Mush.
Browsing the Brookings site, I clicked on "A Skeptic's Case for the Surge" and reminded myself why reading "centrist" commentary about Iraq is so depressing. It's just so much mush:
Finally, President Bush is rightly telegraphing to Iraqi leaders that they must reach compromises with each other -- on sharing oil revenue, on reining in militias, on allowing those former Baathists without blood on their hands to regain their opportunities to hold jobs in Iraq. He correctly argues that without progress on such matters, there will be no success in the mission and the American people will continue to lose faith in the effort. This stands in contrast to incorrect comments he made as recently as November, during his trip to Vietnam, when he argued that we could fail in Iraq only if we Americans lose our resolve.
In fact, we need a viable Iraqi partner with broad support across sectarian lines, and American policy must strive to help create that partner.
Vague condemnations of Bush rhetoric, quickly followed by truisms, and above all the implicit assumption that what America "telegraphs" to what remains of the Iraqi government means anything at all. I don't mean to be hard on Micheal O'Hanlon -- my point isn't that his piece is especially bad or uninformed or that his arguments are wrong, just that they're depressingly typical of the genre. His piece convinces me of nothing -- neither that the surge is a good idea or a bad one. Regardless of the merits of the arguments (and, conditional on my limited understanding, I'm torn), those arguing for a withdrawal of troops have an inate rhetorical advantage -- they're demanding something that is both concrete and actually within the U.S.'s power to control.
On the other hand, it's not true that Brookings-type liberal-hawk Iraqi commentators never have anything powerful to say. But, with a few important exceptions I can think of, mainly, reading them reinforces my theory that, when it comes to war, what matters is the initial choice to commit. Once that's over -- especially if the war is being conducted by elements on the political spectrum who don't care what liberals think -- what's left is just the handwaving and the impotence and the farce. And good Lord there's a lot of it.
Finally, President Bush is rightly telegraphing to Iraqi leaders that they must reach compromises with each other -- on sharing oil revenue, on reining in militias, on allowing those former Baathists without blood on their hands to regain their opportunities to hold jobs in Iraq. He correctly argues that without progress on such matters, there will be no success in the mission and the American people will continue to lose faith in the effort. This stands in contrast to incorrect comments he made as recently as November, during his trip to Vietnam, when he argued that we could fail in Iraq only if we Americans lose our resolve.
In fact, we need a viable Iraqi partner with broad support across sectarian lines, and American policy must strive to help create that partner.
Vague condemnations of Bush rhetoric, quickly followed by truisms, and above all the implicit assumption that what America "telegraphs" to what remains of the Iraqi government means anything at all. I don't mean to be hard on Micheal O'Hanlon -- my point isn't that his piece is especially bad or uninformed or that his arguments are wrong, just that they're depressingly typical of the genre. His piece convinces me of nothing -- neither that the surge is a good idea or a bad one. Regardless of the merits of the arguments (and, conditional on my limited understanding, I'm torn), those arguing for a withdrawal of troops have an inate rhetorical advantage -- they're demanding something that is both concrete and actually within the U.S.'s power to control.
On the other hand, it's not true that Brookings-type liberal-hawk Iraqi commentators never have anything powerful to say. But, with a few important exceptions I can think of, mainly, reading them reinforces my theory that, when it comes to war, what matters is the initial choice to commit. Once that's over -- especially if the war is being conducted by elements on the political spectrum who don't care what liberals think -- what's left is just the handwaving and the impotence and the farce. And good Lord there's a lot of it.
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