{"id":12806,"date":"2007-09-07T16:20:41","date_gmt":"2007-09-07T20:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12806.html"},"modified":"2007-09-07T16:20:41","modified_gmt":"2007-09-07T20:20:41","slug":"a-long-shot-gamble-on-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-long-shot-gamble-on-2027\/","title":{"rendered":"A ‘long-shot gamble’ on 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) traveled to Baghdad and received a briefing from Gen. David Petraeus, in which he acknowledged his belief that in order to “win” in Iraq, U.S. forces would have to stay in the country for “nine or 10 years<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

This was hardly reassuring. Indeed, for every pundit who insists that the Bush policy is finally, after years of failure, on the right track, Petraeus’ assessment creates a helpful contrast. As Yglesias put it<\/a> at the time, “To say that our current policy is working and needs just ten more years to stabilize Iraq is lunacy — just leaving stands a perfectly good chance of working just as quickly at radically lower cost.”<\/p>\n

But that’s the 2017 plan. Have you heard about the 2027 strategy?<\/p>\n

Slate’s Fred Kaplan, who wrote a good piece<\/a> about the kinds of questions lawmakers should ask next week, chatted with Stephen Biddle, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, and who is also a key member of Petraeus’ advisory panel. Biddle described his take on the viability of the “bottom-up” strategy the administration has suddenly embraced.<\/p>\n

[Biddle] said (again, expressing his personal view) that the strategy in Iraq would require the presence of roughly 100,000 American troops for 20 years — and that, even so, it would be a “long-shot gamble.”<\/p>\n

Do Petraeus and Crocker agree with this assessment?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good question. Biddle is a “key proponent” of the current strategy — and he believes that 100,000 American troops for two decades buys us nothing more than a “long-shot gamble.” Indeed, as Kevin Drum noted<\/a>, “What the hell do the pessimists<\/i> think?”
\n
\nYglesias added<\/a> a good point.<\/p>\n

Kaplan gets at some of this, but if your analysis is that we should accept<\/i> a “long-shot gamble” that entails 100,000 American troop serving in Iraq until 2027<\/i> then you owe us some kind of explanation of what the payoff is supposed to be. The cost of doing what Biddle’s analysis suggests is necessary would be enormous. The benefits, meanwhile, don’t seem especially high even if you ignore the “long-shot” nature of the odds. Plug the odds in, and the whole proposition looks ridiculous.<\/p>\n

I respect Biddle enormously, and think his argument against a middle path in Iraq is absolutely solid. His analysis of what staying would entail also seems solid. I just can’t understand why he doesn’t see that the obvious upshot of his analysis is that we should leave. To conclude anything else it seems to me you’d need to put a near-infinite value on the prospect of salvaging something to label “success” in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a point that really needs to be explored next week. Gambling, even “long-shot” gambling, is about a payoff. The gambler hopes to get a reward in exchange for his or her risk.<\/p>\n

Biddle, a Petraeus advisor, believes the U.S. should bet hundreds of thousands of American troops and an entire generation. In return, we might<\/i> get a stable Iraq.<\/p>\n

Who, exactly, believes this is a “long-shot gamble” worth the investment?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) traveled to Baghdad and received a briefing from Gen. David Petraeus, in which he acknowledged his belief that in order to “win” in Iraq, U.S. forces would have to stay in the country for “nine or 10 years.” This was hardly reassuring. Indeed, for every pundit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}