Decius wrote:
The core question is whether or not there is a reason to think that we will "prevail." The correct answer is that it is simply not possible to know right now, because we've changed tactics, and the new tactical approach won't pan out enough to tell if its working until the middle of next month.

Which you assert with the same degree of absolutism you deride in others. I think it's absurd. My analysis tells me that the surge is too little, too late. Granted, I'm not an expert on military tactics, but neither are 99.99% of other humans with an opinion. The fact of the matter is that I don't think the situation is salvageable. I don't think I have to wait another 20 days to say that.

And assuming we'll know more at that time further presupposes that one expects to get any genuine facts next month. As if it's suddenly it's all gonna become clear... some day in mid-September is a magical day when all the real facts on the ground will become transparent and indisputable. Is it really believable that this administration's going to honestly report if the surge is failing miserably? I think not. That level of trust is quite simply naive at this point, and there's no other word for it.

For example, Hillary Clinton is positioning that we're going to withdraw even if the evidence demonstrates that if we keep fighting we'll succeed.

We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar Province, it's working. We're just years too late changing our tactics.

Assuming she's saying what you think she's saying, she's also probably wrong. There's evidence that Al Anbar was becoming safer well before the surge took effect, so any supposed decline in violence there is difficult or impossible to link to the surge. I was able to quickly find a few references here and here.

From the latter :

I was deployed to Ramadi as little as six months ago, working a counter-IED mission, and I can assert that violence levels started to decline back in the fall. Furthermore, [Senator] Graham made this argument to Sen. Jim Webb, whose son just returned from service in Ramadi.

So why has the violence dropped? Well, the locals were tired of getting killed by foreign insurgents, so they organized. This is primarily due to the work of the most powerful Man in Western Iraq, Sheikh Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi. Sheikh Sattar has organized militias to snuff out al-Qaida all over al-Anbar, and his forces have moved into Diyala province of late.

The US military is not defeating al-Qaida in Iraq -- locals with torches and pitchforks are.

As for this claim :

There is no relationship whatsoever between an observation about the political reconciliation and an observation about the success or failure of a military tactic. It is dishonest to conflate them.

Are you serious? You don't think politics have an effect on the long term efficacy of military actions in Iraq? That's astonishing. Without political leadership, even an apparent total military success in Iraq -- that is, the elimination of al Quaeda and the putting down of the insurgency and the quelling of a religious civil war -- will not last longer than the time it takes US boots to leave the sand. And of course in reality a total military success can't happen without the political will to make it happen and support it.

Surely the military and the political aren't the same thing, but they clearly affect one another. To claim they're apples and alternators is just plain wrong. It's alternators and fan-belts at a MINIMUM. Without both, the machine doesn't function.

You cannot undo the fact that we went to war in Iraq by pulling out.

No, but maybe you can save some lives, not to mention billions upon billions of dollars. Again, we're arguing about the basic premise of the salvagability of this war. I believe it's out of reach, that recovery is not practically possible. You believe that it might be, and that we're gonna know one way or another soon. We simply disagree completely on this point.

You are doing everything you can to shoot it down before you know whether or not its viable. Why? Because you are too trapped by the extremism of your own political rhetoric to make the right decision?

Insulting me will avail you not at all. It's not an extremist position to
a) believe the war was executed incorrectly from day 1
b) believe that the surge is an ineffective gesture; pabulum meant to subdue the American public and congress
c) distrust the administrations claims about this war. They have been mendacious and corrupt in quite literally countless ways. I'm not about to believe them anymore. That's not blind partisanship, that's just reality. If someone lies to you enough times, they aren't trustworthy, by fucking definition.

If the surge report is positive and yet the US pulls out of Iraq anyway it will be, frankly, just as irrational and tragic as the decision to go in in the first place. Perhaps thats the history we deserve, but it just goes to show you that it really, deeply, doesn't matter which political party is in charge.

If the surge report is positive and the US pulls out anyway it will show, at MOST, that the American people and congress no longer have faith in this administration or even, possibly, government in general, and completely disbelieve it. Frankly, as I've said, it's hard to dispute that feeling.

The parties are clearly not the same. Honestly, it's beneath you to equate evolution-denying Crusaders (yes, capitalized on purpose) like Brownback with even Big Brother Giuliani, much less the Democrat candidates. Nader got me to entertain this "they're all the same crooks and liars" notion briefly in my various periods of despondency and betrayed idealism, but if there's anything the subsequent Bush years have shown it's that the lesser of two evils can make a enormous goddamn difference.

RE: Obsidian Wings: Bush's Speech