Joe Conason Reveals a Liberal Frustration Toward Iraq

Joe Conason is a pundit that I am quite familiar with. He penned a piece defending Columbia's decision to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. You can read the link if you like but let's say the facts don't match his hypothesis.

Based on what I know of his work, he appears to be a standard down the line liberal. As such, he hates the Iraq War and everything related to it. He just penned a piece that seemed like it would have been more appropriate during 2005 and 2006. This piece is laced with cynicism and he wastes no time in starting...

What winning really means and whether that vague impression can be sustained are questions that the war's proponents would prefer not to answer for the moment. Their objective during this election year is simply to reduce public pressure for withdrawal, which is still the choice of an overwhelming majority of voters.

So long as the surge appears to be working, political space is created for the Republican candidates who support the war -- especially Sen. John McCain, the hawk's hawk, who said recently that he might keep U.S. soldiers in Iraq for "a hundred years." Although that remark was not well received in the Arab world, they may take comfort in the fact that no matter how determined the Arizona senator is to fulfill that threat, he is unlikely to do so since he is already over 70 years old.

Now, first, victory is a free Iraq, at peace with itself and its neighbors, and an ally in the GWOT. Now, given that violence, as measured by every single statistic, is down dramatically since May, the surge doesn't merely appear to be working but is working. It appears clear to me that nothing in Iraq, short of full withdrawal, would actually please Conason and so even the overwhelming success is met with his skepticism.

Next, he sets his sights on a cynical attack on a few of the war's biggest proponents.

Consider the work of William Kristol, who played an important role in selling the war as editor of The Weekly Standard and on the Fox News Channel. From his new perch on The New York Times' op-ed page -- proof that being hideously wrong is no obstacle to scaling the heights of American punditry -- he proclaims that "we have been able to turn around the situation in Iraq" and achieve "real success."

According to Kristol, who once mocked concerns about religious strife in Iraq as "pop sociology," the drop in violence last month marked the lowest overall number of deaths for both civilians and military forces since the war began in March 2003. Declining casualties for a month or two means progress, which, in turn, means that the war must continue, and that the president's policy is correct.

What has fallen far more sharply than the casualty statistics in Iraq is the standard for success there, as defined by neoconservatives like Mr. Kristol. In the original promotional literature produced by these individuals and their associates, and recited by the president, this war was supposed to remake the Middle East into a showcase for democracy, with ruinous consequences for our terrorist enemies and cheaper oil for us -- and all for free because the Iraqi petroleum industry would cover all the costs.

Apparently, in a year, a significant drop in violence leading to an improved economy and overall quality of life in Iraq isn't enough. For Conason, Iraq must transform the Middle East and do it now, or the whole endeavor is a failure. The whole line of reasoning is nonsense. First, Iraq already has had a transformational effect on the Middle East. The Sunnis rejected Al Qaeda and their dark vision and gave a blue print for all people of the Middle East. Second, there is no way that a country can transform from dictatorship to a beacon of hope in this short a time. He is cynically holding Iraq to an unreachable standard so that he can then cynically claim it is a failure.

He continues...

When that happy future never arrived, to put it mildly, the war's proponents scrambled to reduce expectations. So in announcing the surge, the president set forth a series of benchmarks for progress in Iraq that were supposed to result from our increased troop presence. The objective was not a temporary reduction of sectarian killing, but real movement toward reconciliation of the contending factions, including the passage of laws on sharing oil revenues and political power among the Sunni, Shia, Kurds and other ethnic communities. President Bush declared the escalation would create space for the Iraqis to act on behalf of their own country.

Even those minimized objectives have yet to be met. The oil-sharing statute is stalled in the Iraqi parliament, while Kurdish regional authorities make their own separate deals with foreign oil companies. The Sunni militia organizations that we have armed to fight al-Qaida have been rejected by the Shiite central government. The statute passed by the Iraqi parliament last week to reduce sanctions against former members of the Ba'ath Party, which was supposed to mollify the Sunni leadership, appears only to have alienated them further because they consider it fraudulent.

Here, Conason uses the tired new liberal line that progress on security hasn't lead to progress on the political end. This whole belief is pure fiction. Frankly, this follows along with favorite Latin phrase, Res Ipsa Loquitor (the facts speak for themselves). Violence isn't merely down but down dramatically. It didn't happen due to some sort of a military police state. That means there had to be political progress. We've seen progress everywhere. The Anbar Awakening is the most obvious example, however Sheiks and other civic leaders are coming together everywhere. They are forming neighborhood watches. They are encouraging their followers to join the military and police. It is working. These neighborhood watches are popping up everywhere. Recruitment continues to grow for both the military and the police. The whole thing is frankly absurd. If there has been no political progress, how do the liberals explain the remarkable security progress.

Finally, Conason ends the cynicism with his most cynical statement.

Worst of all, despite the undoubted courage and commitment of our troops, violence in Iraq has increased since the new year began. Killings of civilians by car bombs and snipers averaged more than 50 per day during the first two weeks of January, and U.S. military deaths are averaging slightly more than one per day, or nearly 50 percent higher than last month.

At that level, if American troops stayed for another 10 years, let alone a century, as Mr. McCain suggests, our casualties would double. What would winning mean then?

Suddenly, this individual who was totally unimpressed with numbers from the last five months isolates numbers from the last three weeks and uses those to draw inferences.

This sort of tortured logic is what the most fervent of war opponents is left with. They must circumvent the facts on the ground. On nearly every single measurable statistic, and you will see plenty when Petraeus visits in March, things look better. Whether the numbers relate to violence, economics, or simply overall quality of life, we have seen things improve dramatically since the surge. Now, Conason and those like him can pretend that those things just happened, however they happened because Iraqis finally stood up to the insurgency and stood side by side with our military. THAT IS POLITICAL PROGRESS.