The answer is obvious to me – what they want is NOT what the US/Bush wants. Maliki wants an absolute Shite dominated Iraq with few if any minority rights. That is been obvious since he became PM. Sadr wants a Shite theocracy. Hakim wants a mini Shite only mini state in southern Iraq. The Sunnis want to run Iraq again. The Kurds just want to be left alone to their own country. These are the major players and notice none of them want a multi-ethnic democracy like Bush wants. Regardless of what Iraqi faction ultimately comes out on top, none of the scenerios match our desires.

None of these players are going to give up their dream of “their” Iraq. We can beat Maliki over the head for years and he is not going to change and neither are the objectives of the respective political parties. Our military is beating it’s head aginst the wall trying to establish an Iraq that the Iraqis DON”T WANT! How long will it take for the political people (Republicans and too many Democrats) in this country to figure that out? I think the American people have already figured out that the Iraqis don’t want what we’re offering.

The real problem is that the Iraqi forces are worthless, the Shiite-led government has chosen not to work towards reconciliation and power-sharing, and the only progress that is being made on any front is being made militarily by us. Even that level of progress can’t be maintained forever, because our forces are too small. How many more tours can American soldiers be expected to do in Iraq? Recruiting is another problem, because the existing troops are being so badly used.

Well, it will be interesting to see what will happen in September, since Petraeus has already said that that will be too soon to see real progress.

Like I said, Congress set September as the arbitrary date for a progress report, not Petreaus and It’s no accident September was the month they picked.

Al Qaeda did cause 9/11 and there are groups identifying themselves as Al Qaeda now in Iraq. He links the two but does not directly say those in Iraq comm

They have only identified themselves with bin ladin’s AQ to cash in on that group’s popularity (and they’ve since changed their name). The goals of AQI are quite different – being local and regional as opposed to global and focused on the West. AQI has little interest in attacking North America – they, like most of the salafist groups in Iraq – are instead interested in toppling our weak but rich friends the Kuwaiti’s, Saudi’s, etc.

Think Progress had this breathless analysis, as though they had Petraeus in a gotcha moment:

Today on Fox News Sunday, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, agreed that lawmakers will be able to have a “reasonable and a realistic sense” of whether the escalation is “working or not working” by September. “I’ve said that all along. I started saying that back in January. I think we’ll have had by then our forces in the mix for a good several months.”

Later in the show, however, Petraeus admitted that he didn’t expect the “surge” to be done by September, the date set for Petraeus’ supposedly make-it or break-it report to Congress. Asked by host Chris Wallace whether he believed “the job would be done by the surge by September,” Petraeus responded, “I do not, no.”

Is it not obvious that Petraeus is the one who is being consistent? He has said all along that he thinks there will be some criteria by Sept to evaluate whether or not the surge strategy has helped; he has never, of course, stated in any way shape or form that the surge mission would be completed by then. Yet now, when asked if it would be completed and he replies (completely consistent with his former statements), no, it will not, and TP acts as though this is preposterous.

Of course it is true that Al Qaeda was not significant in Iraq before we invaded.

If the Democratic plan were enacted, the next President will still be so screwed – don’t you see a little disingenuity here?

Actually, no. I think the public would be thrilled to have half or more troops home and the rest on their way home. The GOP surely isn’t offering that.

The real question is how long we can continue down this road, spending 12 billion a month and losing heavier casualties, without public support.

Just thinking about the idiot that got us in this oh-so-avoidable quagmire on his whim sets my blood to boiling. And the weekly slaps in the face we get whenever Bush gets up there to propose ANOTHER solution based on the same thinking that got us her,e as if the last 4 years didn’t happen, isn’t helping.

But there are plans by other Dems like Richardson, Kucinich and Gravel that would get all of our troops the hell out of there. And if the Dems actually decided to publically discuss all these plans at once, then I think we’d see the public getting behind a true withdrawal rather than just a force reduction.

Entropy, it’s true noone said the surge would only last until September, but they did say that we would have an idea of how well the surge was working in September. Unless something radical happens in the next two months, it would be hard to paint the surge as a success given the rosy set of outcomes proposed. If the tactics aren’t working, you change them.

Well, most of those against the surge have been calling it a failure since January, so I doubt much will change their minds when Sept rolls around, no matter how much “progress” has been made. The September report is likely to be a mixed bag with progress in some areas and none in others, which will give each side ammunition to use against the other. However, the anti-surge side is basically saying (and has been saying for months now) that if the war isn’t “won” by September then the surge is a patent failure. I think that’s dishonest. A more honest position would be the argument that the time required for the surge to work, even if progress is being made, is not worth the ultimate cost in blood and treasure – but no one is making that argument, instead calling it a failure before it even began.

However, the blame for this overblown rhetoric used by some on the left I think can be placed pretty firmly at the feet of the administration by constantly implying or (earlier on) stating out right that the end of the war lay just over the horizon.

That is partially true. The administration has consistently failed to manage expectations, keep the American people informed, etc. The President never provided the leadership necessary to settle all the disputes within the administration on what the post-war environment should be. Contrary to Rovian conspiracy theories, a major problem was that factions within the administration agreed on going to war, but didn’t agree about the reasons and how to go about it. Going in, for example, the DoD under Rummy was planning a quick invasion followed by State installing a government of exiles (probably led by Chalabi) and then pulling out. The declassified top secret war-planning documents show that the DoD planned to have only 5k troops in Iraq by 2006 and it assumed that all the political stuff would be taken care of by the State Department. The military, in essence, planned to get in and get out, which partially explains why it was so unprepared for a long-term occupation.

Competing with Rummy’s view were idealogues like Wolfowitz who was a true believer in the whole ME democracy meme. There were other competing interests as well. When it became obvious the DoD’s get-in-get-out strategy would not work because Iraq was, shockingly, not the heterogeneous “nation” the administration believed it was, chaos and confusion ensued giving the insurgency time to get its foot in the door. Elements of the CPA under Bremer had all these same factions who were all working on their own agendas. The lack of an overall coherent strategy that everyone would sing to is a major element to the disaster we have today.

Anyway, I agree Bush deserves most of the blame for this fiasco, but opponents did not hit on this “dump Iraq on the next President” meme until just recently when it was obvious by 2004 (at least to those of us schooled in such matters) that pacifying Iraq would be a long, multi-year effort.

Chris,

Entropy,
What’s this monolothic Democratic plan you’re talking about?

It’s the same plan the Democrats have been attaching to various bills for several months now – the one that calls for withdrawal of all forces from Iraq by April 2008 except for those engaged in training, counter-terrorism, force protection, and a couple of other missions. Military experts have stated that the force required to meet the missions in the Democratic plan would require somewhere between 50k-80k troops – some estimates have even gone as high as 100k. Of course, the Democrats don’t talk about such numbers because their base would get very angry as Pelosi et al have been selling it as a “get out of Iraq” plan. It’s not at all a “get out of Iraq plan” and, actually, the end result would look a lot like Casey’s plan in 2005-2006 which got us the civil war and the Samarra bombing.

I think Bush’s legacy will really be about the downside of spin.

Way too kind. Bush moved way past spin as soon as he started selling the war in Iraq. The proper term is lying not spin.

I can only hope that Bush’s legacy will be a much greater skepticism toward the claims of our government.

I think Bush’s legacy will really be about the downside of spin. When you constantly try to put things in the best light possible, people actually believe you. That’s great in the short term, but then in the long term, that creates a greater disparity between expectation and outcome, making people that much more mad.

Take for example the whole idea of Bush “dumping” the problem on to the next president. Anyone who has read about counter-insurgency knows that it is a long process, something like 9 years, therefore any reasonable fact based assessment of the Iraq war would have us maintaining a significant level of troops until about 2012, through a full term of the next president. However, the blame for this overblown rhetoric used by some on the left I think can be placed pretty firmly at the feet of the administration by constantly implying or (earlier on) stating out right that the end of the war lay just over the horizon. Had they taken the time and effort to spread accurate assessments of the cost and duration of the war either before, or at the very least very soon after the insurgency began, the “dumping” meme would have a lot less political punch today.

I agree with Kim’s point in comment #16, the blame between Executive branch and Congress shouldn’t be equal- but neither should Congress be excused from all blame (not saying she’s doing that, but as she points out some on the right, I’m also pointing out some on the left). And as another corollary, if things do begin to improve due to the surge, then Congress can’t claim credit when they were dragged kicking and screaming into funding the surge.

So, Kim, in other words Congress voted for the guy who was best at counterinsurgency but they didn’t actually want him to carry out a counterinsurgency? Oh…OK, thanks for clearing that up- makes perfect sense now.

CS, this is more snarky than I usually expect from you. Anyway, I consider the approval of Petraeus to be the pragmatic thing to do. Even if you don’t think a counterinsurgency plan will work but know that you don’t have a choice that one is going to happen since the President directed it to, you may as well bring in the guy that’s the best at it.

And I was only responding to your own comment where you said that Congress approved Petraeus because of his credentials in fighting counterinsurgencies. If Congress wasn’t interested in fighting the insurgency, then why approve the appointment of a guy who was chosen for that very reason? Now that I’ve pointed this out you’re changing your reasoning and saying that they had to approve someone, but that’s not what you initially stated.