the 4th paragraph is the most persuasive one IMHO. No one should expect a perfect military, just as no one should expect a perfect executive or legislative branch. The question is how does the army learn from and move past its mistakes? In my view the army has been decent tactically but the lion's share of its room for improvement is in basic PR. We always here stories of great soldiers individually taking burdens upon themselves in order to better life for the Iraqis (witness the report this weekend on (CBS early show, possibly?) about soldiers helping to revitalize the Baghdad zoo). But this is always individual people asking their superiors for permission to do good deeds. The army should be engaging, institutionally, in more of these goodwill gestures as SOP.
One must also recall never to trust a press account of a poll. They get it wrong constantly. Go to the real source data (like Dave did) and look honestly at the exact questions and answers. News accounts always spin poll results, always.
But leaving that aside: public opinion shifts. People don't know this? Right now any attitudes expressed will have more to do with this exact moment in time, not some kind of hard kernel of inflexible belief.
In 2001 I was working for a small (~25 employees) startup company. The company had a product and a few customers, but it needed another round of funding to keep going. The main customers were telecom companies, and the telecom hardware sector was collapsing with the dot.com bubble. A big order that kept getting delayed evaporated when the whole engineering group of the customer was laid off. If you looked at what was happening to the company’s customers, it was clear the company was in trouble long before 9/11. Most people realized things were not going well, but if you listened to company president, he always had good news, new customer opportunities, new investors interested in another round of funding. He was always able to find nuggets of “good news” in the unfolding disaster, even though big picture clearly showed things were going very badly. After 9/11, all options disappeared, and the company had to just give up, and shut down.
I landed on my feet. I was very lucky and only unemployed for one day. The lesson I learned from this is to look at the big picture. Even in a total disaster, you can always find nuggets of good news, but the nuggets of good news don’t tell you what is going on. It is the big picture that tells how things are going.
There are nuggets of good news in Iraq, but the big picture has been slowly getting worse for the last four years and really hasn’t started to change yet. The big problem is that the whole purpose of the surge is to buy time for the Iraqi to create a unity government, but the Shia have no interest in compromising with the Sunni or creating a unity government. The Shia figure they are the majority and they won the election, so they should get to make the rules. Any compromises with the Sunni is just appeasement of terrorism. You don’t negotiate with terrorists. The Shia in the government think they will eventually have to fight a civil war with the Sunni anyway. Promising developments, like the Anbar tribal leaders that are working with the government and the US, will evaporate, if the government does not show some willingness to work with the Sunni and make compromises.
The American people have been listening to the stories of how we are making progress in Iraq for the last four years. They know that the situation has not really gotten any better. They have stopped believing that the nuggets of “good news” really mean progress. That is what Rick Moran is talking about. The administration and its supporters have said we are making progress in Iraq for the last four years, and things have just gotten worse. The administration is asking Congress and the American people for one more chance to get it right. The extra 20,000 troops are not going to help much. The switch to counter insurgency tactics will help, but at the cost of much higher casualty rate. We really don’t have enough troops, even with counterinsurgency tactics and the Iraqi Army to pacify the whole country. Our plan still relies on the elected Shia government doing what they simply don’t want to and have refused to do so far.
Dave did say that in Iraq, if not in America, time is on our side. That time is not on our side in America owes simply to the ongoing breakdown of our political will and not to the actual military or political state of affairs in Iraq.
The long-awaited compromises ending in a cessation of violence between the factions have not occurred as hoped, but to that end, in order to convince me that time is not on our side you would have to demonstrate that the desired result becomes less likely as time goes on. The turnaround in Anbar is evidence of the opposite, is it not? I understood it to be, until recently, the Sunnis we were waiting on more than the Shia. Anyway, as we're all aware, the Sunni/Shia divide does not accurately describe the cause of all the violence we are seeing.
5.1.2007 7:59am
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
This is fairly amazing to most people, who just assume things are awful.
But leaving that aside: public opinion shifts. People don't know this? Right now any attitudes expressed will have more to do with this exact moment in time, not some kind of hard kernel of inflexible belief.
I landed on my feet. I was very lucky and only unemployed for one day. The lesson I learned from this is to look at the big picture. Even in a total disaster, you can always find nuggets of good news, but the nuggets of good news don’t tell you what is going on. It is the big picture that tells how things are going.
There are nuggets of good news in Iraq, but the big picture has been slowly getting worse for the last four years and really hasn’t started to change yet. The big problem is that the whole purpose of the surge is to buy time for the Iraqi to create a unity government, but the Shia have no interest in compromising with the Sunni or creating a unity government. The Shia figure they are the majority and they won the election, so they should get to make the rules. Any compromises with the Sunni is just appeasement of terrorism. You don’t negotiate with terrorists. The Shia in the government think they will eventually have to fight a civil war with the Sunni anyway. Promising developments, like the Anbar tribal leaders that are working with the government and the US, will evaporate, if the government does not show some willingness to work with the Sunni and make compromises.
The American people have been listening to the stories of how we are making progress in Iraq for the last four years. They know that the situation has not really gotten any better. They have stopped believing that the nuggets of “good news” really mean progress. That is what Rick Moran is talking about. The administration and its supporters have said we are making progress in Iraq for the last four years, and things have just gotten worse. The administration is asking Congress and the American people for one more chance to get it right. The extra 20,000 troops are not going to help much. The switch to counter insurgency tactics will help, but at the cost of much higher casualty rate. We really don’t have enough troops, even with counterinsurgency tactics and the Iraqi Army to pacify the whole country. Our plan still relies on the elected Shia government doing what they simply don’t want to and have refused to do so far.
That is why time is running out.
The long-awaited compromises ending in a cessation of violence between the factions have not occurred as hoped, but to that end, in order to convince me that time is not on our side you would have to demonstrate that the desired result becomes less likely as time goes on. The turnaround in Anbar is evidence of the opposite, is it not? I understood it to be, until recently, the Sunnis we were waiting on more than the Shia. Anyway, as we're all aware, the Sunni/Shia divide does not accurately describe the cause of all the violence we are seeing.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.