Monday, July 30, 2007
Credibility
Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings have just come back from eight days in Iraq, and they have reported their findings in The New York Times. Excerpts below, on the remote chance that any of our readers are fool enough not to read the whole thing:
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: 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.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship....
American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).
In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab....
Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.
This bit seems especially important, since it points toward the declining credibility of the extremists:
In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.
Finally, given the palpable progress that they saw, the authors call for sustaining the war at least into 2008.
Commentary
The question of credibility suffuses this article. O'Hanlon and Pollack are Democrats -- Pollack worked on the National Security Advisor's staff during the Clinton administration -- but both were supporters of the invasion of Iraq ex-ante. Indeed, Pollack was the author of the book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq
, which persuaded me and many others to support removing Saddam's government by invasion (Christopher Hitchens called it "the argument to beat" long after it became clear the war would not turn out as the optimists had hoped). Both men have since turned sharply critical (pdf) of the execution of the war, and in that sense occupy the same ground as other Democratic hawks who are now diving for cover on this issue. No doubt their motives are broadly the same as Hillary Clinton's -- they want another shot at government, and their only opportunity is with a Democratic party that has turned reflexively against a war they argued for.So what are we to make of it when O'Hanlon and Pollack say that we could still turn it around in Iraq? Lefties will argue that both are desperate to save themselves from the "inevitable" verdict of history, that they supported an incompetent president in the waging of an illegal war. At least some lefty bloggers think that this article so discredits them that they should be banned from future Democratic administrations. This argument invites a couple of questions, though: Why turn optimistic now after years of having attacked the Bush administration's handling of the war hammer and tongs? Why advocate continuation of the war into 2008, a state of affairs which all Democratic presidential aspirants are desperate to avoid for political reasons? O'Hanlon and Pollack know -- just as John Edwards does -- that their future in Democratic party policy circles requires contrition and penance for their original position on Iraq. This article clearly works against their professional self interest -- a groveling denunciation of the surge would have been much better for their prospects in the next administration -- so perhaps O'Hanlon and Pollack are more credible than the average analyst. Maybe Pollack and O'Hanlon just believe that in war intellectual honesty is more important than their next position in government.
It is also interesting that O'Hanlon and Pollack have gone out of their way to praise General David Petraeus. This is a serious no-no on the anti-war left, which has been preparing to attack Petraeus' status report in September by attacking his credibility in July. Either O'Hanlon and Pollack do not know that their acceptance among Democrats depends on joining that chorus, or they are unwilling to trash our last best hope even if that's the Poliburo's most recent talking point.
Finally, O'Hanlon and Pollack indirectly make a point that I have argued for a long time -- that victory in the war against violent Islamism requires that the Muslim world polarize. It is far more important in this war, which is largely a fight within the Muslim world, that we create enemies of our enemies than popularity for ourselves. Yes, the Iraq war has almost certainly helped extremists recruit more soldiers, but it has also caused far more Muslims to take the other side. They are picking up that gun and fighting the extremists because, as O'Hanlon and Pollack said, the Salafists have been brutally cruel. This is not only because, as the authors say, we have "picked the right adversary." Yes, we are at war with the extremists because they are brutal and revolting people as they have demonstrated countless times across the Muslim and Western world. It is more than that, though. In Iraq we presented them with an unavoidable but very hard target -- the Army and Marines of the United States, and the soldiers of the United Kingdom, Australia and other allies. The extremists chose a war that they soon learned they could not win on the battlefield. Their only option, then, was to horrify the media and thereby the voters in the countries that supported those soldiers. Their means for doing that necessarily polarized many Muslims against them. All that remained, then, was to supply leadership with a clue. Unfortunately, that was a long time in coming.
MORE: Wretchard and I were writing at the same time, apparently. He inadvertantly (I believe) elaborated on my last paragraph with his usual great eloquence.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Jul 30, 10:16:00 AM:
Perhaps they are starting to build a donk policy position that does not involve cut and run. That's going to be Hillary's position and it makes sense to move towards it as she is the probable nominee.
By 
Marzouq the Redneck Muslim, at
Mon Jul 30, 11:32:00 AM:
I believe this is evidence Coalition Forces and Iraqi forces have read/studied FMFM-1A and it is finally being implemented.
Salaam eleikum!
By ScurvyOaks, at
Mon Jul 30, 03:39:00 PM:
I've been wondering whether decision-making with respect to whether to stay in Iraq is suffering from a reverse version of the sunk-cost fallacy. The usual sunk-cost fallacy is the unwillingness to cut one's losses because of the large amount already invested.
Here, by contrast, some of the "leave now" arguments are roughly "we've lost too many American lives already; we shouldn't lose another one." The media's constant focus on the cumulative number of deaths feeds into this sort of thinking.
A rational decision about whether to stay or leave must be rigorously forward looking, made without reference to the sunk costs. As more encouraging news about the progress of the surge appears, my guess that that there will be a renewed emphasis on the "too many lives already" style of leave-now arguments.
By , at
Mon Jul 30, 04:43:00 PM:
Michael O'Hanlon is the prmary author of the Brookings Iraq Index which tracks just about every statistic in Iraq.
His last Iraq Index was published a few days ago.
I'd be interested in seeing him square the claims of reduced attacks from this Op Ed with the data he provided a mear 4 days ago.
Especially this whopper!
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
Does he just assume that everyone reads the New York Times but no one will read his own Iraq Index report?
By antithaca, at
Mon Jul 30, 07:45:00 PM:
Well, if readers do take the time to read O'Hanlon's Iraq Index...they'll see he figures a 26% drop in Iraqi civilian deaths due to violence from 1/07 to 6/07.
But, we're still right where we started. Is it credible to cite your own statistics? MNF-Iraq statistics(which O'Hanlon does)? Lancet statistics(LOL)?
By , at
Wed Aug 08, 09:34:00 AM:
"Why advocate continuation of the war into 2008, a state of affairs which all Democratic presidential aspirants are desperate to avoid for political reasons? O'Hanlon and Pollack know -- just as John Edwards does -- that their future in Democratic party policy circles requires contrition and penance for their original position on Iraq. This article clearly works against their professional self interest -- a groveling denunciation of the surge would have been much better for their prospects in the next administration -- so perhaps O'Hanlon and Pollack are more credible than the average analyst. Maybe Pollack and O'Hanlon just believe that in war intellectual honesty is more important than their next position in government."
The obvious reason is that anti-war people will suffer over the next decade or two, being blamed for losing Iraq. Anti-war people are the perfect targets for this sentiment, holding jack sh*t for responsibility. Blaming people with less power is much safer than blaming the people who actually hold power. This way, they are beautifully positioned to take advantage of the argument 'we were winning, until the Evul Librulz back-stabbed us. One or two more Friedman units.....".
Hillary, for example, is far, far more pro-war than the Democratic base *or* the American people; anti-war people will fare poorly when it comes time for appointment.
