The Weekly Standard’s Robert Kagan and William Kristol wrote a 2,600-word paean to the war in Iraq this week, offering the Bush administration hearty advice on how to proceed during his last two years in office. As they see it, the only way to avoid “heading inexorably toward disaster” is to send more U.S. troops. Lots of them.
Instead of looking for a graceful and face-saving way to lose in Iraq, the president could finally demand of his civilian and military advisers a strategy to succeed. Such a strategy would do what previous strategies have not done: provide the number of American forces necessary to achieve even minimal political objectives in Iraq. Such an effort would begin by increasing American force levels in Iraq by at least 50,000.
The objective of this increased force would be to do what has not been done since the beginning of the war: to clear and hold Baghdad, without shifting troops from other contested areas of Iraq. As our colleague, military expert Frederick Kagan, has argued–and sources inside the U.S. military have confirmed–an additional 50,000 troops could secure the Iraqi capital. […]
Those who claim that it is impossible to send 50,000 more troops to Iraq, because the troops don’t exist, are wrong. The troops do exist.
There is no follow-up on this point. This excerpt isn’t wrenched from context; Kagan and Kristol simply assert, as fact, that there are 50,000 troops available right now, who can be deployed to the war in Iraq. They are right and those who say the troops aren’t available are wrong.
Why? Because they’re Robert Kagan and William Kristol — and they say so.
It’s an usually lazy form of making an argument. I’ve grown rather accustomed to Bush administration officials backing up their arguments with bogus and misleading evidence, but Kagan and Kristol cut out the middle-man — they’ve decided to forgo evidence altogether. It’s reasoning through assertion.
I’m reminded of a new rule Kevin Drum came up with a couple of weeks ago.
I think the punditocracy needs a new rule: you’re not allowed to pontificate about the importance of winning in Iraq unless you’re also willing to make concrete suggestions about how to make that happen. More troops? Tell us how many and where they’re going to come from. Help from Syria and Iran? Tell us what you think they can offer us and what you’d be willing to put on the table to get their help. Partition? Convince us that the Iraqis would be willing to peacefully accept this. Etc.
If you’re not willing to do any of this, then write about something else.
Good idea. I get the sense from reading the Kagan-Kristol piece that they wanted a magnum opus that would bolster the neocons in the administration and renew debate among lawmakers about sending more troops (McCain’s preferred solution). While writing, they seem to have stumbled into a paragraph about our overstretched forces, so they simply dismissed the point. “The troops do exist.” And that was that. They didn’t even go to the bother of quoting some anonymous Pentagon ally who would tell them what they wanted to hear. It’s probably because Defense Department officials who agree with them are as hard to find as the 50,000 troops themselves.
I’ve seen some note, in response to the Weekly Standard piece, that the vast majority of Americans are opposed to increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq. That’s not inconsequential, but it’s almost a tangent. If there aren’t 50,000 troops available, public support or the lack thereof is a moot point.
Kevin’s rule rings true: if Kagan and Brooks (and McCain, and Lieberman…) want more troops, they should explain where these elusive soldiers are hiding. Otherwise, it’s just empty rhetoric.