"Humility"?

And that would accomplish what? Marginalize the messenger(s) and somehow, via some goofy analytical vivisection, the message loses its import? Maybe we should ask for footnotes next time-or a thumb...

Relax, Greg-ah, George. Not everyone's war-in-Iraq apercu has to baptize itself. That a message is heterodox to the prevailing winds of Iraq's gloom and doom doesn't mean somebody needs to fall on the proverbial sword.

I'm sorry that too many folks got the plays wrong in the first place, from day 1. Get over it. Move on. In the immortal words of Belushi's boys, "Hey, ya fu#ked up; ya' trusted us!"

But these were not a pair of jaundiced eyes, as even Packer admits. This wasn't Quixote sauntering down Baghdad and Main looking for windmills. Truth came riding into town, and it rode out in balance. Screw the humilty. Give me an ounce of candor and a few words that don't smell like refried BS.

Good or bad.

Posted by: reshufflex at August 1, 2007 08:32 PM | Permalink to this comment

Pollack and O'Hanlon were not critics of the war. They were critics of how it was conducted. Now that the Bush administration is finally getting around to conducting a proper counterinsurgency, of course they are on board. The problem remains--surge or no--there are not, and never will be, enough troops to pacify Iraq, particularly after four years of almost uniformly contradictory and counterproductive actions by the United States. The victory train, if it ever existed, left a long time ago. Their op-ed amounts to praising the finish on the decks of the Titanic, as it is sinking.

Posted by: Tom S at August 1, 2007 10:58 PM | Permalink to this comment

Hey fellas, why not be objective and apply George's scrutiny to ALL reports re Iraq.

Read reports of those in Iraq but not protected from the truth such as Michael Totten's and Michael Yon's dispatches from Iraq plus the Iraqi brothers at "Iraq the Model" and then do some research on the web as to how many of the "facts" used by our media and politicians are wrong, skewed, or incomplete or were purposefully doctored by the press.

For example: The lack of sufficient electricity in Bagdad has been widely reported. How many people know that part of the reason Bagdad has less electricity since the war is because Saddam had denied electricy to other parts of Iraq. After the war more electricity has been diverted to other regions of Iraq.

Did you know that most Iraqi's think of themselves first as an Iraqi; not part of a religeous sect. They are insulted that the US politicians and newspapers keep dividing them up and pigeon holing them.

Did you know that in parts of Iraq you can find restaurants and shops named after American cities. You can even find American flags at jewelry shops along with crosses, Quranic verses, and hearts. If you do the research you will find a picture of these items for sale all at one place in Iraq.

I am not trying to paint a picture of Iraq that is better than reality. I am trying to say that there is so much more positive going on and if the people understood the COMPLETE picture of Iraq there would be more hope and the politicians couldn't use Iraq as a their own private political football.

The last thing that bothers me is the lack of knowledge about history and the struggles to succeed. Both in war and in developing a working government. Just look at the history of the US.

Posted by: ketchikan at August 1, 2007 11:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

Ketchikan:

Do you get the sense from reading Michael Totten's recent reports that there is real progress in Iraq? Ask yourself if the conditions that he describes in Baghdad--the capital city--what should be the showcase of a successful occupation, FOUR GODDAMN YEARS after Saddam was defeated, represent anything resembling success?

Most who post here are not idiots, you know. We are aware that Saddam diverted electric power from the provinces to ensure that Baghdadis were fully supplied with power. We are also aware--as perhaps you may not be--that power lines and oil pipelines are regularly targetted by Iraqi insurgents, so that FOUR YEARS after Saddam was overthrown and Iraq was occupied, Iraq still cannot export oil. And that Baghdad is down to one hour of electricity per day.

Before you start lecturing us on Iraq's history and culture, ask the Kurds if they consider themselves Iraqis. Ask the largest Sunni political bloc--that just walked out of Parliament--if they consider themselves to be Iraqis first. I suspect that you won't like the answer.

What gets my goat is the betrayal US interests, US soldiers, Iraq, and its inhabitants by an administration that did not have the faintest f-----g idea what it was doing. There was no plan, there were not enough troops; only high hopes and a perverted sense of history. Yet Ketchikan presumes to lecture us. This administration did not know--and still does not know what victory is--and have only now, FOUR YEARS LATER, gotten around to implementing a strategy that may have worked FOUR YEARS AGO, but now only shows local, short-term results that will disappear as soon as US troops move elsewhere in Iraq. That war supporters are treating these local successes as the Battle of Gettysburg demonstrates how pathetic their hopes have become.

Posted by: Tom S at August 2, 2007 12:53 AM | Permalink to this comment

Ketchikan,

Someone needs to get the word out to the 4,000,000,000 Iraqi refugees,..the coast is clear, come home.

Posted by: Russ at August 2, 2007 01:02 AM | Permalink to this comment

Actually, what was missing from that Op-Ed was an understanding that for success in Iraq to be success for the United States it must be worth the price paid for it. By that standard the train for American success left the station years ago.

Posted by: Zathras at August 2, 2007 01:30 AM | Permalink to this comment

Repeat in unison "THEY WERE HUGE CRITICS OF THE WAR" lies.....They were huge boosters of the war and most of the tatics, except for a few things at the margin of which they were critical. Both have also proclaimed MANY false dawns before.

Posted by: centrist at August 2, 2007 03:34 PM | Permalink to this comment

Whether O'Hanlon and Pollack were originally critics of the war in Iraq or not appears to miss the point.
The real question is whether their report is accurate or not, and from a gathering body of evidence being offered by the international media contingent in Iraq, the Brookings pair would appear to be close to the mark.
I am an Australian who watches the Iraq war debate in the US and find it weird that so many Americans are wishing for failure in Iraq, which would be part measured in the toll of US service peoplewho are killed or wounded.
Too bad, also, about the national humiliation that would result from defeat and too bad about the inevitable emboldenment of Al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates world wide.
Hatred of Bush appears to transcend any such obvious considerations, even if it means being mocked by a gloating bin Laden et al.
Most sensible people know that war, and especially those involving guerilla forces, are never able to be fought according to time-tables, so how could anybody in a sophisticated nation such as the US countenance such a ridiculous proposition?
History will judge the US intervention in Iraq as a heroic venture and will measure it against the cowardice of the useless European cafe set and the Democratic and other naysayers in the US who did their best to hobble the war effort.
We certainly don't want another Vietnam, but not in the sense those opposed to the Iraq war would be thinking. 'Uncle' Ho Chi Minh was in fact a mass murdering swine and after communist Victory in 1975, hundreds of thousands of supposed State enemies went into jungle hell-holes called 're-education' camps and between 500,000 and one million people persijed at sea while tryign to flee persecution.
The liberal left in the US and elsewhere which celebrated the communist victory have been silent on the ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity committed by the Hanoi regime after it seized power in South Vietnam, with the help of the Jane Fondas and other shameful ignoramuses of the so-called anti-war movement, which should have been called the cave-in to anti-democratic monsters movement.
If the US ever pulls out of Iraq without achieving an acceptable level of security and stability for the populace, just watch the left stay silent and melt away as millions of Iraqis are left to a far more horrific fate than they are now enduring.

Posted by: Bodan at August 7, 2007 04:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

And the war fanboys still don't get it.
Vietnam could conceivably have been won if we had sent in, say, 3,000,000 troops and sacrificed every other priority. We weren't willing to do so for the excellent reason that we did not have enough at stake.
Bodan et al, please stop mistaking the readers of this blog for a bunch of harebrained Jane Fonda leftie peaceniks.
Concentration of force, clarity of goals. Do you see that in Iraq? Even now, has has been pointed out, we have something resembling a realistic counter-insurgency approach?
Perhaps there has been some miraculous turnaround and Iraq is now solidifying around a functional core of civil society. But I at least will take a Hell of a lot of convincing.
In the end, if enough people in a geographical area do not want there to be a functioning central authority, and that authority is not in a position to impose its will by force, there will be chaos and anarchy. The planet is full of examples.

Posted by: Antiquated Tory at August 9, 2007 06:11 PM | Permalink to this comment