ways to discredit his reporting. I didn’t read what Laura Ingraham wrote but since she is a partisan I wouldn’t doubt that she overgeneralized everything positive that she saw. The same doesn’t apply to Totten, so why dismiss him?

Please try to avoid speculating about posters’ or other commenters’ motives, personal beliefs, or personal characteristics. The issues should be the focus of argument, not the persons making them.

The area of Baghdad just to the south of us, which the locals think of as downtown Adhamiyah, is surrounded by a wall recently built by the Army. It is not like the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank. Pedestrians can cross it at will. Only the roads are blocked off. Vehicles are routed through two very strict checkpoints. Weapons transporters and car bombers can’t get in or out.

The area inside the wall is mostly Sunni. The areas outside the wall are mostly Shia. Violence has been drastically reduced on both sides because Sunni militias – including Al Qaeda – are kept in, and Shia militias – including Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, are kept out.