It looks like the op-ed of the day comes by way of the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, both of whom supported the president’s “surge” policy, and both of whom write in the NYT today that they were — wait for it — absolutely right about everything.
Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
That O’Hanlon and Pollack describe themselves as observers who have “harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq,” is obviously a political strategy. If they can convince the reader that they’re White House critics, who work for a historically left-leaning think tank, then their support for the current strategy caries more weight.
Except the claim is inherently misleading. O’Hanlon and Pollack endorsed the war before it began, and have eagerly backed the occupation ever since, including the so-called “surge.” These guys “have harshly criticized” the administration the same way that John McCain and Lindsey Graham have — as enthusiastic war supporters who’ve been frustrated at times by the Cheney-Rumsfeld policies. But that doesn’t make them objective, credible analysts; on the contrary, they’re touting dubious results that bolster their own predictions.
More importantly, O’Hanlon’ and Pollack’ evidence of progress in Iraqi is wholly unpersuasive.
ThinkProgress noted some of the principal claims.
Pollack and O’Hanlon applaud the administration’s military strategy for providing “basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people,” praises the ‘reliability’ of Iraqi security forces, and expresses genuine surprise over “how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working.”
Given that basic services in Baghdad are still awful, Iraqi security forces are anything but reliable, and reconstruction efforts are failing miserably, they’re odd choices for Pollack and O’Hanlon to applaud.
What’s more, as Joe Klein noted, Pollack and O’Hanlon fail to note the lack of progress on Iraq’s political front, which is not exactly trivial at this point.
It could be argued that what the U.S. military is now accomplishing is clearing the field of foreigners–i.e. the Al Qaeda in Iraq foreign fighters–so that the indigenous Sunnis and Shi’ites can go at each other in a full-blown civil war, complete with Srebrenica style massacres. (Although a precursor to that civil war is the internecine Shi’ite battle between the Hakim and Sadr militias that is about to take place in Basrah. If Sadr wins that fight, he will control Baghdad and the southern oil fields–and will be the de facto leader of Shi’ite Iraq.) I see absolutely no evidence that the majority Shi’ites are willing to concede anything to the minority Sunnis, and there are significant signs that Baghdad is being ethnically cleansed.
Yes, progress has been made in the fight against the most extreme jihadis (AQI), but that should not be extrapolated into anything resembling optimism….And if we manage to put a major hurt on AQI–which is Bush’s (current) rationale for us being there–what rationale remains for us staying there if the Iraqis themselves are intent on slaughtering each other?
And let’s also not forget the Pollack/O’Hanlon track record. Glenn Greenwald documents a series of opinion pieces the two have written over the last few years, and wouldn’t you know it, they’ve been optimistic about all the “progress” in Iraq all along.
I realize the right is seizing on the NYT op-ed as proof of how right Bush is about Iraq, but they may want to think twice. Not only is the piece incomplete and unpersuasive, but betting on Pollack and O’Hanlon being right about Iraq has proven to be a loser every time.