A War We Just Might Win -Michael O'Hanlon & Kenneth Pollack
The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
[I]n the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help.
[I]n the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help.
We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
[T]he surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.
[New York Times]
5 comments:
At first blush, I was intrigued that Brooking's people would feel this way, but as i read the entire piece and thought about it, I realized that this is tantamount to saying we have finally got to a point our President claimed we were years ago. More than that, they relied on military analysis and summary and also considered the mood of service people. All well and good for something, I suppose. By the number of deaths and injuries and successful terrorist attacks committed against 'non-insurgent Iraqis' and American troops it does not seem nearly as rosy. I think the evidence shows things may be going better than the disaster they had been, but do not think this means a win is necessarily in the air, even in the limited sense mentioned in this op-ed piece. Much less Americans were being killed earlier on and this is a measure I will look at. If the service people are feeling optimistic, I would like to think and hope the death and injury toll will drop precipitously and soon.
By the way, despite so much of what they said in this op-ed piece being conclusions drawn from subjective superficial evidence and military personnel opinions, I did not, you will notice, bother to remind everyone how great our first hand observers; Cheney, McCain and Lieberman told us everything was going years ago. It will take more than some journalist or politician's opinions to sway me at this juncture.
And of course, while everyone is wondering if this patient (the Iraq war) can be saved, we do know what is going on in Afghanistan, where the real terrorists were, and are, and where we also 'dropped the ball'. The resurgent Taliban is killing hostages. It would be unfair, in any piece about Iraq, to not remind people that Iraq was not actually a part of the war on terrorism, except in our President and Vice President's mind. We do remember that Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Iran and was afraid of Al-Qaeda, right?
Still, hearing this kind of assessment of the war from two of its critics is quite uplifting.
Okay. I would actually find it more uplifting if it were true. SInce publication the NY Times has been inundated with "fact-providers" who felt the piece wasn't worth the newsprint it was put on. They brought up some of the points I did here, as well as many others. Since it was just an OP-ED piece, I didn't really have a problem with it, although i really didn't understand why it was ever written either. My only problem with it was that George W., Cheney, and a few others, might ignore the continuing bloodshed, the lack of accomplishment, the distraction from the war on terror and actually believe things were improving. But at this point, any believers are clearly not going to be swayed by the truth or the facts, so this was probably erroneous anyway.
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