A Political (Anti-War) Argument for "The Surge"

the wording seems odd, but killfile is right. it's not that anti-war people want more troops in iraq. it's that by adding more troops in this sudden way, the resulting outcome may be a quicker overall withdrawal due to the increased support for the anti-war movement in general.

the fact is, the surge would define the failure in iraq as a failure of americans to commit and support the war and the military. these are highly calculated moves by bush's team.

does this make bush a believer in the utilitarianism? probably not. unless we look at it from the point of view that whatever he does is justified if it keeps his party in high favor and his circle of friends in power and in the money.

will be the primary target - instead it will become a clash between actual armies.

I did, of course, mean to say: "will no longer be the primary target". I hope readers were able to interpret this from context. I would not want to be accused of being a Manson fan like "Squeaky" Fromme, even though that is a label that could be thrown at anyone calculating with "collateral damage".

BTW, Excellent article, again!!

Maybe Squeaky Fromme is going after Bush now? She probably thinks she finally got Ford.

Too many people fall into the falacy that they are some how able to read everyone else's mind that they disagree with.

Too many people have lost perspective by assuming that critics of Bush arnt logical but really just want him to fail because they dont like him. This made up psychobable is repeated over and over despite the lack of real evidence.

What makes you so certain of your psychological diagnosis? Are you sure its not the Bush supporters who are blinded by their partisan loyalty and hatred of those that are liberal. So far history has mostly bourne out the critics and not the supporters when the facts have come to light yet you continue to assume that the critics are the delusional ones.

Catch, do a lot of comment threads evaporate when you show up? Not because you can't make fine points, but because you instead just look for excuses to ooze condescension and smarminess?

You are just demonstrating that your psychological analysis remains faulty. Perhaps you feel my comments "ooze condescension and smarminess" has more to do with your continued willingness to jump to conclusions about the feelings rather than address the actual substance.

Perhaps your not as witty and funny as you think you are?

Nice strawmen you both are beating up there.

"thinking conservative" Does that mean that you dont care whether or not the troops come home safe or maimed or in a body bag - huh?

Koozebane,

Some people are pacificists, most critics of the war are not, yet you assume they are all blindly critical of all war. Surely you dont believe that all wars are GOOD do you? Some wars are better than others, dont you agree?

Some people think the military should be deployed cautiously and not recklessly and only when our national interestes are clearly as stake. Funny, but when Bush ran for President he accused Gore of being too willing to use the miliatary and promised not to unless he had a clear goal and clear exit strategy.

Why not try criticing real arguments by real people instead of imagining ones to knock down? By your approach does that mean you are a war monger and that the nations soldiers should be constantly placed in danger?

I'm not assuming anything.

I'm talking about a specific quote from a specific source.....not a wide range of people you've managed to dream up out of thin air.

When it's made clear that defeat doesn't matter, I have the right to comment on the absurdity of the thought.

Do you ever tire of citing bogus statistics?

First, there is plenty of anger about illegal immigration even if it is ridiculous to characterize it as an "invasion."

Second your made up figure is completely bogus and the violent crime rate among illegal immigrants actually tends to be relatively low.

Where did you get that number anyway? Dont believe all of the crap you read on the internet, especially if they clearly have an axe to grind.

People with axes to grind declare numbers to be false before they ask for a source.

People with axes to grind declare numbers to be false before they ask for a source.

When something is total bull@!$%# on its face, do you really need to ask for a source before pointing out that its bull@!$%#?

Funny you didnt ask for a source.

So how about providing a source? I looked and couldnt find a reliable estimate, but I pretty damn surr that illegal immigrants do not commit 25% of the murders of Americans in the country. If his number was accuarate thats what it would mean.

The stat is bogus why not try supporting it, instead of knocking my comment?

what does immigration have to do with this article?

red scare.

Still to come,, abortion,,homosexuals,,, social security.

Brilliant, winsome, you've identified Bush's plan to solve the social security crisis: abort all the homosexuals.

here is that source

Great source. WorldNetDaily quoting Congressman Steve King of Iowa, who made some un-sourced claims on the floor of the House and entered them into the Congressional Record. I looked all over Representative King's site and read the original statement in the Congressional Record, and searched on the web and every link I found circled back to Rep. King's un-sourced statement.

I did find some information however on some of Rep. King's other statements, such as his claim that 28% of all prisoners in US prisons are illegal immigrants. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics annual bulletin "Prisoners in 2005" and the Government Accountability Office publication "Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails" in 2003 there were 2,081,580 prisoners in Federal, State and local jails. About 275,000 of those prisoners were "criminal aliens," the definition of which differed in the study between Federal prisoners and state and local prisoners. All 45,000 non-citizens imprisoned for committing a crime, whether they are here legally or illegally, are considered "criminal aliens" in Federal statistics, while only those who are illegally in the US are considered "criminal aliens" for state and local prisons and jails. But even if we count all 275,000 criminal aliens in prison, that only works out to about 13% of prisoners -- less than half of King's claim.

Another claim in the article -- not by King -- is that there are 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the US. That means that either 88% of all illegal immigrants in prison are sex offenders as compared to 12% of the general population, or she has knowledge of 200,000 sex offenders in the illegal immigrant population not in prison.

And I'm not even going to go into the article's inane claims about illegal immigrants responsible for drunk driving deaths. All in all, the sourcing and quality of analysis don't leave me very much confidence in the validity of any other claims Rep. King or the author of this WND article.

I had never heard of Rep King, I took the word of a congressperson (bad, bad idea!) and tried to make a point: we have a serious problem with the security of the Mexico/America border and nobody seems to care about it.

13% of prisoners are illegal...to me that is 13 percent to high.

People need to pay attention to the grow crisis on the border. Just a couple of days ago armed gunmen fired on the border guards, yet we as a nation don't have the guts to make an effort to stop the flow of illegals. We seem not to care.

I know its off topic for this artice, so I am done.

Great job running that to earth, evano. I followed the first tier of links and found it too specious to be worth going further.

I'll take your depressing premise and raise you one.
Ok here's my bid. There is not enough manpower to perpetuate war but there is the technological wherewithall to construct a system wherein a country is at a constant low level war with itself.

Whoops -- kind of botched the formatting on that one. Apologies

Ditto, Killfile, ditto.

I'm not sure that it will go to all-out genocidal war, and I'm very sure it isn't inevitable. How we make our next moves can make a big difference. One example, not necessarily one I favor--we could hammer Sunni areas hard before we leave, in the name of security, essentially putting the Shiites in a truly dominant position, in terms of force. Alternatively, we could take out Moqtada al Sadr before we go.

Another rather Machiavellian thought -- maybe we could be clever enough to get Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan, and the Saudis all fighting each other to support various factions. Probably even bloodier result, but at least we're working through proxies and might actually have a chance of getting an outcome that meets some minimal goals.

Plus, I'm talking here about mitigation and containment, in any case. How quickly we leave makes a difference in areas like refugee management and other blowback issues for neighboring countries.

I realize this is a bit of a hodge-podge, here. My overall point is we're not coming up with a real strategy (never have in any aspect of this fiasco). Calling it one doesn't make it so. We keep thinking in terms of the next step instead of the journey.

If we "get out now" Iraq will go from "low grade civil war" to "all out genocidal civil war."

I have to say this, even if it may make me look like a political dumb-ass - what you say is an assumption. It may be an obvious assumption that time will prove to be correct, but still, we have to ask the question that conscience and reason prompts: Are there any circumstances or scenarios that could establish a "flat curve" of hostility? Are there anything we can do - except for what we are doing now - that could break the singularity?

Exactly, Claus.

What to do next flows from what we want and think can be accomplished. That requires looking at the options and their likely outcomes and what secondary and tertiary actions will reduce negative possiblities and increase positive ones. That's strategic planning, which has been notably absent from the beginning and continues to be, even in the Iraq Study Group Report.

No where is anyone conducting an analysis that says, "If we do X, these are the possible outcomes, ranked by probablity. Here's what steps can be taken to influence those probabilties, here's what secondary steps can be taken to mitigate the downside consequences." Then the same for Y and Z, etc. This leads to a network map of baysian alternatives (sorry for the jargon) within which we can plot a course of actionS (emphasis intended) for the long haul. That is a strategic plan.

The primary reason there has been none of this so far is simple and obvious: this administration would not and could not own up to its actual objectives -- and I think still has not -- because the war would never have been authorized in the first place. If you fight a war under false pretenses, it's nearly impossible to plan strategically and make any sense out of what your doing in justifying requests for money from congress and support from the American people. If you can't do that, you can't fight it effectively or have much hope of winning.

"Right outcomes cannot flow from false premises."-- George Santayana

To your point, Killfile--

If we think the best to be hoped for (or even the best in absolute terms) is a divided Iraq along sectarian lines, then how can we best further/expedite that outcome? Is immediate withdrawal likely to accomplish that more readily? Or would significant escalation (not the pitance referred to as a surge) a better plan? Analyze the alternative actions and their likely consequences, secondary and tertiary actions to be taken, and how each path through the network leads toward or away from the objective. Then you can propose a truly strategic plan. It's far from perfect and lots can still go wrong, but at least you have a real plan, something you can measure progress against and with which to monitor and respond to events. It's a lot better than "well, let's try this and see what happens next".

As an aside, it seems to me it's the Iraqi's right to figure out the answer to that issue (dividing the country, that is), and their constitution pretty much does. It defines a loose federation with most governance devolved to the sectional level and the federal governement responsible only for national defense, foreign policy, and oil revenue distribution. The sticking point is, of course, the oil. Sunnis and Khurds don't trust the Shiites to do it fairly, and no progress has been made in resolving how to split it up.

Thanks Killfile, a very qualified reply - more so than necessary when comes to me, in fact, as I pretty much agree with your assessment in the first place. The reason why I said it is that I am still primarily concerned with the problem of saving civilians (and subsequently establish a basis of civil society - comments in this and other threads has led me to realize that some people actually believe this exists in Iraq at the point and I can only advice them to seek out eye witness reports from bloggers and captured on video on various locations on the web).

Secondarily, the sectarian violence should be contained. Along with proposals to divide the country - which is a very complex, very time consuming job and probably not one that the current US administration is able to administer - I would say that it is a strategic challenge to create conditions that make armed forces fight each other. That could be a reasonable goal for a surge. In order to achieve that you would have to evacuate civilians and push sectarian militia into the periphery of civil society - wall them out outside a larger green zone.

This, of course, is a preposterous proposal considering the actual situation in Iraq, particularly the siege of Baghdad. The problem is the difference between invasion and occupation. You need vast amounts of skirmishers to drive away the militia, and we must assume that more or less all militia at this point are also part of the anti-American insurgence, more or less openly. I am not the one to judge if 25.000 or 50.000 men could do the job, but right now it seems to be logistical problems that hampers progress more than anything. It is simply faster to knock down installations than it is to deploy engineers with military backup to move into the countryside and repair them.

I remain firm on the point that our primary concern should be that of securing the lives of innocent civilians in Iraq, even if that would mean protracted warfare to the cost of US and coalition forces. We simply cannot invade a country and leave the population to slaughter, even if it is from forces arising from amidst their own culture. If and when we fail to do that - which we are at the moment to a certain degree - we have failed. That's how I define success or failure. Victory is out of the question, because it means either a) unconditional surrender or b) total annihilation of opposition.

Thanks, Moon, for starting this thread waaaaay down on the page where there's some actual thought going on and some real consideration of the issues we -- and the Iraqis -- are going to face surge or no surge. Killfile's article started us on the path by assuming that there really is little control the legislature can exert on the movements and day-to-day functioning of the troops, and urging us to think beyond that.

The actions you suggest in your 3rd point are very interesting. I'm not sure whether Congress could or would de-authorize the military action. With the imperial executive tendencies of this administration, I'd hate for the showdown between Congress and the Executive to put the military in the middle. And especially since the effects of the confrontation will mostly be borne by the 140,000 troops already in harm's way.

I think the idea of impeachment of other government officials besides the President is an interesting concept. Too often we tend to think of impeachment as strictly an action to be taken against the President, but it can actually be applied to any government official. Of course part of the problem with that is that in this particular Administration,where the criminal behavior starts at the top, going after underlings while leaving the boss alone seems... cowardly.

So, as Claus and Killfile say, the genocidal civil war scenario is an assumption, and that assumption assumes that it is only our presence there that is keeping that possibility at bay. In other words, our military presence in Iraq is a positive influence. Hmmmm. I have some difficulty with that assumption.

The danger I see is not from a civil war, but from a proxy war. Iran steps in to help their Shi'ia brethren and to solidify their claims on the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway. Turkish and Iranian Kurds step in to help their brethren while Turkey steps in to keep the Kurds from declaring a homeland. Syria steps in to help their Baathist Sunni brethren. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia decide that this is a good time to fix the international boundaries which have always been somewhat fluid. (Strange term to use when talking about desert.)

Maybe the way we can help while drawing down our troops is to keep that proxy war from occurring. Maybe we withdraw our troops to the borders, providing external security while letting the Iraqis solve their own internal affairs. Maybe we let the majority who are sick of the violence and bloodshed demand an end to it.

It's not without precedent: the Kurds were deeply divided between two warring factions while Saddam was able to project his power into the North. Once American and British warplanes began patrolling the declared no-fly zone, suddenly the Kurds found themselves without external interference and created for themselves a relatively quiet, relatively stable, relatively democratic government. The societal characteristics which allowed Iraq to become one of the most secular and Westernized countries in the Middle East weren't all imposed by Saddam. Maybe there's enough of it still there that, given breathing room, they can find some way of accommodation.

I'm not sure whether Congress could or would de-authorize the military action. With the imperial executive tendencies of this administration, I'd hate for the showdown between Congress and the Executive to put the military in the middle.

That's the advantage of rescinding the resolution. The conditions expressed in that resolution have already been met. Saddam is gone and there are no WMD to remove. Bush does not have authorization to do what he's doing NOW by one reading of it. (Wiggle room: "whatever means necessary" could include what the troops are doing now, hence the need to rescind it). This is not simply sniping at the funding, as was done in Viet Nam. It removes the authorization for troops to be there at all, and the President has to bring them home or face impeachment.

The danger I see is not from a civil war, but from a proxy war. Iran steps in

This is not very likely. (1) Ahmadinejad has a lot less support at home than it appears. He just lost ground in local elections and there is a lot of discontent with his grand-standing internationally and not fulfilling his promises at home. (2) Despite the appearances in the ruling class, Iran's population is still one of the most Westward-tilting in the middle east; they don't like a lot of our policies toward them, esp. vs nuclear energy, but they don't hate us, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric notwithstanding (3) Iran has it's own significant minorities of Sunni arabs and Khurds, who will become even more rowdy than at present. (4) Arabs (read Iraqi's) hate Persians as much as Shiites hate Sunnis; they may be willing to use them for arms, etc., to fight inside Iraq, but they don't want them invading any more than they want us there; even the Shiia would fight them (which brings up an interesting possibility for turning the tables if Iraninan leaders were dumb enough to actually try an invasion).

Turkey steps in to keep the Kurds from declaring a homeland

This is the problem with the three-state solution on a regional basis. Turkey is adamantly opposed and threatens to invade. Personally, I think that problem can be worked out with enough money and safeguards (or threats -- we could provide air protection to the Khurds), but Turkey's opposition has been taken at face value. Even if they did mount a military effort, they would likely fail. They haven't been able to subdue the Khurds since the fall of the Ottoman empire.

Syria steps in to help their Baathist Sunni brethren

Syria helps nobody but Syria. If Iran stays out, Syria stays out unless they can find a way to get some of the oil. They're more than happy to provide weapons, but they're not marching their military in unless they can take home a piece of the pie -- unlikely with the overwhelming Shiite majority -- or to oppose an Iranian invasion (they hate Persians, too). Syria's army is big enough to control Lebanon but not a country the size of Iraq.

Maybe we withdraw our troops to the borders, providing external security while letting the Iraqis solve their own internal affairs.

We don't have enough troops to actually control the borders, but it's not a bad deployment strategy. Problem being that the internal violence will spread significantly (maybe -- not sure that's a given, either), and if that cranks up our troops could be caught in the middle and targets for everybody.

There's more to say, but I'm running out of steam (just getting to bed at 3:40 am...)

I guess one last closing thought:

US policy alternatives -- even a lot of the comments here and elsewhere from the left -- still presume that Iraqi's and/or other middle-east countries can't solve their own problems without us. The "chaos" scenario is a flavor of that. I think if we just pull out now, it will be messy for a while, maybe a 100,000 or so Iraqi's kill each other. Many more than that have already been killed as a result of our presence. I don't think it descends into long-term anarchy and I don't think it speads into a regional war because the other parties in the region don't really want to fight each other.

It will create major problems throughout the region in terms of refugees and some tangential instability. It will leave Israel more vulnerable than ever. And it will give the Chinese an opportunity to futher expand their influence by providing most of the redevelopment funds for the Iraqis. And we will be hamstrung in our foreign policy there and around the world for years to come, both because of our loss of credibility and what will be perceived, true or not, as an unwillingness to deploy force in any major way in the future (e.g.; post-Viet Nam syndrome).

The problem is that such legislation will never pass. The Republicans will not so baldly betray their President, and Lieberman is calling for more troops. Not enough votes in the Senate to pass, and for that you can partially thank the Lamont team for acting like winning the primary in a party that represented a minority of Connecticut residents was the same as winning the general election.

On the other hand, even with Senator Lamont, the Democratic Party would lack cloture. After all their arguing against the "nuclear option" they could hardly flip-flop and override the GOP. And even if they did decide to ignore principles to get results, they'd get vetoed and lack the votes for an override. All of the same mathematics applies to impeachment proceedings as well.

So now it comes down to this: do you want theatre, or do you want results? Mere obstructionism carries with it the perils of one party GOP rule in 2008, with President McCain sending even more troops into the grinder.

I agree that, at present, it would not pass. No attempt to end the war immediately will, primarily because, all the blowsy rhetoric notwithstanding, the public does not favor such a response. (See Killfile's seed of the CNN poll -- can't find the link right now). I don't necessarily either. I engage on this issue across a number of articles and threads to explore the possibilities, the options, and most importantly to try and figure out what will lead to an outcome that I think constitutes success in terms of restoring our credibility and leverage in the world and in terms of justice and fairness to the Iraqi people.

This could become an option downstream, depending on how events unfold. The surge is a given at this point, nobody can prevent Bush from doing that. But it will have consequences on the ground and in public opinion.

I, for one, hope it works, just as I have hoped, without much conviction, that all of Bush's policies would work. I don't long for the opponents to fail in an enterprise involving our country. But I have been and am skeptical in the extreme that the policies proposed will be successful, primarily because the proceed from invalid assumptions and false pretenses, not to mention employ means that are, in my "bible", unethical. I don't believe one can accomplish postive change by improper means.

But if it doesn't work, as seems likely to me, then we have to consider what comes next -- which most of the discussion here, elsewhere in the media, and in the political class itself, seems to always glide right over. If X works, what next" If it doesn't work, what next?

I'm always mindful of the great Wayne Gretsky quote: "I don't skate to where the puc

is

, I skate to where I think the puc is going."

Whoops, botched the formatting again. Should read:

I don't skate to where the puc is, I skate to where the puc is going.

I'll get the hang of these buttons eventually.

So do most hockey players, he was just better at it. Do you believe you are Gretsky's equivalent in politics?

If I did, I'd be running for office. :-)

No, I don't mean in terms of politics exclusively, in any case. I mean in planning in general, it's not sufficient to say, "What do we do next?" You have to look at the possible consequences and evaluate what you do in response in an interative process.

Most of us who have either been to Iraq; are military or former military officers; or have a background studying Middle Eastern realities... agree that there is really only one potentially successful solution for Iraq. That is that Iraq will have to become three countries. One Sunni, one Shiite, and an independent Kurdistan.

a prominent iraqi-american blogger, "raed in the middle," would disagree. there are seeds on this, from me and claus. i won't link here, but will just say that many informed voices feel that the sectarian issue is something propped up if not mostly invented by western govts via western media.

they feel that the best people to define iraq's future are the iraqis themselves, and that there are many developing coalitions within iraq that arent falling into the sects as defined by the west.

i hear ya. but i think we have to allow for the possibility that what amounts to gang violence in iraq doesnt have a direct correlation to the political movements there.

The problem with the three state solution (that I used to be a staunch advocate for myself) is that the oil resources are not all nicely split up in three's. So, even if you segregate the three populations - there is still going to be a resource war for the oil - if not immediately, eventually.

That said - our military and our presence in the region is sure as hell not going to stop them from fighting over it. Help the refugees that want to get out of harms way out of the country and get our troops out of the theater ASAP.

The only other option I can see is if the International Community stepped in too - and a VERY massive amount of troops and rebuilding resources were brought in. I'm talking like a million boots on the ground. But then the Bush administration would have to go begging, hat in hand, and give up all sorts of incentives. Even then I don't think the rest of the world really has the stomach to do the right thing now anyway - they'd rather just step out the way and let it be our problem. (Can't blame them really, but it WILL be their problem soon...)

Might have better luck just inventing a time machine and going back to stop 9/11...

Vulgrin-

The oil is the point in all of this. The sectarianism, although real enough, I think is just the method of expression, the means of mobilizing sufficient hostility. Iraq's constitution already provides, more or less, a three state solution. It's a weak federation with the central government only responsible for external affairs and oil revenue distribution, pretty much.

Bringing something resembling peace to the country at this point will take massive troop levels, my guess -- based on Colin Powell's initial estimates -- is about 500,000. The only way to mount that is an international effort, and probably mostly from Muslim countries. Opens up a whole new can of worms, potentially, but at least the widespread sectarian strife would likely be stopped and the government given time to finally work out a solution on the oil revenue distribution. That IS the political problem at this point.

More GOP Voices Aganist the Surge/Escalation:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA):

BLITZER: Can you justify deploying more U.S. troops into what you believe is a civil war?
SPECTER: On this day, for the record, Wolf, I would say no. [CNN, 12/31/06]

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN): "[Coleman] said today after a two-day trip to Iraq that he would not support an increase in the number of soldiers in Baghdad. He said he would 'stand against' any effort to send a surge of more troops to Baghdad unless there's a clear vision that it will help end sectarian violence in the city. 'I think it would create more targets. I think we would put more life at risk,' he said." [Star-Tribune, 12/20/06]

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM): "I am not a supporter of a surge to do for the Iraqis what the Iraqis will not do for themselves. I also have not seen a clarity of mission. And I think that's the greatest weakness that we have right now.We're talking about goals in lofty terms that are not vital American national interests. American troops should only go into harm's way to protect America's vital national interests." [Remarks at the National Press Club, 1/5/07]

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR): "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more. I believe we need to figure out not just how to leave Iraq but how to fight the War on Terror and to do it right." [Senate Floor Speech, 12/9/06]

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): "'I don't think the addition of new American troops in a situation plagued by sectarian strife is the answer,' Collins said. 'I think more American troops will present more American targets.' She said in an interview that she was also influenced by a meeting the senators had with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. 'The prime minister made it pretty clear that he did not welcome the idea of more American troops,' she said. 'I would speculate that he recognizes that he needs to take control of the situation, that if he's seen as completely dependent on American troops it's difficult for him to establish his legitimacy.'" [Washington Post, 1/1/07]

George W. Bush a hypocrite! Who'd'a thunk it?! (Well, besides the 49% of the electorate that voted against him...)

Still, while it's nice to see that there are some Republicans who are resisting being sucked into the Machiavellian vortex which is the entrance to the Dark Side, one of Killfile's main points in this article is that Congress doesn't have much say in the tactics and deployments of troops. Withholding funding is really their only weapon and its effects will be felt by the troops who will wind up short of equipment, ammunition, food, gas or whatever.

The Administration has isolated itself completely from any of the pain being suffered by the men and women in the line of fire -- that's what they call "supporting" the troops -- so if more of them die from the results of funding cuts by Congress, the White House will see it simply as an opportunity to pin all the failure on the Legislature.

Unless someone in his inner circle is free of the symptoms of Strangelove syndrome which is epidemic in the West Wing and can convince him that this surge will accomplish nothing but guaranteeing that 2008 is the Democrats' year, the boots are going to be on the ground. So the question is: what do we do next?