American Enterprise Institute “military analyst” Fred Kagan is not exactly a neutral observer when it comes to the president’s “surge” strategy. In fact, Kagan is perhaps best known for being the architect of the surge, crafting the policy in 2006 as an alternative to the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations. While the ISG said “sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq,” Kagan told Bush what he wanted to hear: “We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation.”
Ever since, of course, Kagan has been desperate to show that his policy — that is, Bush’s policy — is a success. This week, the GAO documented the opposite; Iraq has met only three of 18 benchmarks. In response, Kagan has a new piece in the Weekly Standard that Matthew Duss describes as a “masterpiece of excuse-making.” It is certainly that.
The GAO report reflects everything that has been wrong with the discussion about Iraq since the end of 2006. Through no fault of the GAO’s, the organization was sent on a fool’s errand by Congress. Its mandate was not to evaluate progress in Iraq, but to determine whether or not the Iraqi government had met the 18 benchmarks. As a result, as the report repeatedly notes, the GAO was forced to fit an extraordinarily complicated reality into a black-and-white, yes-or-no simplicity. In addition, the GAO’s remit extended only to evaluating progress on the Congressionally-sanctioned 18 benchmarks, 14 of which were established between eight and 11 months ago in a very different context.
As a result, the report ignores completely a number of crucial positive developments that were not foreseen when the benchmarks were established and that, in fact, offer the prospect of a way forward that is much more likely to succeed than the year-old, top-down concept the GAO was told to measure. As the situation in Iraq has been changing dynamically over the past eight months, as American strategy and operations, both military and political, have been adjusting on the ground to new realities, the debate in Washington has remained mired in the preconceptions and approaches of 2006. The GAO report epitomizes this fact.
This is all very silly. Go look at the list of unmet benchmarks. While most Republicans have argued the last couple of days that the test questions were too hard, Kagan argues the test questions are irrelevant — as if we no longer care about an oil-revenue sharing plan, or the independence of Iraqi security forces, or reducing sectarian violence. Those arguments are so pre-2007.
We should, Kagan argues, look past all of these pesky details. As Brian Beutler explained, Kagan’s argument is basically, “[W]e haven’t met the benchmarks for progress Congress set earlier this year (with the president’s resounding approval) because… we haven’t met them yet.”
It was my intention to go point by point, explaining how deeply foolish Kagan’s analysis is, but there’s probably very little use for such an exercise. Instead, I’ll just highlight a very clever short play written by Matthew Duss that captures the problem nicely:
(INTERIOR: Elementary school classroom. Fred Kagan and the Teacher are sitting in tiny chairs around a tiny table.)
Teacher: The truth is, Mr. Kagan, your child cannot read, add, subtract, color within the lines, or get to the bathroom on time, most times. He’s just not going to pass the first grade.
Fred Kagan: Come on, can’t he “partially pass” or something? Shouldn’t he be graded on how much progress he’s made toward reading?
Teacher: I don’t think–
Fred Kagan: These standards were devised months ago, in a totally different context, at the beginning of the school year! They’re outdated! They were designed to induce failure!
Teacher: Be that as it may–
Fred Kagan: Admit it, you’ve always hated my son!
Teacher: Please, I–
Fred Kagan: This was a fool’s errand!
Teacher: Mr. Kagan–
Fred Kagan: Fool’s! Errand!
fin
Remember, Kagan’s nonsense wasn’t just some random right-wing blog post or the latest absurdities from Hannity or Limbaugh; this is one of the principal architects of the president’s Iraq strategy writing for the leading conservative political magazine in the country.
And it’s unpersuasive to the point of comedy. But don’t worry, none of that matters because we’re “kicking ass!“