Thirteen Ways Not To Think About The Petraeus Report

by hilzoy

In anticipation of the Petraeus report, I've put thirteen* ways not to think about it below the fold.

* (OK, actually only eight. But how could I not invoke Wallace Stevens?)

(1) "The surge is working; we should maintain it until we've done the job." -- This is not an option. Fred Kaplan:

"Adm. Michael Mullen, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at his confirmation hearings last month that the "surge" in Iraq could not be sustained at present levels past April 2008.

There are a few ways to remedy this shortfall, all of them impractical or infeasible. First, soldiers' tours of duty in Iraq, which were recently extended from 12 months to 15 months, could be stretched further to 18 months. However, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, told me, during a recent interview for a separate story, that this idea is "off the table." As it should be: The relentless rotation cycles have already compelled many soldiers and junior officers to quit the Army; pushing duty and tolerance much further might not just exhaust the troops beyond limits but spark an exodus from the armed forces."

This means that the surge will end next April. When we ask ourselves whether or not to maintain it until then, we should recognize that the only question worth asking is: will keeping the extra troops there until April improve matters? Asking whether it would improve matters to keep them there in perpetuity, or "until we get the job done", is beside the point: we can't.

(2) Even if we can't maintain the surge, we're making progress, so we should stay. -- This is an example of what, on Obsidian Wings, I called "benefit analysis": noting that an option provides some benefit and concluding that we should adopt it. (Relatedly, "cost analysis" involves noting that an option involves some cost and concluding that we should not adopt it.) In making decisions, we need to consider the pros and the cons.

In the case of keeping our troops in Iraq, there are obvious costs. Our soldiers are dying. Iraqis are dying. We are spending enormous amounts of money. This YouTube clip of a military wife calling Bill Kristol on CSPAN will get some of them across:

(3) Our army can handle it. -- Besides the deaths of our troops and of Iraqis, the injuries, the displaced people, and the immense strain on everyone -- American, Iraqi, British, you name it -- who is involved with this war, we are also breaking our army. Over two years ago, Phil Carter and Owen West reported that the Army was trying to solve its recruiting problems by letting in people with criminal records, substance abuse problems, and so forth:

"Now comes a new Army directive that attempts to alleviate the personnel crunch by retaining soldiers who are earmarked for early discharge during their first term of enlistment because of alcohol or drug abuse, unsatisfactory performance, or being overweight, among other reasons. By retaining these soldiers, the Army lowers the quality of its force and places a heavy burden on commanders who have to take the poor performers into harm's way. This is a quick fix that may create more problems than it solves."

A year and a half ago, Salon reported:

"Waivers, which are generally approved at the Pentagon, allow recruiters to sign up men and women who otherwise would be ineligible for service because of legal convictions, medical problems or other reasons preventing them from meeting minimum standards. (...)

According to statistics provided to Salon by the office of the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, the Army said that 17 percent (21,880 new soldiers) of its 2005 recruits were admitted under waivers. Put another way, more soldiers than are in an entire infantry division entered the Army in 2005 without meeting normal standards. This use of waivers represents a 42 percent increase since the pre-Iraq year of 2000."

The army is shedding officers at an alarming rate. Last year, 44% of the West Point class that became eligible to leave the army did so -- "the service's highest loss rate in three decades." We have already done enormous damage to our armed forces, and the longer we stay in Iraq, the worse it will get.

(5) But -- but -- look what's happening in Anbar province! It's real progress! -- Yes, it is. It's debatable whether or not it's due to the surge, but let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it is. The question remains: what is going to happen when we leave Anbar province? One possibility is that the Iraqi government will embrace all the Sunni militias who have worked with us, allow them to continue to fight al Qaeda in Iraq, and provide them with the arms and supplies they need to do so. In this case, the "Anbar Awakening" would really have accomplished something.

However, it is completely unclear whether or not that will happen. Anthony Cordesman (pdf):

"Key tribal leaders, and the main tribal confederation in the area have started to fight Al Qa’ida, have turned to US forces for help, and seem willing to strike a bargain with the Shi’ite-dominated central government if the government will give them money, a reasonable degree of de facto Sunni autonomy, and incorporate their fighters into auxiliary police forces, the regular police, and Iraqi Army. Sunnis in other areas are considering similar deals, although such Sunni support of the US and central government is uncertain and dependent on far more action from the central government than has occurred to date."

If the government does not integrate the Sunnis we are working with into the army and police, or at least continue to supply them, then once we leave, they will lose the capacity to resist al Qaeda in Iraq, and the gains in Anbar will evaporate. So how is this integration going? Not so good:

"Many Sunni leaders here contend that the Shiite-dominated government is neglecting them for sectarian reasons, and the bad feelings at times boil over into angry accusations. In interviews conducted in early August, some said that factions in the Interior Ministry were taking orders from Iran, or that the government was withholding money and support because it did not want to build up Sunni security forces that it could end up fighting after an eventual American withdrawal from Iraq.

Iraqi officials in Baghdad deny shortchanging Falluja, saying they have authorized more than enough police forces for Anbar. ''We'd like to support them, but that does not mean we can respond to their requests or demands,'' said Sadiq al-Rikabi, political adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. He said the government had problems supplying the police throughout Iraq. (...)

If the Iraqi government provided a large and steady supply of men, weapons, vehicles and equipment, the police could secure the city, said Colonel Hussein, the Falluja police chief. But he complained of little support from the government except for salaries, which he doubted would be paid if the Americans were not here. He said he also needed four times more policemen. ''Without the role of the Marines, I'll fail,'' he said.

Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, a senior Interior Ministry spokesman, called Colonel Hussein's comments ''unprofessional.'' In an interview, he said if the Falluja police had an equipment shortage then they failed to request enough gear earlier.

He added that if Colonel Hussein is so fond of the Marines, perhaps he should apply for American citizenship."

Another story about attempts to enroll Sunnis in the Iraqi police:

"In all, [Lt. Col. Kurt] Pinkerton marshaled 2,400 men willing to become policemen, but the Interior Ministry agreed to accept 1,700 of them, at a salary of $600 a month. When it came time to enroll, Pinkerton realized that 23 percent of the names he had submitted had been changed by the Iraqi government -- raising his suspicion that officials want to disrupt his efforts. "Who are they?" he wondered. "And where'd they come from?""

Along with the Iraqi government's general ineptitude, the problem is that the Shi'a in charge of Iraq are very worried about arming the Sunnis in Anbar provice, for the understandable reason that they might end up fighting those Sunnis in a civil war. The problem is that this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Shi'a in the government are too fearful to integrate the Sunnis into the armed forces and police, and as a result, the Sunnis conclude that trying to work with the central government is a lost cause. If that happens, then we will have taken some AQI fighters out of action, which is good, but we will also have trained Sunnis who will fight against the Iraqi government in a civil war, which is very bad.

Moreover, they have no real incentive to let the Sunnis in:

""It's always easy to get the prospective loser in a civil war to agree to a cease-fire," said Stephen Biddle, a counterinsurgency expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who has advised military commanders in Iraq. Sunnis are a minority and far more open to switching loyalties if it ensures them a future stake in governing Iraq, he said.

"It's a lot tougher to get the prospective winner to agree to a cease-fire," Biddle said, referring to the majority Shiites. "Getting them to sign on is going to be harder because they see themselves in ascendancy.""

Or, in the words of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate:

"Such initiatives, if not fully exploited by the Iraqi Government, could over time also shift greater power to the regions, undermine efforts to impose central authority, and reinvigorate armed opposition to the Baghdad government." (Emphasis added.)

(6) But look at all our military progress! Doesn't that count for anything? -- In a word, no; at least not without political reconciliation. What is true in Anbar is true across the board: if the Iraqi government uses the increased security our troops are providing for them to create the conditions for real peace, then we will have accomplished something of real importance. If, on the other hand, they do not, then once our troop levels go back to normal, or lower, we'll be right back where we started. The entire effect of the surge will have been to produce a temporary fix, not a lasting improvement.

Don't take my word for it, though: here's Bush's nominee to be head of the Joint Chiefs:

"Unless the Iraqi government takes advantage of the "breathing space" that U.S. forces are providing, Mullen said, "no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference." (...)

In written responses to committee questions, Mullen warned that "there is no purely military solution in Iraq" and that the country's politicians "need to view politics and democracy as more than just majority rule, winner-take-all, or a zero-sum game." Absent that, he said, the United States will be forced to reevaluate its strategy."

Everything turns on whether or not the Maliki government takes advantage of the surge to make real progress towards reconciliation. And, of course, they haven't. From a briefing accompanying the National Intelligence Estimate:

"Political reconciliation has come to a "standstill," said a senior intelligence official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity."

And from a story on the recent GAO report:

"One of eight political benchmarks -- the protection of the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature -- has been achieved, according to the draft. On the others, including legislation on constitutional reform, new oil laws and de-Baathification, it assesses failure.

"Prospects for additional progress in enacting legislative benchmarks have been complicated by the withdrawal of 15 of 37 members of the Iraqi cabinet," it says. An internal administration assessment this month, the GAO says, concluded that "this boycott ends any claim by the Shi'ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity." An administration official involved in Iraq policy said that he did not know what specific interagency document the GAO was citing but noted that it is an accurate reflection of the views of many officials."

And, of course, there is no real Sunni buy-in to the government, which makes reconciliation even more unlikely.

And without reconciliation, any improvements in security will vanish as soon as we do.

(7) Well, if the Maliki government doesn't want to promote reconciliation, why not replace him? -- First, it's not up to us. Nouri al-Maliki is the leader of a sovereign state, and he should be replaced, if at all, by Iraqis. Second, it took the Iraqis months to form a government the last time around, and there's no reason to think they'd do it any faster this time. Replacing Maliki would be the best possible way to ensure that no reconciliation happened between now and the end of the surge, since there would be no Iraqi government.

Finally, as I wrote earlier, replacing Maliki would be a solution to the Iraqi government's problems only if Maliki himself were the cause of those problems:

"Suppose, for instance, that most members of the Iraqi parliament were ready to compromise with one another. Deals were ready to be struck, compromises were in hand, but alas! Nouri al-Maliki stood in their way, using his power as Prime Minister to block them all. In that case, it might be a good thing if he were replaced.

On the other hand, suppose the reason the Iraqi government is not functioning is that its various members are not prepared to come to terms with one another and try to resolve the outstanding issues that divide them. Maybe they believe that a civil war is imminent, and that they should concentrate on being in the best position to win it once it starts rather than trying to prevent it; or maybe they are just incapable of putting aside their sectarian and ethnic differences and working for the good of the country. In that case, there would be no reason at all to suppose that replacing Maliki would solve anything. He might or might not be the best person for the job, but that wouldn't really matter: if no one could make the Iraqi government functional, then the particular characteristics of Nouri al-Maliki are beside the point."

As far as I can see, there's no reason at all to think that Nouri al-Maliki is the problem, and thus there's no reason at all to think that replacing him would solve anything.

(13*) But we can't leave. There will be a bloodbath when we leave. -- This is probably true. However, as Mark Kleiman said:

"That's not a good enough reason to hang around, unless at some point it stops being true: that six months, or a year, or two years, or five years from now we would be able to withdraw and not have civil war and massacre follow. If we're spending blood and treasure only to postpone a catastrophe we can't prevent, the "humanitarian" argument against a fairly rapid withdrawal collapses."

What our decision about what to do ought to depend on is not whether or not there will be a bloodbath when we leave, but whether, by staying, we are either improving the odds that there will not be a bloodbath, or improving the odds that it will be a smaller bloodbath; and also whether either of these gains is worth the cost, in American and Iraqi lives, of our staying.

I see no sign that we are trying to reduce the impact of our eventual departure, as opposed to postponing it until President Bush leaves office.

***

So where does that leave us? We know our presence in Iraq cannot be sustained at surge levels past April, and it probably can't be sustained at pre-surge levels much longer either. We are either going to leave or to draw down our troops substantially. Any military progress that will not survive our departure is a temporary fix. If the Iraqi government took advantage of the surge to pursue serious political reconciliation, they might use the opportunity to make lasting improvements. But they show no signs of doing so; it's not even clear that they want to.

Under the circumstances, then, I assume that General Petraeus will report military progress. It would be surprising if he didn't: after all, our army does a good job, and it would be odd if tens of thousands of additional troops had no effect at all. But it's meaningless without political reconciliation. And there is no political reconciliation in sight.

***

* Footnote: What happened to 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12? Why did I skip from 7 to 13? To make the title come out right, of course.

Comments

[Hartmut]

...and that the country's politicians "need to view politics and democracy as more than just majority rule, winner-take-all, or a zero-sum game."
Who let this pinko commie in? ;-)
--
I cynically expect a return to the old "Frontbewährung". Why not clean US death rows by sending the people (except Muslims of course) waiting for execution to Iraq instead to do the really dangerous jobs (without giving them arms of course)?
Survivors will get a reduced sentence.
Hey, if US inmates can be used for medical experiments without consent...
--
New slogan: If we don't kill them there they will kill each other once we leave.
--
[/snark of the day]

[alphie]

The Dems of either House o' Congress have the power to halt our occupation of Iraq this month.

But aren't they really just gonna look at the Petraeus Report! and decide whether it offers them enough political cover to kick the occupation past the next election or not?

My guess is it won't disappoint them.

[x]

And to think, we might have been out of there already if the left didn't do every single thing they could to obstruct and destroy George Bush.

Shameful.

[Jesurgislac]

Assuming that "x" is for real and not a drive-by joke, I wonder how well that particular line of attack will play? Surely there can't be that many people in the US with the memory of a goldfish?

[Debbie (aussie)]

As they are planning on moving the goal posts, yet again. They just need another freidman unit,and all will be well/won. yes :P

[matttbastard]

Hey 'x', assuming you are sincere (as Jes said), I have a message for you and your ilk that I wrote last night. (A note for work filter folks: like a lot of my writing, profanity abounds. Plus, it's pretty DFH-ish.)

[Dantheman]

I can fill in one of the missing numbers:

8. The Bush Administration doesn't believe that the surge has markedly improved the security situation. Otherwise, they would not have had an "unannounced" visit to Iraq over this weekend to meet with the Iraqi government. How many other heads of state and/or government has Bush met with where the existence of the meeting could not have been announced beforehand?

[cleek]

the "surge" is going to last until 2009, at least.

[G'Kar]

I'm not sure your logic holds, Dan. The security situation in Iraq has been bad enough that it could improve quite a bit and still make the secret service very nervous about announced visits.

[J Thomas]

Cleek, are you saying that Bush will require the army to continue the surge to 2009 so that his successor will be faced with an absolutely no-win situation? Pull out a broken army and be blamed for failure, or leave the broken army in iraq until things really fall apart?

That's cold. I can see Bush/Cheney doing that despite the moral objections, but wouldn't it be risky? What if things fall apart too fast? They can't blame it on Democrats cutting funding, the Democrats have given them everything they asked for. They could blame it on inadequate cheerleading, but would that even work?

[Dantheman]

G'Kar,

I will disagree. We are talking about a very basic level of security to make the skies safe enough for Air Force One to land and take off and to make a military base safe enough for the President to hold a meeting. If we are not achieving that, it does imply that the security situation is far worse than the Administration is admitting to.

And that is even ignoring that military progress is a sideshow compared to politcal progress in showing the surge's effectiveness.

[cleek]

Cleek, are you saying that Bush will require the army to continue the surge to 2009 so that his successor will be faced with an absolutely no-win situation?

i'm saying Bush isn't going to end it because it will always need a little bit more time to fully succeed; and no Rep or Dem with any chance of winning in 2008 is going to pull out either, for the same reason.

we're going to be stuck fighting in Iraq for another 4 years.

(book)mark my words.

[Tim]

This war is a major cash cow on both the U.S. and the Iraqi side. Any report that might jeopardize that had no chance of being written.

We'll be in Iraq until the money runs out.

[asdf]

I can see the set up right now, "the surge had to end because the left has spent the last 30 years destroying the ability of the military to wage war by de-funding, therefore it is the democrat's responsibility for the quagmire..."

btw, what happened to #4?

[Jesurgislac]

btw, what happened to #4?

You forgot about Poland.

[hilzoy]

Oh noes! No 4? Well, it was very late last night. Oh well.

[J Thomas]

Cleek, you figure this will be like lebanon but on a massive scale?

We sent in a little force mostly to hold the airport, with no clear mission, and they held on there while everything fell apart around them until they got hit hard. Then Reagan pulled them out.

I can't see a draft before 2012, and without that, how are we going to avoid some lebanon-type incidents? We're getting tired and the army's getting slowly degraded. Individual soldiers spending half their time in a hot desert hellhole for no particular reason. Not nearly enough prostitutes. It sure isn't helping many Reservist careers. Our guys get tired and a little careless and they make mistakes. We lose a few more supply dumps. A few more DFACs. The other sides start getting weapons that are effective against our aging helicopters. (That hit the russians pretty hard in afghanistan.) And the next president tries to hang in there because (s)he can't think of an adequate excuse to leave? Like Beirut but 500 times larger?

No. Certainly within the next 5 years there will be an iraqi government that we recognise as the legitimate government of iraq. There's one of those right now. All we have to do is let them tell us to get out, and we have a perfect excuse to get out. What, are we going to overthrow them and replace them with a new government so we can occupy iraq longer? No way.

I figure the timeline something like this:

November 2008: US president-elect quietly tells the current head of the iraqi government to ignore all those previous threats about what happens if they tell us to go away.

January 2009: Iraqi government tells us to go away.

June 2009: US forces have withdrawn from iraq.

Bush could delay that though by making sure there is no iraqi government in November 2008.

[cleek]

Cleek, you figure this will be like lebanon but on a massive scale?

i figure it's going to be just like Iraq has been - lots of US troops trying to get the Iraqis to stop killing each other while politicians here and there screw around.

We're getting tired and the army's getting slowly degraded.

we've been hearing that for years. Kerry ran on that message, and lost.

And the next president tries to hang in there because (s)he can't think of an adequate excuse to leave? Like Beirut but 500 times larger?

the next president hangs in there because he/she doesn't want to be the one who lost Iraq - in addition to whatever delusions of Flypaper and Fight 'Em Over There he/she harbors.

What, are we going to overthrow them and replace them with a new government so we can occupy iraq longer? No way.

i'm not suggesting anything like that.

but they won't really ask us to leave, if we're the only thing keeping them in power.

it's gonna be more of the same, for many more years. maybe it'll be called something different (peace-keeping, advising, training, etc). but it'll be the same.

listen to the politicians and the media. the options they discuss, even today, are "immediate withdrawal" and "stay the course". everyone scoffs at "immediate withdrawal" (even though nobody in any position to make it happen is advocating it), leaving "stay the course" as the only alternative. leaving is for pussies. nobody wants to be a pussy.

four more years.

[Mike Schilling]

There must be fifty ways to leave Iraq.

[Slartibartfast]

Oh noes! No 4? Well, it was very late last night. Oh well.

Still...it's only mostly prime.

[G'Kar]

Dan,

As you wish. Still, I think you underestimate how easy it is for someone to take a shot at an aircraft. Any fire and forget weapon like that is extraordinarily difficult to defeat in this type of fight, no matter how good the security situation is.

[matttbastard]

What cleek said re: '09. Wouldn't be surprised if his '4 more years' prediction proves to be accurate, either.

[togolosh]

The gripping hand is Iran. If reports of an imminent attack pan out, Iran will throw everything it can into the Shia insurgency. I suspect that given their longstanding involvement with irregular forces in Lebanon they have a pretty good idea of how to fight effectively in the sort of conditions prevailing in Iraq.

[J Thomas]

If "the iraqi government" can't survive without us, then we have a tremendous amount of leverage with them. We can quietly tell them to tell us to get out, and slip them few billion dollars in "reconstruction" money, and they'll do it. If they won't we can dispose of them and get an iraqi government that will.

On the other hand an iraqi government that can survive without us would get a whole lot of public support by telling us to go away. Certainly there'll be many a dry eye in iraq when we're gone. And they get a whole lot more credible as an iraqi government as opposed to our puppet, after they defy us that way. So I think that approach could definitely work.

But what happens if we get into a war with iran? We start losing a lot of vehicles in iraq, maybe we start losing aircraft, our supply lines get kind of unreliable in iraq. Meanwhile we're doing whatever we do in iran. Presumably congress feels obligated to give 100% support to Bush's iran war. What do the candidates say? I have no idea how to predict the 2008 election in that case. I can't predict what the next president will do. I can't predict how bad the economy would get. I can't predict china or the UN. Or for that matter NATO. Is there any chance we'd get thrown out of NATO after we started a war with iran?

All in all, war with iran looks likwa good move for Bush. As it is, he looks real real bad and there's no prospect for anything better. Holding out in iraq until he can pass the quagmire off to some sucker doesn't make him look good, it just keeps him from looking even worse. But if he gets us into a big war that actually scares people, maybe one that gets most of the world united against us in opinion though not actions, maybe he'll get more support. Maybe not, but he can't win if he doesn't gamble.

So if the army gets in really serious trouble, will we blame Bush or will we blame iran? It could be argued that it's treasonous to blame Bush while the war is raging.

It looks like his best chance.

[Gary Farber]

"So how is this integration going? Not so good:"

Hilzoy, for some reason, linked to the subscription-only link; here's a free link to the whole story.

[Gary Farber]

"We are talking about a very basic level of security to make the skies safe enough for Air Force One to land and take off and to make a military base safe enough for the President to hold a meeting. If we are not achieving that, it does imply that the security situation is far worse than the Administration is admitting to."

I don't quite follow this. The primary threat to the President would be, I assume, handheld anti-aircraft missiles, of the Strela/Stinger sort. Since these can be fired by a single person, and there are doubtless more than a few around in Iraq, the "basic level of security" that Dantheman seems to presume is some sort of easily-obtainable measure would seem to require the locating and restraining of every single human being over the age of 12 for several miles around wherever Bush would land, to make sure they're not in possession of a missile.

This would seem to require a considerable amount of manpower, perhaps on the order of a division or more. I'm unclear why dantheman reqards this "very basic level of security" in, say, the area surrounding the Baghdad International Airport, as some sort of trivial task, which lack of doing proves "that the security situation is far worse than the Administration is admitting to"; I'm pretty sure that the Admin, for all its faults, hasn't claimed to have made it impossible for there to be man-portable SAMs in Iraq, nor to have killed off the population of Baghdad.

The issue of wanting to limit that risk doesn't seem to speak to the situation in Iraq in any way not already perfectly clear to anyone who reads a newspaper. We already know the security situation in Baghdad is poor, and that man-portable SAMs get around, and that there are lots of people hostile to the U.S. in Baghdad; this isn't information the White House has successfully suppressed.

[Dantheman]

Gary,

"the "basic level of security" that Dantheman seems to presume is some sort of easily-obtainable measure would seem to require the locating and restraining of every single human being over the age of 12 for several miles around wherever Bush would land, to make sure they're not in possession of a missile."

Funny, no one seems to think that searching the area for missiles (not restraining all adults, a task which would likely require a far higher number of soldiers than a single division) is a necessity in any other country where the President goes.

Also, as a non-trivial aside, the President did not go to Baghdad (where a plane with several members of Congress on it was recently shot at), but rather to Anbar Province, an area which the Adminsitration is holding up as an example of how the surge has worked entirely. This drives home that the military situation is not as rosy as the Administration claims.

[Doug H.]

listen to the politicians and the media. the options they discuss, even today, are "immediate withdrawal" and "stay the course". everyone scoffs at "immediate withdrawal" (even though nobody in any position to make it happen is advocating it), leaving "stay the course" as the only alternative. leaving is for pussies. nobody wants to be a pussy.

I listen, I also saw Hilary and Obama both vote 'Yes' on Getting The Heck Out Now a few months back. I guess they could flip-flop, but with the Army as badly worn down as it is, they might flip-flop yet again. In fact, I'm almost certain there'll be a 'Missile Gap'-like moment shortly after inaguration. "Whoops, we didn't have nearly the army strength left we thought we had! We'll have to rethink our strategy..."

[Gary Farber]

"Funny, no one seems to think that searching the area for missiles (not restraining all adults, a task which would likely require a far higher number of soldiers than a single division) is a necessity in any other country where the President goes."

Probably because the president hasn't been traveling to any other war zones. It's a noticeable distinction.

"Also, as a non-trivial aside, the President did not go to Baghdad (where a plane with several members of Congress on it was recently shot at), but rather to Anbar Province, an area which the Adminsitration is holding up as an example of how the surge has worked entirely."

Yes; obviously, I assume that that choice was made primarily for security reasons, beyond the ostensible "visiting Anbar" (as if one sealed Army base gives you a significantly different view than another). That was my point in mentioning Baghdad, which seems to have escaped you.

"This drives home that the military situation is not as rosy as the Administration claims."

Film at 11. The point is that where Bush lands doesn't, in fact, tell us a thing we didn't know the day before; trying to insist that it does is just silly. At this point, most people have actually noticed that "the military situation is not as rosy as the Administration claims," as it happens.

"I listen, I also saw Hilary and Obama both vote 'Yes' on Getting The Heck Out Now a few months back. I guess they could flip-flop,"

If you listen, you'll have noticed that Hillary's version of "Getting The Heck Out Now" seems to come with an asterisk that says "except for the tens of thousands of troops who will stay, to train and advise the Iraqis, and to fight terrorism, and keep our forces safe."

[cleek]

I also saw Hilary and Obama both vote 'Yes' on Getting The Heck Out Now a few months back.

a vote that was pretty much theater, as Bush was absolutely guaranteed to veto it.

they're both firmly in the "large residual forces" camp.

what does this large residual force do? if they're not out in the streets projecting force, what is their purpose? are they "training" Iraqi troops while refusing to shoot back to defend themselves, or does it fight back - chasing bad guys all over the country, intercepting weapons, busting down doors looking for enemy fighters? how is that any different from what we have now?

"out" means out, not reshuffled and relabeled. "large residual force" means, "we're not out, but those of you at home please pretend we are"

[Dantheman]

Gary,

"Probably because the president hasn't been traveling to any other war zones. It's a noticeable distinction."

Except the Administration is saying Anbar is pacified, which would lead one to believe it should not be treated as a war zone.

"Yes; obviously, I assume that that choice was made primarily for security reasons, beyond the ostensible "visiting Anbar" (as if one sealed Army base gives you a significantly different view than another). That was my point in mentioning Baghdad, which seems to have escaped you."

It certainly escaped me that when you said "I'm unclear why dantheman reqards this "very basic level of security" in, say, the area surrounding the Baghdad International Airport, as some sort of trivial task, which lack of doing proves "that the security situation is far worse than the Administration is admitting to"; I'm pretty sure that the Admin, for all its faults, hasn't claimed to have made it impossible for there to be man-portable SAMs in Iraq, nor to have killed off the population of Baghdad." that you were not actually making the modest proposal of killing off the population of Baghdad, rather than the population of the few square miles surrounding the Army base in Anbar which was not mentioned. So foolish of me not to have inferred that.

[Doug H.]

"out" means out, not reshuffled and relabeled. "large residual force" means, "we're not out, but those of you at home please pretend we are"

"Large residual force" means... well, anything that Sens. Clinton or Obama will want it to mean in February 2009. It could mean staying the course, drawing down to levels similar to where we're currently at in Afghanistan, or even just a large residual force to protect the Green Zone while we pack up anything of value.

The Army's broken, and all the King's horses and men won't put it in enough shape to maintain the status quo for four more years. I just don't see it.

[Dantheman]

In the category of great minds thinking alike, TPM makes a similar point to mine.

[J Thomas]

It's hard to tell how broken the army is. At this point it's all statistics. By the time it turns into horror stories that show the army is in serious trouble it will be pretty late in the game for doing things to improve the situation.

My wife plays an online game and has been tracking one of her fellow players. He'd committed multiple felonies and was finally in serious trouble. But they let him join the army. The army said he was going to be a truck mechanic and they'd think about letting him have access to weapons after a year, if he stayed out of trouble for that year. Once he went into training we didn't hear from him very often. The army is keeping him very busy. Every few weeks he gets access. The first time he said the army put up firewalls to keep him restricted to a limited selection of sites, and it took him 20 minutes to get past that. He was very busy and he liked the training. The last time he said he did very well with weapons training and he got to blow up an APC. He did so well he thought they'd give him advanced training in that but they didn't. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he'll be in a year before they send him to iraq.

I thought he'd cause trouble in the army but he seems to like it so far. They give him macho challenges that he can win. From what he says he's doing a whole lot better as a recruit than he ever did as a civilian. I wouldn't say the army's broken just because it has people like him in it.

But then, when real problems show up bad enough that the public hears about them, it will be a big slow task to fix them.

[cleek]

"Large residual force" means... well, anything that Sens. Clinton or Obama will want it to mean in February 2009.

the sum of their statements points towards it meaning "large residual force staying until the pony army takes over"

[Nell]

@J Thomas: Much more of the breakage in the army is due to who isn't in it than to who is. The draining away of officers in the last 18 months has been serious. That creates some serious vulnerabilities when combined with the way in which units have been shorted on training time.

[Anarch]

cleek: Suddenly, I want Iraq to be occupied by a Seven Nation Pony Army...