Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

Matthew Yglesias: Why Are We in Iraq?

he quotes Spencer Ackerman:

Matthew Yglesias: Traffic Stop: Spencer Ackerman:

Geoffrey Millard, a soldier with the New York National Guard, was a general's assistant in Iraq. He related a story he attended a briefing his boss about: a soldier at a traffic control point, faced with a speeding, oncoming car, "made a split-second decision" to fire "more than 200 rounds into the vehicle," killing its inhabitants. "He then watched as the mother, father and two children were carried from that car.

"That evening, as it was briefed to the general -- and I flipped the slides for that briefing -- Col. [William] Rochelle, from the 42nd Infantry Division, DISCOM [Division Support Command] commander -- and I have to apologize for a little vulgarity here, but I feel it's intricate for my testimony -- he turned in his chair to an entire division-level staff, and he said, and I quote, 'If these fucking Hajjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen.'"

To me, in a sense, it's these checkpoints incidents, more than anything else, that exposes the fundamental folly of occupation.

If you're an American, it's just not going to be tolerable to have a bunch of foreigners who only speak Arabic manning traffic stops while heavily armed and ultimately accountable only to an all-foreign chain of command. Nobody would put up with that -- it's absurd. And of course if an American cop had put 200 rounds into a car and killed a whole civilian family over a traffic violation there would have been a shitstorm about it in local politics and the legal system. Even if the shooter evaded any criminal sanction, there would be consequences -- you couldn't possibly just brush it off and put the guy back out there directing traffic!

And conversely, suppose you were asked to finish up your basic training and then go to a foreign country where you don't speak the language but there is a domestic insurgency that forms one part of a complicated patchwork of oft-violent political machinations that you have no way of understanding. You've got a gun, some of your colleagues have been blown up, and here's car speeding right toward you. How am I going to blame you for opening fire? And can you imagine orders going down the chain of command asking U.S. soldiers to radically increase their chances of getting killed in order to somewhat reduce the odds of Iraqis being killed in good faith mistakes? Or putting your life in the hands of your fellow soldiers and then turning around and ratting them out if their errors led to loss of civilian life?

The whole thing is maddeningly impossible. I can't at all imagine the right way to handle these situations. Shrugging it off with an "If these fucking Hajjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen" clearly isn't the right answer, but is there one? I say, no there isn't -- there's just no good way to be a long-term occupying power. American soldiers are (rightly) accountable to American politicians who are (rightly) accountable to American voters but that means they can't be the ultimate source of authority in Iraq in any kind of reasonable way.

I Think the Atlantic Will Rue the Day It Let Jeffrey Goldberg onto Its Part of the Internet

Jonathan Schwarz rips Goldberg into shreds and gobbets with his sarcastic claws--and then eats the gobbets:

A Tiny Revolution: Jeffrey Goldberg Battles Manfully Against Internet's Glaring Flaws: Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg has a new blog at the Atlantic. This is great news, because Goldberg is one of the few people anywhere willing to grapple with the horrible weaknesses of the internet. For instance, here's Goldberg writing in Slate in October, 2002 in support of the Iraq war:

There is not sufficient space…for me to refute some of the arguments made in Slate over the past week against intervention, arguments made, I have noticed, by people with limited experience in the Middle East (Their lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected.)

Yes--Goldberg would have demolished the ridiculous arguments against invading Iraq, if only there were enough space on the internet. Man, he would have ripped them to shreds! But that's the problem with the online world, one that no one but Goldberg is willing to face: the internet has an extremely limited space for words.

Goldberg ran into exactly the same roadblock in one of his first posts:

I was telling Andrew about an on-line mugging I experienced at the hands of a person named Matt Haber, who is associated with the New York Observer...What bothered me about Mr. Haber's post was not its insults (a couple of which were funny) but that he repeated a discredited accusation made by an ethically-challenged journalist about my reporting without having sought my comment.

You can understand how frustrated Goldberg would be by this. Matt Haber had quoted Ken Silverstein of Harper's saying that Goldberg's pre-war Iraq reporting "relied heavily on administration sources and war hawks (and in at least one crucial case, a fabricator)."

God, it would be SO GREAT if there were some invention that would give Goldberg enough room to demonstrate with evidence that Silverstein is ethically-challenged and his claim has been discredited. Even better would be if this invention allowed Goldberg to easily direct readers' attention to such evidence elsewhere, thereby "linking" his post to it.

Perhaps someday science will provide us with such a glorious new means of communication. Certainly if it ever exists, Jeffrey Goldberg will make full use of it. He hates being forced to baldly assert things as fact and expect everyone to take his word for it. But given the internet's terrible shortcomings, he has no other choice.

IT'S A COMMON PROBLEM: Other people who desperately wanted to explain themselves but just didn't have the space include Madeleine Albright and Saddam Hussein.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Listening to Iraq

Ann Friedman:

Listening to Iraq: The news outlets that still report from Iraq rarely publish accounts of daily life there. Rarer still are narratives from outside the confines of the Green Zone. Sure, we get snippets of information from Iraqi reporters working with Western journalists, but most of the time, Iraqis' voices come to us in the form of react-quotes after a marketplace bombing or sectarian uprising. We don't see what it's like for Iraqis to walk home from the scene of the violence, then make dinner, then put their kids to bed. We lack the humanizing power of detail....

Blogs used to fill some of this void. Widely read Iraqi bloggers like Riverbend, the 26-year-old pseudonymous woman who wrote a daily account of life in Baghdad, and Raed Jarrar, whose entire family blogged the first three years of the occupation, gave international readers important insights into the real impact of the war -- in the form of long, winding narratives, not fleeting quotes.

But between 2006 and 2007, almost all of those bloggers, Riverbend included, left Iraq out of fear for their safety.... When I asked Zangana which English-language Iraqi blogs are still active and written from Iraq, the only one she could name (though there are probably more) was A Star from Mosul. In it, a 20-year-old engineering student writes under the pseudonym "Najma" about her stress-inducing course load, drama with her friends, and her adorable niece and nephew. Intertwined with those details, she writes about how the war has intruded on her daily life.... Najma doesn't identify her classmate as Sunni or Shiite or pigeonhole him in any way. He is a young man who used to laugh and is now depressed. And while Najma has also written about U.S. soldiers searching her house and assassination attempts on her university campus, the most striking thing about her blog is how quietly sad many of its details are...

And, of course, why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Except, also of course, for McClatchy: Inside Iraq: http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/

Robert Waldmann Speculates on Basra and Sadr City

This makes more sense than anything else I have seen:

Robert's Stochastic Thoughts: Glanz and Rubin note "many Iraqis have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr's stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes."... Still I note the extreme similarity of the position of the Mahdi army and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Neither denounces or resists the exercise of Iraqi sovereign authority in Basra. Each denounces and opposes the same in Sadr city. Ambassador Qumi went on to denounce fighting in Sadr City:

Strikingly, however, Ambassador Qumi simultaneously condemned American-led operations against the Mahdi Army in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, where major new clashes broke out on Saturday. He said the American-backed fighting in that densely populated district was causing only civilian casualties rather than achieving any positive result.

>>"The American insistence on coming and having a siege on a couple of million people in one area and striking them with warplanes and shelling them randomly -- many innocent people will be killed through this operation," Mr. Qumi said. "The result of this operation will be the sabotage and destruction of buildings, and many people will leave their homes."

The events in Basra, in contrast with the Mahdi Army's continued fighting in Sadr City, renewed questions about where the Sadrist movement stands in Iraq's unstable political landscape.

Glanz and Rubin note that, given the extreme closeness of the Iranian and Iraqi governments, it is very likely that Iran approved the Basra offensive including the initial unsuccessful Basra offensive

Because leaders of the council and its armed wing spent years and sometimes decades in exile in Iran during Saddam Hussein's regime, it was assumed that the silence of the Badr Organization during the Basra offensive indicated that Iran had given at least tacit approval for the move.

In fact, IIRC al Sadr didn't denounce it immediately but just warned that they Iraqi government forces better not mess with the Mahdi army.

That would leave criminal gangs and Fadhila as targets of the offensive. On March 26 Michael Kamber and James Glanz wrote in The New York Times

In the weeks leading up to the operation, Iraqi officials indicated that part of the operation would be aimed at the Fadhila groups, who are widely believed to be in control of Basra's lucrative port operations and other parts of the city. The ports have been plagued by corruption, draining revenue that could flow to the central and local governments. But the operation also threatens the Mahdi Army's strongholds in Basra.

This suggests an alternative interpretation of recent events (put your tinfoil hat on).

There was an agreement between the people who count in Iraq -- al Hakim, al Sadr, al Maliki, al Sistani and Khameini -- to do something about Fadhila. al Maliki and al Hakim tried to use the operation to weaken the Mahdi army too. Their representatives were called to Qom and called to order by the head of the Martyrs Brigade of the Revolutionary Guard. A second try at a reasonable operation in Basra in which only anti-Iranian militias will be disarmed is in course (this would mean UK soldiers just went into the field to support Iran in an Iran vs UK proxy war without understanding what was going on).

However, al Maliki and al Hakim are still making trouble in Sadr city. Iran and al Sadr firmly warn them to stick to the plan. This would make al Mahdi's threat not bluster to hide his weakness, but a reminder of an agreement: "If you do not stop we will announce a war until liberation."

The day's events would still be good news. The difference is really a difference in guesses about what role Iran sees for the Mahdi army. In any case, it would be good if Iran could prevent their many allies in Iraq from fighting each other. I don't like the idea of a major role for al Sadr but, hey, al Hakim and al Mailiki are almost equally horrible.

As for the possibility of an Iraq genuinely independent of Iran, well, I am willing to speculate, but not to fantasize.

John McCain: An Absence of Character

John McCain--while much better than the other Republican candidates--does not have the character to be a good president.

Here are Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter. They should be ashamed of themselves for their "he said, she said" journalism, but the story gets through if you read their article recognizing that everything said by "the Bush administration" or "Kenneth Pollack" is a lie:

McCain, Iraq War and the Threat of "Al Qaeda": As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand "Al Qaeda" to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.... Critics say that in framing the war that way at rallies or in sound bites, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is oversimplifying the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in Iraq in a way that exploits the emotions that have been aroused by the name "Al Qaeda" since the Sept. 11 attacks.

There has been heated debate since the start of the war about the nature of the threat in Iraq. The Bush administration has long portrayed the fight as part of a broader battle against Islamic terrorists. Opponents of the war accuse the administration of deliberately blurring the distinction between the Sept. 11 attackers and anti-American forces in Iraq. "The fundamental problem we face in Iraq is that there is not a single center of gravity, as in the cold war, but a whole constellation of contending forces," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism and counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University.... The entity Mr. McCain was referring to... Al Qaeda in Iraq... did not exist until after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003....

[S]ome students of the insurgency say Mr. McCain is making a dangerous generalization. "The U.S. has not been fighting Al Qaeda, it's been fighting Iraqis," said Juan Cole.... the stew of competing Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed groups, criminal gangs and others that make up the insurgency in Iraq. That was vividly illustrated last month when the Iraqi Army's unsuccessful effort to wrest control of Basra from the Shiite militia groups that hold sway there led to an explosion of violence.

The current situation in Iraq should properly be described as "a multifactional civil war"... Ira M. Lapidus, a co-author of %u201CIslam, Politics and Social Movements%u201D and a professor of history at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley... wrote in an e-mail message....

In recent months, Mr. McCain has also been talking more about the threat posed by Iranian influence in Iraq, bringing him in line with American military officials, who in the wake of the Basra fighting seem increasingly convinced that Iranian support for Shiite groups now constitutes the primary security threat in Iraq.... talking about both threats, Mr. McCain tripped up last month on a visit to the Middle East, when he mistakenly said several times that the Iranians were training Qaeda operatives in Iran and sending them back to Iraq.... And Mr. McCain went beyond what he usually says and what his foreign policy advisers believe during a back-and-forth with Mr. Obama at the end of February.... Mr. McCain... said at a town-hall-style meeting in Tyler, Tex. "Al Qaeda is in Iraq.... My friends, if we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base. They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen."

Mr. Obama's views track with those of many independent analysts. In a speech last August, he criticized President Bush by saying: "The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of Al Qaeda's war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates Al Qaeda in Iraq -- which didn't exist before our invasion -- and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan."...

Few, including Mr. McCain, expect Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group, to take control of Shiite-dominated Iraq in the event of an American withdrawal.... Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, said during a recent conference call with reporters that in the event of an American pullout, "you might not necessarily see a single entity taking charge." But such a withdrawal could empower Shiite militias in the south and Kurds in the north, leaving Al Qaeda "free to try to impose its will" and lead to increased sectarian violence that "would be very likely to draw neighbors into the conflict," he said...

And Matthew Yglesias has a point to make about this, and about the ethics of Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter going to Kenneth Pollack for "balance":

Matthew Yglesias: Ken Pollack's Defense of Lying: This New York Times article about how John McCain's political strategy is based on fundamentally misleading people about the nature of the situation in Iraq, but that's okay with the media not because they're fooled but just because they like John McCain, has gotten a lot of attention, and rightly so. But this particular paragraph is especially telling:

In longer discussions on the subject, Mr. McCain often goes into greater specificity about the entities jockeying for control in Iraq. Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain's portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a "perfectly reasonable catchall phrase" that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that "does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing," said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

At a time like this, you have to ask yourself what is the Brookings Institution for. According to the Brookings website:

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research [...] The research agenda and recommendations of Brookings experts are rooted in open-minded inquiry and our scholars represent diverse points of view. More than 200 resident and nonresident fellows research issues; write books, papers, articles and opinion pieces; testify before congressional committees and participate in dozens of public events each year. The Institution's president, Strobe Talbott, is responsible for setting policies that maintain Brookings's reputation for quality, independence and impact.

To me, that sounds inconsistent with offering a public defense of the practice of using the term "al-Qaeda" to refer to entities that are not al-Qaeda. High-quality research would be that if some large number of public officials and media personalities started referring to something as "al-Qaeda" when it was not, in fact, al-Qaeda you try to correct the record. Instead, Pollack seems to feel his job is to help push back against the people who are trying to correct the public record.

It's certainly an interesting development. A lot of very good people work at Brookings. I imagine they enjoy working at a place that has a reputation for "high-quality, independent research . . . rooted in open-minded inquiry" but it's a reputation they're in danger of losing. Strobe Talbott, who's "responsible for setting policies that maintain Brookings's reputation for quality, independence and impact" might want to think about some of this.

I don't think that it's a reputation Brookings is "in danger of losing" anymore. I think that it's a reputation that Brookings--outside of Economic Policy--has already lost. Certainly foreign-policy stuff from Brookings that shows up in my mailbox today goes to the bottom of the pile--intermixed with the stuff from AEI, well below the stuff from serious think-tanks.

It's probably too late for Strobe Talbott to think about this. But the Trustees of the Brookings Institution should be thinking very hard about this. Very, very hard.

Fafblog Justifies Saving the Universe from the Moon

Giblets explains:

Fafblog! back to save the universe.: Giblets is a patient Giblets... willing to entertain even the most tedious requests... especially if it gets him published columns in Slate and The New York Times. So was Giblets really wrong? Was the war a mistake? Were we right to blow up the moon?

Oh sure, it's easy to look back now with our twenty-twenty hindsight and our armchair quarterbacking and whine and moan about how it all went wrong. But what about the case for blowing up the moon at the time? For literally dozens of years the moon had menaced Western Civilization with its eclipses and its werewolf hordes and its sinister seduction of our seas, all the while dangling its massive stony bulk above us with nothing but universal gravitation standing between the free world and a cold and moony end! Oh, the usual crowd of peaceniks and anti-kill killjoys would have had America stand idly by and do nothing, leaving frightened children and Brookings scholars to tremble under their beds at night while our nation's nocturnal nemesis threatened once again to plunge from the heavens and squish us all, but 9/11 taught us that we can't wait for danger to become dangerous before we pre-re-endanger it back! And by defeating the moon America would ensure not only its own security, but the destruction of al Qaeda's deadly space laser, the liberation of the moon men from the terrible tyranny of the Crater King, and the second coming of Astro-Jesus!

Of course by now everybody thinks they're an expert.... Oh, we didn't send enough troops, oh, we didn't plan for the aftermath, oh, the explosions launched millions of tons of radioactive moon rock into the atmosphere and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Well, boo hoo hoo! Nobody said this war was gonna be perfect. It's true, if Giblets had to blow up the moon all over again he would have made some changes, like firing Donald Rumsfeld and putting more boots on the ground and getting more international support. But would he oppose the moon war altogether? Well that's the kinda crazy talk we were only hearing from namby-pamby pot-smoking puppet-wielding moon hippies like Al Gore and Zbigniew Brzezinski....

The point is, we saw a problem and we dealt with it. Did the problem actually exist? Who knows! Did our solution end up killing lots of people who'd otherwise be alive? Who can say! We could spend all day long pointing fingers and arguing over who slaughtered millions of what, but where will that get us?... Giblets and the rest of America have a war to win. There's still a lot of the moon left to blow up, people - and now it's even more dangerous than ever, because it's been raining this deadly shower of moon rocks down on us ever since some crazy bastards started blowing it up! It's time to stop this pointless bickering over who was "right" and "wrong" and get back to fighting the war we started back when we were obviously wrong. And then we can move on to the real threat by invading the sun.

The Dead of Iraq

Deniel Davies observes that 27,000,000 x 0.24 / 10 = 648000:

D-squared Digest -- FOR bigger pies and shorter hours and AGAINST more or less everything else: 27,000,000 x 0.24 / 10 = 648000

One of those fifth anniversary surveys, asks a number of questions, but look at Q20. Apparently, 24% of Iraqis answered "yes" to the question "Have you personally experienced the murder of a member of your family or relative since the invasion in 2003?". If we were to assume that no families in Iraq had more than one member murdered, for this response to be consistent with an overall violent death count of 150,000, the average size of an Iraqi family would have to be 35.

Mind you, the poll is dodgy - 10% of Iraqis claim to have personally seen a car bomb or suicide attack in the last month, but this is clearly impossible because the surge is working.

Paul Berman Is a Deeply Broken Person

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Duncan Black writes:

Eschaton: Stars Of Their Own Heroic Epic: Years later, it's hard to comprehend the depths of the narcissism of people like [Paul] Berman who obviously see events in the world as nothing more than referendums on their own awesomeness. He and his fellow travelers spent years berating dirty fucking hippies like me for daring to suggest that maybe war in Iraq was not some awesome idea, but instead, you know, bad. And now he wants to claim he opposed it?

This a deeply broken person.

He is reacting to Spencer Ackerman, who drops his jaw in amazement:

From <>:

toohotfortnr: public witness ain't seeing too much: Paul Berman did a BloggingHeads with Heather Hulburt in which the arch liberal-Iraq-hawk strongly suggests that he didn't support the war. You be the judge. Relevant section is about 2:30 in.

On the Iraq war, I myself wrote a piece in The New Republic on March -- which came out in the March 3, 2003 issue saying George Bush was leading us over a cliff. And that his notion of how to deploy power was lacking in liberal principle and that his use of power was going to turn out to be no power at all. In short it was going to be a disaster. I published this before the war. I made that prediction before the war. It's true that afterward I haven't made a career of running around saying I told you so, but if you look it up, the major article ... yeah, I was in favor of getting rid of Saddam but Bush's way of going about it was quite bad, and I pronounced myself, I used the word 'terrified,' of what would come of it.

TNR's messed-up web archives have erased Paul's article.... But it doesn't say what Paul says it says.... Leave aside his odious arrogance. (He told me so?) Paul says his piece recognized Bush's strategic foolishness and illiberalism. He's right. The trouble is he recognized it as a caveat to his enthusiasm to the war, not as an impediment. In other words, Berman wanted a war for liberalism, recognized that it wouldn't be one, and backed it anyway. That -- to say the least -- implicates his judgment.

In order to whitewash this, he pretends his caveat was his argument. He did this before, in the New York Review of Books, where he quoted his caveat and said it rose "rising to what I like to picture as a crescendo." Well, it wasn't a crescendo. It would only have been a crescendo if it stopped him from backing the war. Instead he took the opposite approach. Fine. But own up to it, don't pretend that wasn't your judgment.

Update: Oh God. Toward the end of the clip, Paul says:

Then there's the intellectual debate. The intellectual debate should always tell the truth. It should never be modest. It should always be grandiose.

Please, please, please, step back from the cliff...

And to Matthew Yglesias:

Matthew Yglesias (November 12, 2007) - Did Paul Berman Tell Us So? (Foreign Policy): In the midst of an argument with Ian Buruma, liberal hawk extraordinaire Paul Berman tries to convince us that he actually called Iraq correctly, and has merely been magnanimous in not pointing that out:

I approved on principle the overthrow of Saddam. I never did approve of Bush's way of going about it. In the run-up to the war, I became, on practical grounds, ever more fearful that, in his blindness to liberal principles, Bush was leading us over a cliff. [...] It is true and it is a matter of satisfaction to me that, in the years since then, I have not made a career of saying "I told you so."

Here's what Berman was actually writing in February 2003:

In my own judgment, Fischer and his fellow thinkers in Europe and even in the United States are making a mistake in failing to press for a harder line against Iraq--a harder line that might bring about Saddam's collapse more or less peacefully or, if need be, not peacefully. It should be obvious that, in the Arab world, fascist and Nazi-like movements--political tendencies that call for random mass murder in the name of paranoid and apocalyptic ideas--have gotten completely out of hand. In the last 20 years, Baathist and Islamist movements--the two branches of what ought to be regarded as Muslim fascism--have killed millions of people and might well kill many more, and not just in the Muslim countries, as we have reason to know. A war against Muslim fascism ought to be seen as a continuation of the long struggle against Nazism and fascism in Europe--a continuation of the same decent and necessary cause that people like Fischer have always wanted to support, even if they have not always known how to do so in a sensible way.

He was worried about Bush's failure to embrace liberalism, but it wasn't a worry that this meant the war would go badly, it was a worry that Bush wasn't being as rhetorically persuasive as he should have been:

Maybe Fischer is not convinced because the Bush administration has presented a series of side arguments about weapons, U.N. resolutions, and dark terrorist conspiracies and has failed to present the main argument, which is the single huge argument that has always sustained the Western alliance. This argument is the one about totalitarianism. It is the argument that says: The totalitarians are dangerous to themselves and to us, and we had better fight them. Fight wisely, of course, which the New Left notoriously managed not to do long ago, but fight. Why can't Bush make that argument? I won't speculate. But he could change. He gave up drinking long ago. Let him give up his arrogance, small-mindedness, and aversion to large and idealistic ideas today. It might help.

And here he was in January 2004 when many people still thought the war was going well:

What was the reason for the war in Iraq? Sept. 11 was the reason. At least to my mind it was. Sept. 11 showed that totalitarianism in its modern Muslim version was not going to stop at slaughtering millions of Muslims, and hundreds of Israelis, and attacking the Indian government, and blowing up American embassies. The totalitarian manias were rising, and the United States itself was now in danger. A lot of people wanted to respond, as any mayor would do, by rounding up a single Bad Guy, Osama.

But Sept. 11 did not come from a single Bad Guy--it was a product of the larger totalitarian wave, and the only proper response was to comprehend the size and depth of that larger wave, and find ways to begin rolling it back, militarily and otherwise%u2014mostly otherwise. To roll it back for our own sake, and everyone else's sake, Muslims' especially. Iraq, with its somewhat antique variation of the Muslim totalitarian idea, was merely a place to begin, after Afghanistan, with its more modern variation.

In short, Berman was wrong. The reason he hasn't made a career of telling us "I told you so" is that, in this instance at least, he didn't tell us so. But now he's trying to tell us that he did tell us so. But all he told us was that had Bush employed more Berman-style rhetoric then maybe more of Berman's friends would, like Berman, have wrongly deciding that an invasion of Iraq was a good idea.

Paul Berman may or may not be the stupidest man alive^TM. But he surely is the most mendacious man alive.

For the record, I was in favor of the war on Iraq in the winter of 2003. I reasoned:

• Condi Rice is not-stupid and not-malevolent, and is for the war.
• Colin Powell is not-stupd and not-malevolent, and is for the war.
• This means that even though the public intelligence is bs, that there must be solid evidence of an advanced nuclear program in Iraq and of a willingness to give serious weapons to terrorist groups--otherwise attacking Iraq while we have real enemies like Osama bin Laden running loose would be really stupid.
• And although Bush is really stupid, not everyone in the administration is.

Wrong on all counts. I am very sorry.

I may be the stupidest man alive.

Abu Muqawama: Why We Oppose the Sadrities

It is as good an explanation as any:

abu muqawama: A Town Called Malice (Updated): Update III: Why, some wonder, is the U.S. closer to the Iran-backed ISCI and Badr Brigades than it is with the Sadrites? Why does this make sense? Two Baghdad political veterans have ruefully pointed out to Abu Muqawama that while Sadr has more popular support, the ISCI crowd have something more valuable: they speak English. One former State Department veteran with whom Abu Muqawama spoke a few months ago pointed out that former Iraq honcho Meghan O'Sullivan was particularly vulnerable to falling under the sway of those politicians who didn't just speak in that confusing gutteral language where they write from right to left in co-joined letters. Ergo: they speak English, so they must be our friends! Hoo-ray, democracy!

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now.

A Bulletin on Baghdad and Basra from the Times of London

James Hilder writes:

Areas of Baghdad fall to militias as Iraqi Army falters in Basra: Iraq's Prime Minister was staring into the abyss today after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen. With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki's police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.

Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias -- who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade -- would not stop at mere insurrection.

In Baghdad, thick black smoke hung over the city centre tonight and gunfire echoed across the city. The most secure area of the capital, Karrada, was placed under curfew amid fears the Mahdi Army of Hojetoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr could launch an assault on the residence of Abdelaziz al-Hakim, the head of a powerful rival Shia governing party. While the Mahdi Army has not officially renounced its six-month ceasefire, which has been a key component in the recent security gains, on the ground its fighters were chasing police and soldiers from their positions across Baghdad. Rockets from Sadr City slammed into the governmental Green Zone compound in the city centre, killing one person and wounding several more.

Mr al-Maliki has gambled everything on the success of Operation Saulat al-Fursan, or Charge of the Knights, to sweep illegal militias out of Basra. It has targeted neighbourhoods where the Mahdi Army dominates, prompting intense fighting with mortars, rocket-grenades and machineguns in the narrow, fetid alleyways of Basra. In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army took over neighbourhood after neighbourhood, some amid heavy fighting, others without firing a shot. In New Baghdad, militiamen simply ordered the police to leave their checkpoints: the officers complied en masse and the guerrillas stepped out of the shadows to take over their checkpoints.

In Jihad, a mixed Sunni and Shia area of west Baghdad that had been one of the worst battlefields of Iraq’s dirty sectarian war in 2006, Mahdi units moved in and residents started moving out to avoid the lethal crossfire that erupted. One witness saw Iraqi Shia policemen rip off their uniform shirts and run for shelter with local Sunni neighbourhood patrols, most of them made up of former insurgents wooed by the US military into fighting al-Qaeda. In Baghdad, thousands of people marched in demonstrations in Shia areas demanding an end to the Basra operation, burning effigies of Mr al-Maliki, whom they branded a new dictator, and carrying coffins with his image on it.

From his field headquarters inside Basra city, the Prime Minister vowed to press on with his attack, which he said was not targeting the Mahdi Army in particular but all lawless gangs. "We have come to Basra at the invitation of the civilians to do our national duty and protect them from the gangs who have terrified them and stolen the national wealth," he said. "We promise to face the criminals and gunmen and we will never back off from our promise." Supporters of Hojetoleslam al-Sadr, the rebellious cleric who formed the sprawling, 60,000-strong militia five years ago, have accused the Prime Minister of trying to wipe out the powerful Sadrists as a political force before provincial elections in October.

Residents of Basra complained that water and electricity had been turned off in the three main areas besieged by the Iraqi Army, which has an entire division deployed for the battle. They also said that they were running low on food an unable to evacuate their wounded. Estimates of the death toll in Basra reached as high as 200, with hundreds more wounded. “The battle is not easy without coalition support,” lamented one Basra resident, who had worked as a translator for the British forces. “The police in Basra are useless and helping the Mahdi Army. The militia are hiding among the civilians. This country will never be safe, I want to leave for ever. I don’t know how to get out of this hell.”

One man was shot in the leg while trying to fix the rooftop water tank on his house but feared he would be taken for a militiaman if he tried to reach a hospital. Officials said that more than 200 militiamen had surrendered after the Government issued a three-day deadline to give themselves up. While residents in Basra said that the army appeared to be making little headway against the militia bastions, a British Army spokesman based at nearby Basra airport said progress was being made. “The Iraqi Army are rebalancing across the city, consolidating their positions, resupplying and preparing for future operations,” said Major Tom Holloway. “They made considerable progress, although not total progress by any stretch of the imagination.”

With fighting flaring across the Shia south, the police chief of Kut — where Mahdi fighters had seized large parts of the town, 110 miles southeast of Baghdad — said his men had killed 40 militiamen while losing four officers. "The security forces launched an operation at around midnight to take back areas under the control of Shiite gunmen," Abdul Hanin al-Amara said. While US and British military officials have been at pains to distance themselves from the push against the deadly militias, President Bush praised the high-risk strategy of tackling militias that a politically weak Mr al-Maliki had been forced to court in the past. "Prime Minister Maliki's bold decision, and it was a bold decision, to go after the illegal groups in Basra shows his leadership and his commitment to enforce the law in an even-handed manner," Mr Bush said. "It also shows the progress the Iraqi security forces have made during the surge"...

America Held Hostage by Nouri al-Maliki

Spencer Ackerman:

toohotfortnr: wages of sin, we keep paying: Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki is giving powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's forces three days to surrender in Basra, as clashes between Maliki's security forces and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- in which the U.S. intervenes on Maliki's side -- escalate. But with the U.S. happy about the now-abrogated Sadrist ceasefire, why is the U.S. military getting involved? The Washington Post isn't sure:

It was unclear why U.S. forces would take part in a broad armed challenge to Sadr and his thousands-strong militia on the eve of Petraeus's assessment, which the Bush administration has said would greatly influence its decision on whether to draw down troop levels.

Here's an answer. As long as Maliki is in the prime minister's chair, and as long as we proclaim the Iraqi government he leads to be legitimate, Maliki effectively holds us hostage.... It simply is not tenable for Petraeus to refuse a request for security assistance from the Prime Minister to deal with a radical militia.

Now, some of my Iraq-watcher friends of mine point out that this is absurd. "Sadr is, of course, a thug," they say, "but he's a nationalist. And he's far less beholden to Iran than the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq or Maliki's Da'wa Party -- both of whom we're supporting! And most importantly, Sadr remains perhaps the most popular figure in Shiite Iraq. Petraeus can do business with him. This doesn't make any sense!" And they're right. It doesn't. But as long as we sponsor the Iraqi political process -- and a Sadrist doesn't actually become premier himself -- this will keep happening....

The dangers of picking and choosing who the Iraqi premier should be outweigh any imperial temptations we may feel. We'll be just as responsible for Prime Minister Next-Up's mistakes as we are for Maliki's. And the Iraqis will never trust any leader that foreigners pick for them. In what's shaping up to be the Second Sadrist Intifada, you go to war with the prime minister you have, not the prime minister you might want.

Stupidest Woman Alive Nomination: Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle gets scores of 10.0, 10.0, 10.0, 9.8, and 5.6 from the Slovakian judge as she dives off the platform onto her belly in her play for the "Stupidest Woman Alive" crown. She tries to explain why we should pay attention not to those who got Iraq right but to those who got Iraq wrong:

Megan McArdle: Most of us know that we have learned more about the world, and ourselves, from failing than from success.... Failure tells us more than success... success is usually a matter of a whole system... development economists have proven... complex webs of interactions are impossible to tease apart.... Since [the invasion of Iraq] failed, the more interesting question is... what did you get wrong. The people who were right can (and will)... rewrite their memories.... This is not some attack on people who were against the war....

The people who failed... will have to look for some coherent explanation... the honest ones are vastly more interesting than listening to a parade of people say "Well, obviously, I'm a genius, and also, not mean."...

Update: To everyone who asked "Why would the behavior of the people you're arguing with matter?" I can only respond: so what have you learned during your visit to our planet?... Something else to keep in mind is that unless you are planning to die soon, you are going to get some major policy question badly wrong in the future, because no one is as smart as some of the war opponents have decided they must be. And every word that you type mocking the repentant supporters of the war will, I guarantee, be hauled up and thrown in your face. It is best not to fling calumny about other peoples' decisions unless you are very confident that you will be able to bat a thousand for the next forty years or so...

And what are the "vastly more interesting" things we learn from closely and attentively listening to the people who were wrong on Iraq? Well, let us take one canonical example: Megan McArdle. Megan McArdle got Iraq wrong. Today--listen carefully and attentively--Megan McArdle writes:

Megan McArdle: One of my commenters asks what I got wrong on the Iraq war. I've posted on this before, but I suppose it's worth saying again what I've learned from the experience.... (6) I paid too much attention to the French. While in general, "Whatever France is doing, don't do that" is very good policy advice, it is not actually true that everything the French oppose is therefore a good idea...

This truly is self-pwnage of an extraordinary degree. "I laughed so hard I fell off my chair" is usually hyperbole.

But not in this case.

I am speechless.

But The Philosopher is not.

Here is the lesson:

Obsidian Wings: "Seriously Misguided": There's something right about what McArdle says, and something wrong. To start with the first: most of us sometimes get things right, and sometimes get things wrong. Suppose God grants you the chance to question someone about an important decision, and gives you the choice: would you rather question that person after she has screwed up, or after she has gotten something right? Other things being equal, I think I'd rather question the person after she screws up, for more or less the reasons McArdle suggests. Notice, though, that in this case, we have to choose whether or not to question one and the same person after a success or a failure. The identity of that person, and with it, her good or bad judgment, her wisdom or naivete, and so forth, is held constant; and this is essential to the example.

The question McArdle claims to be asking is a different one: given a particular decision, would you rather question the people who got it right or those who got it wrong? Here what we hold constant is not the people we question, but the decision itself. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Different people have different track records. On foreign policy, George Kennan had a very good track record: he got a lot of things right, including some very difficult ones. That is in large part due to the fact that he knew a lot and had exceptionally good judgment. Jonah Goldberg, by contrast, has a terrible track record: he gets things wrong all the time, and when he gets them right, it seems to be more or less by coincidence. That is because he knows almost nothing and has terrible judgment. Their respective track records mean that on any given decision, people with good judgment, like George Kennan, are much more likely to have gotten it right than to have gotten it wrong, while the opposite is true of people with bad judgment, like Jonah Goldberg.*

If I ask myself whether I would rather hear from the people who got a given question right or wrong, I can assume that the people with good judgment on questions of that type will be overrepresented among those who got it right, and underrepresented among those who got it wrong; and that the opposite will hold true of the people with bad judgment. So one way to think about the question: who would I rather hear from? is that it is a question about whether I would rather hear from people likely to have good judgment, like George Kennan, or people who are likely to have bad judgment, like Jonah Goldberg. This is, frankly, not a hard call to make at all.

However, as McArdle notes, a given person who has just gotten something very wrong is more likely to have something interesting to say about it than she would be had she just gotten it right. If the differences between people with good judgment and people with bad judgment were very small, or the additional insight conferred by confronting one's own errors were very large, then the effects of having just made a mistake might be big enough to swamp the effect of having good judgment overall. In that case, even though the people who got something wrong would be likely to have had worse judgment initially than the people who got it right, the fact that they had just gotten something wrong might make them suddenly become more interesting and better to talk to, on the whole, than the group who got things right.

Obviously, though, this isn't the way it works. First, the difference between George Kennan and Jonah Goldberg is very, very large. Second, the fact that Jonah Goldberg has terrible judgment doesn't just lead him to screw up foreign policy; it also makes him far less likely to learn from his mistakes than George Kennan would. Someone who is thoughtful, perceptive, and insightful, and who had gotten the Iraq war wrong, might find his or her judgment changed forever, in very interesting ways. (Then again, George Kennan would be almost as likely to learn something really interesting from observing other people's errors. He would be interesting to talk to either way.) Jonah Goldberg, by contrast, seems to have learned nothing whatsoever from his mistakes. And this doesn't seem to be entirely unrelated to the defects that made him get Iraq wrong at the outset. He was a shallow, thoughtless idiot then, and he is a shallow, thoughtless idiot now.

And this is what's so wrong about what Megan McArdle says. She is making an argument whose natural application is to the question: given one person, would you be likely to learn more from her after she had gotten something right or after she had gotten something wrong? And she is extrapolating it to the quite different question: would you rather talk to the people who got a given decision right or wrong? It would be fine to extrapolate in this way if the fact that someone got that question right or wrong showed nothing whatsoever about their wisdom or judgment; if the George Kennans and Jonah Goldbergs of this world were tossed at random into either category.

But that's not the way things work. Decisions reveal things about those who make them. People who get them right are, on average, more likely to have wisdom and judgment and insight than those who get them wrong. This means that they are both more likely to be worth talking to in general, and more likely to profit from any mistakes they make, than people who get them wrong.

This is what McArdle missed. It's an interesting omission for someone who, by her own account, got Iraq wrong.

In her post, McArdle suggests that people who get a decision right are likely to revise their memories "to show themselves in the most attractive light", and that this kind of self-deception is more difficult for those who got it wrong. Her own post, with its implicit assumption that major errors do not reflect anything about the judgment of those who make them, suggests that people who get things wrong are just as prone to self-deception as the rest of us.

(See also: Richard "we were right to be wrong" Cohen.)

There will be a quiz.

Iraq Goes Pear-Shaped

Spencer Ackerman:

Yeah, The End of the Sadrist Ceasefire - The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Aaaaaaaand so much for the Sadrist ceasefire. According to The New York Times, Iraqi and U.S. (!) forces are now battling the Mahdi Army in Baghdad -- and around the country. And it's not even just the Sadrists who are fighting.

Heavy fighting broke out Tuesday in Basra and Baghdad, after Iraqi ground forces and helicopters mounted a major operation in Basra against Shiite militias, including the Mahdi Army, whose months-long cease-fire is credited with reducing the level of violence during the troop surge. There were also serious clashes in the southern cities of Kut and Hilla.

In Basra, Iraq's most important oil-exporting center, thousands of Iraqi government soldiers and police moved into the city around 5 a.m. and engaged in pitched battles with Shiite militia members that have taken over big swathes of that city.

What appeared to be American or British jets also soared through the skies, witnesses said, providing air support. The operation, which senior Iraqi officials had been signaling for weeks, is considered so important by the Iraqi government that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who went to Basra on Monday, intended to personally direct the fighting, several Iraqi officials said.

I recommend a two-pronged strategy. First, begin drinking heavily. Second, withdraw immediately from Iraq. Consider this:

"We are doing this in reaction to the unprovoked military operations against the Mahdi Army," said a Mahdi commander who identified himself as Abu Mortada. "The U.S., the Iraqi government and SCIRI are against us," he said, referring to a rival Shia group. "They are trying to finish us. They want power for the Iraqi government and SCIRI." But Basra has been riven by violent power struggles among the Mahdi Army and local Shiite rivals, such as one controlled by the Fadhila political party. In the weeks leading up to the operation, Iraqi officials indicated that part of the operation would be aimed at the Fadhila groups, who are widely believed to be in control of Basra's lucrative port operations and other parts of the city.

That doesn't sound like "civil disobedience." That sounds like an intifada. If it doesn't get tamped down like right now, it represents an overturning of the creaking apple cart known as the Baghdad political process, and the replacement of the Shiite political leadership. If there's a silver lining, it's that here in the States it's Happy Hour.

I still haven't wrapped my mind around the fact that we are providing air support to a group called "The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution"...

John Cole: What I Was Wrong About

John Cole writes:

Balloon Juice: I see that Andrew Sullivan was asked to list what he got wrong about Iraq for the five year anniversary of the invasion, and since I was as big a war booster as anyone, I thought I would list what I got wrong:

Everything.

And I don't say that to provide people with an easy way to beat up on me, but I do sort of have to face facts. I was wrong about everything.

I was wrong about the Doctrine of Pre-emptive warfare.
I was wrong about Iraq possessing WMD.
I was wrong about Scott Ritter and the inspections.
I was wrong about the UN involvement in weapons inspections.
I was wrong about the containment sanctions.
I was wrong about the broader impact of the war on the Middle East.
I was wrong about this making us more safe.
I was wrong about the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq.
I was wrong when I stated this administration had a clear plan for the aftermath.
I was wrong about securing the ammunition dumps.
I was wrong about the ease of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
I was wrong about dissolving the Iraqi army.
I was wrong about the looting being unimportant.
I was wrong that Bush/Cheney were competent.
I was wrong that we would be greeted as liberators.
I was wrong to make fun of the anti-war protestors.
I was wrong not to trust the dirty smelly hippies.

I mean, I could go down the list and continue on, but you get the point. I was wrong about EVERY. GOD. DAMNED. THING. It is amazing I could tie my shoes in 2001-2004. If you took all the wrongness I generated, put it together and compacted it and processed it, there would be enough concentrated stupid to fuel three hundred years of Weekly Standard journals. I am not sure how I snapped out of it, but I think Abu Ghraib and the negative impact of the insurgency did sober me up a bit.

War should always be an absolute last resort, not just another option. I will never make the same mistakes again.

Kudos to Tim Noah

Glenn Greenwald directs us to...

Glenn Greenwald: Atrios notes some commendable observations from Tim Noah, whose mea culpa article is, by far, the most thoughtful in the Slate pile (a distinction easily achieved)...

Tim Noah:

Forget what I got wrong. Why did Mary McGrory and Barack Obama get Iraq right?: Why should you waste your time, at this late date, ingesting the opinions of people who were wrong about Iraq? Wouldn't you benefit more from considering the views of people who were right? Five years after this terrible war began, it remains true that respectable mainstream discussion about its lessons is nearly exclusively confined to people who supported the war, even though that same mainstream acknowledges, for the most part, that the war was a mistake. That's true of Slate's symposium, and it was true of a similar symposium that appeared March 16 on the New York Times' op-ed pages. The people who opposed U.S. entry into the Iraq war, it would appear, are insufficiently "serious" to explain why they were right.

Fortunately, this Lewis Carroll logic hasn't prevailed... in the... Democratic nomination.... Barack Obama, is winning primary votes partly on the strength of his having opposed the Iraq invasion. Another person who ultimately proved right on Iraq is Mary McGrory... Feb. 13 [2003]...:

[E]veryone needs a respite from the encircling apprehension and dread. Beginning with the president, all should take a deep breath and reassess. Colin Powell is working overtime to close the loop on Iraq's ties to al Qaeda. In his masterly U.N. speech he made the case against Saddam Hussein, but not the case for war. He needs a rest. The orange alert has worn everybody out.

McGrory repeated this sentiment in her March 6 column, addressed to readers who'd misconstrued her Powell column. A couple of weeks later, McGrory suffered a stroke, and 13 months later she died. But she leaves behind a lovely anthology, edited by her friend Phil Gailey. It can be read more profitably than this pile of tired mea culpas.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Adam Smith on the Liberal Hawks of Slate

From Glenn Greenwald:

Lessons not learned: I'm not sure that applies to all of them, but certainly almost all. There really is no more toxic combination than the ability to urge war and simultaneously be shielded from all costs and consequences. Adam Smith put it perfectly in his 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

Or, put another way, we must not withdraw from Iraq ever, sayeth the Washington establishment.

Adam Smith sez: Friends don't let friends read Slate.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps.

McCain: Clueless as... as... Saying that Some Neo-Confederate Group Is Secretly Funneling Money to Louis Farrakhan

Hilzoy is the shrillest woman in the Boswash Megalopolis:

Obsidian Wings: Clueless: I didn't want to let this gem from John McCain pass unremarked:

Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

It's important to be clear about exactly how clueless this is. It's like saying that some neo-confederate group is secretly funneling money to Louis Farrakhan, and then having an aide have to whisper: no, no, it's the Aryan Nation; wrong extremists! It's like suggesting that McCain is making a play for Kucinich voters, and having to be told that, no, you really meant Ron Paul: wrong losing candidate! No one who had any understanding at all of Iraq, or for that matter about the Shi'a/Sunni split and which side Iran was on, would get confused about this....

McCain gets to say silly things like this without being challenged. His reputation as a serious thinker on national security can only survive so long as people don't notice things like this....

Today we saw exactly how intelligent and nuanced Obama is. In this series of remarks by McCain (and others; it's not unique), we can see exactly how unprepared he is to win an argument against Obama.

In terms of intellect, grasp of policy details, nuance, and depth of knowledge, McCain is just not in Obama's league -- or, for that matter, Clinton's. When we have a chance to see McCain debate a Democratic nominee, I have every confidence that this fact will become painfully obvious.

New York Times Death Spiral Watch

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Words fail me. But they do not fail Ilan Goldenberg:

democracyarsenal.org: It's Not the Execution: The NY Times has its five year retrospective on the Iraq War and I gotta say I'm not impressed. There are nine pieces: Bremer, Perle, Slaughter, Pollack, Pletka, Fick, Eaton, Kagan, and Cordesman. I understand the need to bring in more conservatives for this piece, since they are the ones responsible for the execution. But out of the nine pieces not one talks about the strategic failure of going in in the first place.

Almost 4,000 American troops have died, approximately 30,000 have been wounded, we've appropriated more than $500 billion with the costs to the actual economy estimated to be well over $1 trillion and possibly heading towards $3 trillion. For all of this we have gotten a more powerful Al Qaeda, a more powerful Iran, a more unstable Middle East, and an overstretched military.

But all of these pieces talk about the failure of execution and foist blame at various directions as if this could have all worked out if we had just done some things differently.

Let's face it, the failure was in the initial concept and the fact that the Times feels like it needs to give both Pletka and Kagan a spot, and can't find us a Korb, Graham, or Bacevich to make the strategic failure argument is pathetic.

And for God's sake. With 9 Pieces about Iraq, perhaps the Times should have had at least one piece by ummm.... perhaps an Iraqi? But after all who cares what they think. Fred Kagan and Danielle Pletka tell it like it is.

On the bright side. No Mike O'Hanlon.

David Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress'

From Cameron Barr:

Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress': Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday. Petraeus... said... that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services. The general's comments appeared to be his sternest to date on Iraqis' failure to achieve political reconciliation....

Many Iraqi parliament members and other officials acknowledge that the country's political system is often paralyzed by sectarian divisions, but they also say that American expectations are driven by considerations in Washington and do not reflect the complexity of Iraq's problems.... Petraeus insisted that Iraqi leaders still have an opportunity to act. "We're going to fight like the dickens" to maintain the gains in security and "where we can to try and build on it," he said....

The additional forces sent to Iraq last year have begun to depart and will be gone by midsummer, leaving in place a baseline U.S. presence of about 130,000 troops. Petraeus said it would increasingly fall to Iraqi security forces and neighborhood patrols funded by the United States to help keep violence down.... Petraeus credited both the mainly Sunni neighborhood patrols known as the Awakening and a cease-fire called by Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr with helping to bring down violence. The Awakening fighters include former insurgents who say they have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a largely homegrown Sunni group that Petraeus said is in communication with al-Qaeda leaders abroad. The United States is now paying 88,000 members of the Awakening $300 a month to take part in the neighborhood patrols...

New York Times Death Spiral Watch

From Ilya Goldenberg:

democracyarsenal.org: Five Out of Eleven: Oh, I love it when Mike O'Hanlon is in the NY Times:

The most intriguing area of late is the sphere of politics [in Iraq]. To track progress, we have established "Brookings benchmarks" -- a set of goals on the political front similar to the broader benchmarks set for Baghdad by Congress last year. Our 11 benchmarks include establishing provincial election laws, reaching an oil-revenue sharing accord, enacting pension and amnesty laws, passing annual federal budgets, hiring Sunni volunteers into the security forces, holding a fair referendum on the disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk, and purging extremists from government ministries and security forces.

At the moment, we give the Iraqis a score of 5 out of 11 (our system allows a score of 0, 0.5, or 1 for each category, and is dynamic, meaning we can subtract points for backsliding). It is far too soon to predict that Iraq is headed for stability or sectarian reconciliation. But it is also clear that those who assert that its politics are totally broken have not kept up with the news.

Here's the best thing about this. There is no way to refute it because his scoring isn't up anywhere.... So, five out of eleven it is because that's what Mike O'Hanlon tells me it is.

Sure enough:

The New York Times says that there is an ongoing "Brookings benchmarks" set of indicators on Iraqi political progress that simply... does not exist.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Today's Must Read: Nir Rosen, "The Myth of the Surge"

From Rolling Stone:

Nir Rosen: The Myth of the Surge: Rolling Stone: Hoping to turn enemies into allies, U.S. forces are arming Iraqis who fought with the insurgents. But it's already starting to backfire. A report from the front lines of the new Iraq...

http://delong.typepad.com/egregious_moderation/2008/02/the-myth-of-the.html

Dan Froomkin Reads Scott MacKay Reading Lincoln Chaffee

This is what he rights:

Fear of Looking Weak: Scott MacKay writes in the Providence Journal: "Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee's new political memoir is remarkable for its candor, its delicious window into life in America's most exclusive club, and its condemnation of President Bush and the combination of right-wing Republicans and Democratic enablers who plunged the nation into an ill-fated war without end in Iraq. . . .

"The book excoriates Mr. Bush and his GOP allies who repeatedly fanned such wedge issues as changing the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, abortion and flag-burning. But he saves some of his harshest words for Democrats who paved the way for Mr. Bush to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq. . . .

"'The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were,' writes Chafee. 'They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

"'Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one's hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,' writes Chafee. 'That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.'

"Chafee writes of his surprise at 'how quickly key Democrats crumbled.' Democratic senators, Chafee writes, 'went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration's nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?'"...

David Petraeus Shows He Has Learned the Leadership Secrets of William Westmoreland

The Government Accountability Office weighs in:

Iraqi Spending to Rebuild Has Slowed, Report Says: Highly promising figures that the administration cited to demonstrate economic progress in Iraq last fall, when Congress was considering whether to continue financing the war, cannot be substantiated by official Iraqi budget records, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday.... [L]ast September the administration said Iraq had greatly accelerated such spending. By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year. As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraq’s often dysfunctional government.

But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year. The reason for the difference, said Joseph A. Christoff, the G.A.O.’s director of international affairs and trade, was that few official Iraqi figures for 2007 were available when General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker went to Congress. So the administration, with the help of the Finance Ministry in Baghdad, appears to have relied on a combination of indicators, including real expenditures, ministries’ suggestions of projects they intended to carry out, and contracts that were still under negotiation, Mr. Christoff said. But actual spending does not seem to have lived up to those estimates for spending on reconstruction, a budget item sometimes called capital or investment expenditures, he added. “So it looked like an improvement, but it wasn’t an improvement,” he said....

[A]fter Iraq’s failure to spend its own money on reconstruction was first disclosed in late 2006, Iraqi and American officials repeatedly asserted that the problems would be much less severe the next year, as the new government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki found its way.... But the accountability office figures, which Mr. Christoff said were taken directly from Finance Ministry records, show that through August 2007 the Iraqi government had spent less than half the percentage of its investment budget that it had spent in the same period in 2006...

Happy Iraq "Surge" Anniversary!

Duncan Black writes:

Eschaton: Happy Surge Day: George Bush, one year ago.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

Any of that happen?

Approx. 789 US troops died to not achieve all that stuff.

Les Roberts on Tracking Deaths in Iraq

Posted by Tim Lambert at Deltoi:

Deltoid: IFHS study on violent deaths in Iraq:

1) There is more in common in the results than appears at first glance.

The NEJM article found a doubling of mortality after the invasion, we found a tripling. The big difference is that we found almost all the increase from violence, they found 1/2 the increase from violence.

IBC adds to their estimate for months after a given date; back at the end of June 2006, IBC estimated 41,000 deaths (my notes suggest 38,475 to 42,889 on June 24, 2006). This new estimate is 4 times the "widely accepted" number of that moment, our estimate was 12 times higher. Both studies suggest things are far worse than our leaders have reported.

2) There are reasons to suspect that the NEJM data had an under-reporting of violent deaths.

The death rate they recorded for before the invasion (and after) was very low....lower than neighboring countries and 1/3 of what WHO said the death rate was for Iraq back in 2002.

The last time this group (COSIT) did a mortality survey like this they also found a very low crude death rate and when they revisited the exact same homes a second time and just asked about child deaths, they recorded almost twice as many. Thus, the past record suggests people do not want to report deaths to these government employees.

We confirmed our deaths with death certificates, they did not. As the NEJM study's interviewers worked for one side in this conflict, it is likely that people would be unwilling to admit violent deaths to the study workers.

They roughly found a steady rate of violence from 2003 - 2006. Baghdad morgue data, Najaf burial data, and our data all show a dramatic increase over 2005 and 2006.

Finally, their data suggests 1/4 of deaths over the occupation through 6/06 were from violence. Our data suggest a majority of deaths were from violence. All graveyard reports I have heard are consistent with our results.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Elisabeth Bumiller/Robert Dallek/New York Times Edition)

More low comedy from the New York Times this morning, picked up by Scott Lemieux and Matthew Yglesias, who give their snark muscles a power workout by mocking Elisabeth Bumiller and Robert Dallek.

Here is Yglesias:

Fun With Antecedents: By the same token, if earth's yellow sun gave me the powers of a kryptonian, I'd be a super hero. If my blog had Engadget's traffic, I'd be the most popular political blogger. If George Bush could breath underwater, he'd be a fish...

Here is Lemieux:

And If The Devil Rays Win the Next 18 World Series, Their Reputation as an Organization Will Be Greatly Enhanced: Uh, yeah. And if I discover a way of powering cars entirely with oxygen, emitting a vapor that would result in the immediate killing of cockroaches and paralysis in the hands of every Hollywood producer about to sign a contract with Joel Schumacher and Uwe Boll, my reputation as a world-class scientist would be greatly enhanced. I'm reminded of nothing so much as David Adesnik's suggestion that Bush signal his commitment to a rational foreign policy by appointing Dick Lugar...

They are talking about this, from Robert Dallek's review of Elisabeth Bumiller's Condi Rice biography:

Condoleezza Rice: An American Life - Elisabeth Bumiller: Ms. Bumiller understands that Ms. Rice’s place in history will rest... on her record in the Bush administration. And “with 18 months left in office,” Ms. Bumiller wrote as she finished her book, “it was still too early to come to definite conclusions.”... Ms. Bumiller says that if President Bush and Ms. Rice can produce a settlement in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, it would give them claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations...

Lemieux says more:

Lawyers, Guns and Money: And If The Devil Rays Win the Next 18 World Series, Their Reputation as an Organization Will Be Greatly Enhanced: [N]othing signals a Must To Avoid more than a positive book review that describes an unreadable book. Such is the case with Robert Dallek's review of a new book about Condi Rice by official Bush administration mash note writer Elisabeth Bumiller. Apparently, we're meant to think that the fact that the book makes no judgments and contains no interesting analysis of Rice's tenure as Secretary of State is a feature, not a bug...

I by contrast, was struck by the striking disjunction between what happens when you start reading Dallek's review from the beginning:

Condoleezza Rice: An American Life - Elisabeth Bumiller: The writer of contemporary history is like the man with his nose pressed against the mirror trying to see his whole body, Arnold Toynbee cautioned. Yet whatever their limitations, books about prominent sitting officials are irresistible, partly driven by an insatiable public appetite for gossip about public figures and an interest in understanding and judging them.... More important, these first drafts of history are indispensable assets... capture... the tone and mood of the day.... Elisabeth Bumiller’s biography of Condoleezza Rice is an excellent case... 10 interviews with Ms. Rice and 150 with other people... a compelling portrait of the country’s first black female secretary of state... its absence of finger pointing or polemics... scrupulously fair.... In Ms. Bumiller’s rendering Ms. Rice is neither hero nor villain but an ambitious woman whose achievements and shortcomings speak for themselves.... Ms. Bumiller refuses to offer any decisive judgments on Ms. Rice’s performance...

and what happens when you start reading Dallek's review backward, from the end:

Condoleezza Rice: An American Life - Elisabeth Bumiller: Ultimately Ms. Bumiller’s book will be seen not just as a discussion of Ms. Rice’s role in shaping one administration’s missteps in foreign affairs but also as a cautionary tale about the gap between ambitious presidential appointees and their unwillingness to speak truth to power.

Inevitably Ms. Rice will be compared to previous national security advisers and secretaries of state, notably Henry Kissinger. Judging from Ms. Bumiller’s account, Ms. Rice, like Mr. Kissinger, was driven more by ambition for high station than fidelity to international realities. Mr. Kissinger’s loyalty to President Richard M. Nixon and Ms. Rice’s to President Bush made them as much political operatives ingratiating themselves with their respective presidents as detached foreign policy analysts serving the national well-being.

“Some of Rice’s friends,” Ms. Bumiller writes, “were stunned that she actually seemed to believe Bush’s argument in the final days of the war buildup that a liberated Iraq could spread freedom across the Middle East.” Ms. Rice also believed that “the postwar phase would be like the successful occupation of Germany after World War II, and that it would be possible to plant democracy in a shattered Iraq.” Either Ms. Rice knew less than she should have about pre- and post-1945 German history, or she was carried away by false optimism.

By the start of the invasion in March 2003, the Rice of early 2000, who had published an article in Foreign Affairs decrying the Clinton administration&rsquo