It gets tiresome, but war supporters continue misstate the point of the Bush administration’s “surge” policy. It’s not complicated: as the president himself explained, a U.S. escalation of forces would create conditions that made political reconciliation possible.
And how’s that political progress coming along? It’s not.
Attempts by American-led reconstruction teams to forge political reconciliation, foster economic growth and build an effective police force and court system in Iraq have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and in the capital, a federal oversight agency reported on Thursday.
The report from the special inspector general, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., detailed assessments from 32 provincial reconstruction teams now deployed throughout Iraq, which are trying to measure progress. As the NYT noted, “The picture that emerges is far from confidence-inspiring, and raises the question of whether any Western program, no matter how well founded, can overcome the challenges of putting Iraq back together again.”
And yet, here’s Fred Barnes, writing for the Weekly Standard’s blog:
The political direction in Washington is shifting. The White House, in a defensive crouch for much of 2007, is beginning to go on offense…. Look what’s happened this fall. Democrats have abandoned their bid to end the war in Iraq or even to put limits on President Bush’s policy of adding troops and pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy there. Meanwhile, the surge policy is unquestionably working.
What is Fred Barnes talking about?
If you follow Barnes’ choice of links, the proof of the “unquestionable” success of the Bush administration’s surge policy is a reduction in the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq, and the dwindling numbers of al Qaeda in Iraq, which some military officials are prepared to declare dead.
Of course, to anyone who’s paid any attention to the Iraq debate at all, none of this makes any sense. The point of the surge wasn’t to reduce causalities, which actually went up for much of the year, and the surge wasn’t intended to rout AQI, which saw its fortunes collapse when Sunnis started attacking the terrorists.
Granted, we haven’t had much in the way of good news for the past five years, and any encouraging news is certainly welcome. But for goodness sakes, the point of the surge policy was to give Iraqis “breathing room” to make political progress. And yet there have been no steps towards reconciliation — in fact, the political environment has gotten worse, not better.
There’s Bowen’s report, and there’s also the assessment from the Iraqis themselves from just two weeks ago:
Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.
“I don’t think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such,” said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. “To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power.”
Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric and parliament member, said any future reconciliation would emerge naturally from an efficient, fair government, not through short-term political engineering among Sunnis and Shiites.
What strikes me as truly depressing about Barnes’ assessment isn’t just how wrong he is — though that’s certainly discouraging — it’s actually seeing how stunted the policy debate has become.
It’s like Groundhog Day with Bush’s allies. We keep having the same debate, over and over again, and they never seem to realize how mistaken they are. The point of the surge policy was clear in January, when the president announced it, and we’ve been saying ever since, “Success means political progress.” That’s not our standard; it’s the one the administration set for itself. Barnes and his cohorts either have incredibly short memories or they’re being intentionally obtuse.
And yet, I have a sinking suspicion that we’ll continue to have this exact same debate next month, and the month after, and the month after that. Each time, Barnes, Kristol, Lieberman, McCain, Cheney, and their ideological allies will continue to point to non-existent political progress and say, “See? We were right all along.” Like I said, it’s tiresome.
Post Script: Speaking of Barnes, the Republican National Committee took Barnes’ piece and distributed it to as many reporters as possible. The tagline at the bottom of Barnes’s analysis reads, “A Product Of The RNC Research Department.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.