historiblogography

hallucinatory politics

The distinctly sober and non-insane Bing West gets more than a little wild-eyed in the opinion pages of today's Wall Street Journal, building a bizarre rhetorical circle that negates its own premises. It's an argument for continuing the American war in Iraq, under the exceptionally curious headline, "The War in Iraq Is Over. What Next?"

It just gets stranger from there:

With victory in sight, why would we quit? The steady -- but not total -- withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is freeing up forces to fight in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is not the central front in the war on terror. Al Qaeda is hiding in Pakistan, a nation we are not going to invade.

We should stay in Iraq, because we are winning the war against al-Qaeda there, but al-Qaeda is not there, they are elsewhere, and we are not going to fight them where they are, but must go on beating them where they are mostly not, because we're winning there.

Then there's the new promise to draw down: "We are withdrawing as conditions permit. For instance, in the infamous Triangle of Death south of Baghdad, Col. Dominic Caraccilo has spread his rifle companies across 22 police precincts. Over the next year, he plans to pull out two of every three companies, leaving the population protected by Iraqi forces, backed by a thin screen of American soldiers."

To avoid being tedious, I won't post the identical versions of this claim that were made in 2005 and 2006 and 2007, when they were standing up so we could stand down.

And still more nonsense: "A stable Iraq keeps faith with the million American soldiers who fought there, sets back Iran's aggression, and makes our enemies in Afghanistan and elsewhere fear us."

Our willingness to fight in Iraq makes our enemies elsewhere -- such as Pakistan, "a nation we are not going to invade" -- fear us. By this reasoning, the proper response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was to bomb the fuck out of Peru, to show the Japanese our willingness to fight. The fear of a distant force that surely isn't coming your way -- it's awesome.

Recognizing that the headline almost certainly came from an editor, it's fun to count the number of ways that the text of the piece proves the headline to be false:

"Then, in the spring of 2008, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki attacked the Mahdi militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that controlled Basra and half of Baghdad. The militia crumbled under pressure from Iraqi soldiers backed by coalition intelligence and air assets...and the Iraqi offensive against Sadr's militia in Basra last April revealed an atrocious Iraqi command and control system."

(That last ellipse represents several missing paragraphs between Maliki KICKING ASS on the Mahdi Army and Maliki, uh, not kicking ass on the Mahdi Army.)

"The threat in Iraq has changed from a full-scale insurgency into an antiterror campaign." These are clearly very different things. One involves military operations against a shadowy enemy that mixes into the population, striking with hidden bombs and hit-and-run attacks; the other involves military operations against a shadowy enemy that mixes into the population, striking with hidden bombs and hit-and-run attacks.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is entrenched in northern Mosul, where it may take 18 months to completely defeat them." You heard that claim 18 months ago. You'll hear it again in another 18 months.

The Friedman Unit tripled. That's certainly a kind of progress.

posted by Chris Bray @ 3:21 PM