Iraq and Security... A Fair and Balanced Look

As I noted two weeks ago, the latest mantra from the right is that recent military gains in certain areas of Iraq is proof that a) we are finally winning in Iraq (not that we ever weren't, in their view), that b) this vindicates the Bush/Cheney foreign policy; and that c) suck it, libtards. Outlets like the NY Post have been touting this line, though admittedly their letter section today gives a genuinely balanced assessment of public opinion on this.

Here is the NY Times article that war supporters have been rallying around-

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.

OmG, Democrats are running scared! Take that, Defeatocrats!

Of course, while any good news from Iraq is a welcome reprieve from the standard carnage, this is misleading. War critics have always heaped praise on the troops for the thankless task they're doing, but have pointed out that in the end, this is beside the point. The larger political picture (which this paragraph seems to dismiss) is still growingly bleak, something for which we've never had a strategy. We still can't force democracy at the end of a gun, and you still can't occupy a country into submission. Bringing violence down in Baghdad to early 2006 levels (when we seemed to consider things to be bad) doesn't change that.

(And I'd add it's insulting to say discussing the economy and health-care is a distraction.)

Furthermore, an escalation of forces may indeed create (temporary) security in the areas where escalation occurred, but-- especially with the 'surge' troop levels ready to collapse by spring-- this is a stopgap measure. This is also hardly the first up or down we've had in terms of violence or attacks, which the article does acknowledge, stating "there is no assurance that the ebbing of violence is more than a respite or represents a real trend that could lead to lasting political stability or coax those who have fled the capital to return to their homes. Past military successes have faded with new rounds of car bombings and kidnappings, like the market bombing that killed at least eight on Friday in Baghdad."

And here are some other NY Times articles I oddly didn't see linked on Drudge. First-

By all accounts, Iraqi families who fled their homes in the past two years are returning to Baghdad.

The description of the scope of the return, however, appears to have been massaged by politics...

...Under intense pressure to show results after months of political stalemate, the government has continued to publicize figures that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq and Iraqis’ confidence that the current lull in violence can be sustained...

...But in interviews, officials from the ministry acknowledged that the count covered all Iraqis crossing the border, not just returnees. “We didn’t ask them if they were displaced and neither did the Interior Ministry,” said Sattar Nowruz, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration.

'Massaging' the facts? Say, that's how we got into this war in the first place! Fun!

And another-- much more relative, and more telling-- article-

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote...

...“I think reconciliation will eventually come,” a senior Bush administration official said, but added, “That’s a long way down the path.”

Long way down the path? Odd, that part seems to have been lost in all the cheering.

[PS- John Bentley, commenting at Washington Monthly, has some other good questions to ask the cheerleaders.]