Obama's Afghan Turnaround?

Former General Stanley McChrystal put President Obama into a near impossible position and President Obama may have turned that into a deciding turning point in the Afghan war.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday replaced Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan and nominated Gen. David Petraeus to replace him while affirming support for a counterinsurgency strategy encountering problems.

The dramatic shift came a day after McChrystal's disparaging comments about America's civilian leadership surfaced, and reignited the national debate on the war in Afghanistan -- now in its eighth year with a June death toll of coalition forces that is close to becoming the highest of the war.

Obama accepted McChrystal's resignation "with considerable regret" and named Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, to take over pending Senate confirmation.

Folks like Joe Liberman and John McCain are fond of saying...

General Petreaus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency

That's because that is true both figuratively and literally. With the successful campaign in Iraq, Petraeus showed the world how to run a counterinsurgency manual. Meanwhile, his actual counterinsurgency manual was published in 2006, shortly before he went to Iraq. Petraeus is taking over with the Afghan theater in disarray but then again, nothing liked more dire than Iraq circa the beginning of 2007. Petraeus has an opportunity to make a case in every history book as America's greatest military person.

Afghanistan has three x factors: the rules of engagement, the timeline for withdrawal, and most importantly, Karzai. Immediately, we'll see if Petraeus will make the rules of engagement. The confirmation hearing should also be a pre qual to his battle over a timeline. Karzai remains the biggest concern. In Iraq, however, no one thought that Nuri Al Maliki could be a great leader right up until he was. Will Karzai go the way of Maliki or the South Vietnamese?

Operation Marjah: The Clearing Process Begins

General McChrystal's Afghan policy has begun on the ground with Operation Marjah.

It could take weeks to reclaim the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, a top Marine commander said Sunday as thousands of U.S. troops and Afghan soldiers fought for a second day in NATO's most ambitious effort yet to break the militants' grip on Afghanistan's dangerous south.

"That doesn't necessarily mean an intense gun battle, but it probably will be 30 days of clearing," Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said. "I am more than cautiously optimistic that we will get it done before that."

This is a McChrystal operation but it follows standard counterinsurgency procedures. That means that the first step in the process is to clear the bad guys from all their spheres of influence.

The clearing portion will also likely be the easiest part of the process. Holding said territory, the second part of the process, will be toughest part. In Iraq, that meant going house to house in an urban environment. In Afghanistan, the regions are much more rural. It means searching all sorts of land and mountains. When we begin the process of holding territory, that will test the limits of how well this strategy transfers.

The final part of the strategy is the build portion and that's entirely economic. That will also prove extremely challenging since Afghanistan has never seen economic growth.

The Afghan Time Line Under Fire

The president's Afghanistan time line is being questioned by all quarters. The British Defense Secretary is openly questioning the policy.

Tensions between Britain and America over the war in Afghanistan erupted into the open yesterday as the Defence Secretary questioned President Obama’s decision to put a date on the start of US troop withdrawals.

In an interview with The Times, Bob Ainsworth said that the Government would not follow Washington’s promise to start pulling out in 2011. “You can’t put a time on it. You’ve got to look at conditions,” he said.

He accepted that the public would not tolerate the war “going on for ever”, but insisted there was no deadline for withdrawal. “Nobody is talking about a drawdown, we are talking about bringing more in there . . . but we are talking about transition.” He said that it would be wrong to set a date for the start of troop reductions.

We already know about the criticism from John McCain.

Sen. John McCain says President Barack Obama's announcement that U.S. troops will begin to leave Afghanistan in July 2011 sends the wrong message to the Taliban and has confused countries in the region.

The Arizona Republican says the U.S. can make significant progress in Afghanistan in the next 12 months to 18 months. But he says the U.S. should be signaling that it will pull its troops from that country once it has won and broken the Taliban's will.

It's also members of his chain of command that are giving not so subtle hints that the timeline has little meaning. First, the General of Centcom, General David Petraeus, said the president acknowledged to him the success of the surge in Iraq. That's something the president has never acknowledged in public.

President Obama did acknowledge the success of the surge in Iraq and used some of its lessons to develop a plan in Afghanistan, the head of Central Command said Sunday.

Petraeus also made it clear that this withdrawal would only be conditions based.

"There is undeniably some tension between" announcing a surge and a withdrawal, Petraeus said. "But ... this will be conditions-based, responsible and a transition starting, but not a race to the exits."

Petraeus was against setting timelines in Iraq. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Gates warned that the nation should prepare itself for a 2-4 year commitment of significant troops in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Americans should expect a significant U.S. military presence in Afghanistan for two years to four years more.

Just as in Iraq, the U.S. eventually will turn over provinces to local security forces, allowing the United States to bring the number of troops down steadily, according to Gates, who appeared on three Sunday talk shows with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to discuss President Barack Obama's new Afghan war plan.

It should be clear now that this timeline has been so watered down that it is meaningless. It was thrown out there to appease his base. Instead, the much more significant timeline will be a year from now. That's when the administration will assess the current strategy. By then, there will need to be some tangible progress or it's very possible that there will be pressure to accept defeat.

Obama Gets it from the Left and Right on Afghanistan

Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the President's Afghanistan policy, and we got a preview of the way things will likely go for him going forward. Obama's policy was attacked from both sides. Carl Levin of Michigan was the chief attacker of the president from the left and John McCain was the chief attacker of the president from the right.

Levin's main problem was extremely techical though it follows to a larger mantra of the left. According to Levin, the Obama plan requires that in the hold portion of the operation, (remember that this will still be Petraeus style counter insurgency of clear, hold, and build) that one American troop would be available for every three Afghan troops. Yet, according to Levin, there simply aren't enough trained Afghan troops to accomplish this. As such, Levin is very concerned about sending thirty thousand additional troops. In Levin's view, this operation needs to be lead by the Afghans not the Americans.

The left has long been calling for us to turn this operation into an advisory/training mission primarily. In that we build the Afghan military into as big and as efficient a fighting force as quickly as possible and leave our soldiers in the background so that the take on as few casualties as possible. (there is the extreme left that wants to pull out entirely as well)

The back and forth between Levin, Mullen and Gates was even more technical and ultimately Mullen put it best when he said that for each neighborhood things would be unique. So, it's not entirely clear if the president's goal of one American troop for three Afghans can or cannot be accomplished. What's more important is that the left has no use for any escalation and they will beat to death any and all available technicalities to show that the "escalation" is not worth it.

Meanwhile, McCain was fixated on the idea that Obama not only called for a date certain to begin the draw down but that this date certain would be "conditions based". McCain was almost a broken record in that the two aren't compatible. In reality, the president has shown over and over that deadlines and timelines are things he almost never keeps himself to. We were supposed to have health care reform by now. GITMO was supposed to be closed in January. So to are we supposed to draw down in July of 2011. It's likely as meaningless as all his timelines.

That's the point that Bill O'Reilly made last night. He's right but there's a larger point. First, if a president constantly sets timelines that aren't followed that's a problem. Second, and more germane here, if he's setting timelines before the mission starts, how committed to victory can he be? It's his lack of commitment to victory that you will see Conservatives hammer at ad nauseum.

On a political level, this Afghan policy is a disaster. He gave everyone a little to like and something to hate much more. Sure, the liberals love the idea of a timeline for withdrawal, but they want to do it now. They hate the escalation much more than a timeline they know he won't follow anyway. Sure, the conservatives love that Obama decided to largely go with the McChrystal/Petraeus counter insurgency strategy, but they don't believe he's committed to winning. Without that commitment, the conservatives don't feel any strategy would work.

So, what you're going to see is a steady stream of criticism from all sides on a range of issues on Afghanistan and given that he wants to pass health care, such a blazing criticism only makes that even harder.

McChrystal Lite is a Recipe for Disaster

The thing about those darn generals on the ground is that more times than not, they know what they are doing. For instance, General David Petraeus only asked for about 20,000 more troops for his surge in Iraq. There were several reasons for that. First, 80% of the violence happened in Baghdad or in the burbs surrounding it. So, the troops would be used almost exclusively in a fairly small area. Second, the main problem was the strategy and not the troop level. We were then involved in a counter terrorism strategy. We would identify terrorists and go in with a search and destroy mission and kill or capture them. Of course, there would be several more that would invariably show up after this.

So, Petreaus wanted to change it to a counter insurgency. That strategy involved three prongs: clear, hold and build. The clear part meant that troops would go into the roughest and toughest neighborhoods and go door to door until each and every terrorists was rooted out. This was tough fighting and it not only required a new strategy but more troops. That's what the 20,000 in new troops were for. After that, some of the troops would stay around and hold the territory. That's because we learned the hard way that if we didn't stay around the terrorists would come back. Beyond that, economic development would follow.

General McChrystal is following a similar philosophy but Afghanistan is not Iraq. The violence isn't centered in one urban area mostly. There isn't really an urban area period. Afghanistan is full of empty space, rural areas, and all sorts of places for the terrorists to hide. Counter insurgency works by taking space away from the enemy, holding that space, until the enemy has less and less space.

The president wants to give McChrystal some of the troops he wants but not all the troops he wants. The problem is that by doing that we won't have enough troops to clear the terrorists from all their hiding places. McChrystal didn't merely pick that number from the clear blue sky. That's how many troops he needs to clear out all the terrorists from all their spheres in Afghanistan. Without clearing the enemy, you can't move to the hold portion. The president, if this is correct, wants to do counter insurgency on the cheap. That's a recipe for disaster. That means we'll clear them from some places and those terrorists will merely move en masse to where we aren't because we won't have the troops to go there.

That's, in fact, what those involved in the strategy are saying will happen. They are saying that we will take back the urban areas and leave much of the rural areas for the Taliban. That's a recipe for disaster. In fact, it's exactly what Ralph Peters predicted weeks ago.

The "Vote Present" Strategy: Send a token increase of 10,000 or so troops, make cosmetic changes to the mission, try to please everyone partially -- and kick the can down the road.

The evidence on the ground, the lessons of history, and our real security needs strongly favor the Biden approach, but giving Gen. Stan McChrystal the full surge he wants would be far better than "more of the same, with new slogans."

This president has to make a decision. A real decision. But it looks like he's going to wiggle, squirm and dodge, then go in front of the teleprompter to vote "present" again.

Peters predicted 10,000 troops extra. The current word is about 20,000 new troops but the idea is the same. President Obama would change strategies. It would be a more dangerous strategy but he wouldn't give his general enough troops to make that strategy work. That's a recipe for disaster.

On Afghanistan: Confusion and Chaos

From the perspective of the President, he's really stuck between a rock and a hard place with regards to Afghanistan. On the one hand, there's all his military advisors. It's never a good idea to go against your military advisors on war matters. On the other side, there's his base. If there's a silver lining out of the chaos in Afghanistan it's that the left has been exposed for the pacifists they are. For years, the left called Afghanistan the good war. They bemoaned that we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan to focus on Iraq. Now, we have an opportunity to focus on Afghanistan and the left wants to get out. So much for focus I guess.

The president is playing a duplicitous game right now. His general, General McChrystal, recently produced a plan that includes asking for forty thousand more troops. Yet, General McChrystal was chosen in May. On March 27th, President Obama made a major speech in which he announced a new strategy.

Now, General McChrystal is asking for forty thousand more troops for his strategy. The president is balking. He's now proclaiming that before he commits to more troops he wants to make sure that we have the right strategy. What exactly has he been doing since March if not making sure we have the right strategy?

General Petreaus, director of Central Command, today endorsed the strategy recommended by General McChrystal. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has also endorsed the strategy. Now, normally, if the general on the ground and their immediate boss both endorse a strategy that would be enough. That still doesn't seem to be enough for President Obama.

Instead, he's still "reviewing the strategy". There's even a report that President Obama is considering a strategy devised by his VP, Joe Biden. This would lessen our troop size and focus on drone attacks on Al Qaeda and Taliban targets. Now, try to put that into perspective. Three military leaders with nearly 100 years of miltary service between them all endorse one strategy and Obama isn't sure that's a good idea and is considering one by Joe Biden.

We all know what's going on here. His base no longer thinks Afghanistan is the good war. They're tired of that war and want to get out. The president isn't all that gung ho in confronting them. Maybe, he fears that if he takes them they won't support him on health care. Maybe, he just doesn't want to take the heat from his base. I don't know and frankly I don't care. What I do know is that we're drifting along with no strategy while Afghanistan deteriorates into chaos. Our troops are in the field and they have no direction.

I've always told people that during war the only thing that matters to me when I vote is the war. Here's a great example of why I have that philosophy. Nothing that Obama is doing now domestically can't be reversed not even health care. If we lose in Afghanistan, that can never be taken back. That is a devastating blow that's not so simple to recover from. Yet, it's hard to see the thought process from the White House as not having far too much political consideration. That's not the Commander in Chief I want. During war, that's the sort of strategy process that leads to nothing but disaster.

Winning Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

If you read the counter insurgency manual by General Petreaus, it's amazing just how much of counter insurgency is very similar to grassroots politics. In fact, Petraeus' overall strategy: clear, hold, and build is rooted in grass roots politics much more than it is in military strategy.

The clear portion of the strategy involves going in door to door and finding the terrorists. This portion of counter terrorism involves clearing the terrorists neighborhood by neighborhood. Because most of the people are NOT terrorists, the key to this strategy comes from building rapport with the folks stuck in the middle of the fighting. After all, they are the ones that know who the terrorists are. This involves convincing the population to throw in with you and not the terrorists. The key to turning things around in Iraq was to flip the Sheikhs who then created the sons of Iraq. Suddenly, thousands of Iraqis that were siding with Al Qaeda were now siding with us. This took many months of military and diplomatic outreach. It involved hours upon hours of outreach and negotiation. The whole process was grassroots politics at its finest.

The second portion is the hold portion. This involves leaving forces back in each neighborhood that was cleared to make sure that the terrorists don't come back. In this portion, you convince the population that you are here to stay. You convince them once and for all that your side will be the one that wins. You convince them that not only have you removed but that they aren't coming back. This involves building pseudo military/pseudo police stations. It means patrolling the streets, interacting with the populace, and reaching out more to the community leaders. It is grassroots politics at its finest.

The final piece is the build piece. This means you rebuild the neighborhood and create an economic boom. The greatest example of this in Iraq was in Ramadi. This was turned from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to a booming economy. Furthermore, Ramadi had created during this transformation a vibrant local government. It goes without saying that all of this is grassroots politics at its finest.

We now face a moment of truth in Afghanistan. All insurgencies/counterinsurgencies are a battle for the hearts and minds of the populace. Or you could call it the ultimate battle of grassroots politics. The insurgency wants to create some much mayhem and chaos that the populace either jumps in with them to avoid being killed or simply loses hope and becomes apathetic. The counterinsurgency, on the other hand, wants to show that no matter what the insurgency does they want be beaten. Another way to look at it is a battle of wills.

So, right now we are in a battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghans. For too many years in Iraq, we took this battle for granted. We likely assumed that because we gave so much blood sweat and tears to the cause that the public would be with us. It wasn't until we aggressively took the war to the insurgents that we captured the hearts and minds of the populace. Once we did, we won the war with it.

The only way to capture the hearts and minds of the populace is to show them unequivocally that we will be there for the indefinite. We will be there until the insurgents are no longer there. The Afghans know that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have no plans to leave. Can we blame many of the peasants for joining in with them. Both had been there for more than a decade before we arrived. Neither is giving any hints of leaving. We just got there and we're from a place far away that most have never visited.

To capture their hearts and minds we must first convince them that we are not leaving. That's why folks like Carl Levin and George Will are so dangerous. If we create the image that we aren't 100% committed to winning, the populace is not going to go in with us. Al Qaeda and Taliban are 100% committed to winning. They aren't leaving. They will have to be removed. The average Afghani is not going to jump in with us if they think we won't be around in five years. If that's the case, they face a very brutal death. They're much more likely to jump in with them. On their side, they aren't as likely to face the brutality.

In order to win this war, we must first show full commitment to winning. Unless we show that, we aren't going to win the Afghan's hearts and minds.

The Key Differences Between AQI and the Taliban

President Obama has indicated to the New York Times that he might be willing to reach out to moderate portions of the Taliban.

President Barack Obama says he hopes U.S. troops can identify moderate elements of the Taliban and move them toward reconciliation.

...

There may be opportunities to reach out to moderates in the Taliban, but the situation in Afghanistan is more complicated than the challenges the American military faced in Iraq, Obama said.

U.S. troops were able to persuade Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq to cooperate in some instances because they had been alienated by the tactics of al-Qaida terrorists.

Obama cautioned that Afghanistan is a less-governed region with a history of fierce independence among tribes, creating a tough set of circumstances for the United States to deal with.

President Obama goes on to say that reaching out to the Taliban is something that military including General Petraeus. Before we attempt to do this though, we must all understand the differences between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban.

The so called Sunni Awakening that started in the end of 2006 (before Petreaus even arrived back in Iraq) reached out to Iraqi Sunnis that had alligned themselves with AQI. AQI, formed initially by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, had been formed mostly by foreigners, but reached out to locals to act as so called foot soldiers. Throughout 2004-2006, Iraqi Sunnis faced a choice. Either they could move forward with their nation and act nationalistically. In this way, they would move forward as part of a new unity government in a new Iraq. Of course, this would have meant a significant reduction of power, Since Sunnis are a minority ethnically in the country.

On the other hand, the could join up with AQI and get into bed, so to speak, with their ethnic brethren (since AQI were almost exclusively Sunni themselves). Initially, Iraqi Sunnis joined up with AQI. They joined in the insurgency in hopes that AQI would over take the country and they would get power again.

Then, AQI's brutality overplayed its hand. (famously recounted in this Michael Totten piece) Their brutality knew no end. They would beat and rape women that put their vegetables in the wrong order in their grocery bags. They would invite families for dinner and then serve their own child's head on a platter. They would cut off the fingers of men that smoked. Worse than that, this brutality was often perpetrated on the very Sunni Iraqis that had allied themselves with AQI.

As such, when the U.S. reached out to Iraqi Sunnis in late 2006, they had an interested ear. Calling these Iraqi Sunnis "moderates" would be an unsophisticated way of analyzing the situation. The marriage of Iraqi Sunnis and the foreigners that made up the leadership of AQI was one of happenstance and convenience. Furthermore, the Iraqi Sunnis had another natural place to go, alligning themselves with their country, when they turned on AQI.

The dynamic in Afghanistan is entirely different. There are likely so called "moderate" elements of the Taliban, but there are two problems with this identification. First, moderate is a relative term. Choosing a moderate out of the Taliban is like choosing the sober one out of a bunch of drunks. Second, even if there are truly moderate elements, how do we identify them? With Iraqi Sunnis, it was easy. The Taliban is not a new group like AQI was. It's both a nationalistic movement and an ideological one. No one in the movement is obviously someone that would be moderate.

So, I say, please try and reach out to the "moderate" Taliban, Mr. President. Before you do though, please know which one is moderate and what you have to offer them.

Where's the Beef?

That's the title of this piece from the New York Daily News regarding the rollout of the bank bailout by Secretary Geithner. It is a general consensus that Geithner's presentation yesterday was far too vague with nothing in the way of substance. Here is a revealing description about Geithner's plan from Bloomberg.

Rather than offer the kind of comprehensive solution he had promised, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday served up a plan for banks and the financial system that was long on platitudes and short on specifics.

The word "platitudes" was often used by critics of the President himself during the campaign to describe his soaring rhetoric that was constantly short on specifics. In fact, in two years of campaigning and nearly a month in office, I still haven't heard one specific from the President. At this point, I am more and more worried that this is because he has none.

Most of us can tell the difference between an expert and a wannabe. Listen to General Petraeus speak about the GWOT and compare his language to that of the average pundit. Petraeus' language is full of the sort of detail that only comes from someone with a real handle on the situation. Listen to Steve Stone talk about baseball and compare that with the average fan. It's the same thing. Stone sees the detail and nuance that only an expert will see.

That's why an administration that continues to be long on platitudes and short on detail should frighten us all. In the press conference, Jake Tapper asked the President how will we know if the stimulus is working. The President said we will see jobs being created. Duh, that's the sort of answer a high school kid could give. In fact, throughout the press conference, despite giving awfully long winded answers, anyone was hard pressed to find any specifics.

What's really troubling is that each and every major issue is full of vague platitudes and very short on detail. The President announced we would close GITMO and then said he would study the situation and report later on what we would do instead. He sent George Mitchell to the Middle East and told him to "listen". It appears in the Obama administration, we need a Presidential directive for a life long diplomat to know to use one of his six senses. On Iran, we are told that we will "reach out", "find common ground" and enter "a new era of mutual understanding". How we will do all this appears to be a secret?

In Afghanistan, we are told we will send about 30,000 more troops however we haven't been told how their mission will change.

The only thing specific is the stimulus bill itself. That's nearly 800 pages, however, President Obama had little to do with writing it. Instead, that was done by the House. Many have called that a strategic error. Maybe, we should all wonder if this was done because he simply didn't know how to write something so specific. The bank bailout is the latest in a series of major initiatives that is again long on platitudes and short on detail. We are told things will be transparent and efficient, but we aren't told how those things will be accomplished.

The time for platitudes has ended. That ended when the campaign ended. The President needs to have specifics. I wouldn't be worried about foreign policy specifics so much if those weren't part of a pattern of non specifics on everything. It seems in nearly two years of campaigning and now nearly a month of being President, the President still can't find a specific to anything. That should worry everyone. Anyone can speak in platitudes. It takes a real expert to speak in specifics and so far those are very short in this White House.

My Playbook for a Successful First Obama Term

All right, this is a Conservative giving a Liberal advice. Maybe, I am the last person to give him advice, however sometimes the best advice comes from those on the other side. That said, if Obama focuses on the right matters, takes advantage of the incredible good will he has, then he has an opportunity to have a very successful first term.

1) In the first year, focus strictly on stimulating the economy.

I am already hearing some troubling things from the Obama camp. He has hinted that he intends to bring a bold agenda in his first year: universal health care, combating global warming, a new regulatory framework, etc. This would be a monumental mistake. The economy is in a state of chaos. Attempting to implement universal health care, cap and trade, and a plethora of new regulations would be disastrous for the economy. Can you imagine the financial industry having to deal with a slew of new regulations just as they are recovering from the mortgage nightmare? Can you imagine the nightmare to our economy if we are implementing a revolution in health care while banking, insurance, and the automobiles are struggling to survive?

Barack Obama's administration will initially be judged by the health of the economy. All he needs to do right now is do everything he thinks will facilitate a relatively quick and relatively painless recovery. If the economy is showing signs of recovery by the mid term elections, not only will the Democrats gain a bunch of new seats, but then he will gain his mandate to implement everything else that he wants. If he tries to do everything all at once, everything all at once will fail and he will be blamed for all of it, fair or not. If he implements universal health care now and the economy is still weak, the Republicans will blame this for the weakened economy, fair or not.

2) Make the bailout as transparent as possible.

He is big on posting everything on the internet. He should announce immediately that each and every penny paid to each and every financial institution will be posted on line. Furthermore, he should annonce that he demands that each and every financial institution that receives money post where each and every penny goes as a stipulation for receiving the money. The public has quickly lost confidence in the bailout and partially that's because they don't understand where it's all going. They think that this bailout is just a massive example of a boy's club. Full transparency will help resolve this loss of confidence.

3) Go to Europe and urge our allies to make a signficantly more consorted effort in Afghanistan

He has more good will in Europe than he has here. He should use this good will to urge that our European allies make a much larger contribution to Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a battlefield that Obama is committed to winning. We need more troops but we also need our European allies to change their rules of engagement. Many of the European troops have defensive postures in Afghanistan. That makes their contributions nearly non existent. This war won't be won unless folks are ready to get their hands really dirty. We can either have American troops do this incredibly difficult, dangerous and deadly task alone, or we can have the Eoropeans share the risk. It's time for President Obama to parlay the good will and urge that they do.

4) Direct General David Petraeus to develop a strategy of counter insurgency in Afghanistan and leave it to Petraeus to execute it.

Barack Obama is a novice on foreign policy and military. General Petreaus is an American hero the likes of which we've rarely had. He directed a stunning turnaround in Iraq, and he can do the same in Afghanistan. Give him the order and he will follow it. He can and will do for Afghanistan what he did for Iraq.

5) Meet with the Europeans and urge that the Ukraine be immediately accepted into NATO along with Georgia.

Whether or not this request is received favorably, President Obama will learn a lot just from asking it. If the Europeans agree to fast track their entrance, the Obama knows that they are willing to confront Putin. If not, then he knows that once Putin needs to be confronted he will have to do it on his own. If Georgia and the Ukraine are accepted, then Putin knows that the Europeans will not allow him to walkover them anymore. If they aren't, then President Obama needs to make contingency plans for a one on one confrontation. Either way, President Obama will know the landscape when the eventual confrontation with Putin occurs.

6) Agree to honor Maliki's timeline immediately, but also announce a goal of a serious reduction in troops over the next year and a half.

We have nearly achieved victory in Iraq. The only thing that would threaten this victory would be a far too hasty withdrawal. Nuri al Maliki has given President Obama the political opening to make a withdrawal commitment without jeopardizing the victory. The Iraqis are about to agree to another three year term of American troops. Barack Obama should announce immediately that he intends to have nothing more than a few thousand advisors still in country after those three years are up. Furthermore, he intends to cut the number of troops significantly over the next year and a half. Such an announcement would allow Obama to massage between his fixed timeline, victory, and reality.

7) Announce immediately that 1) Patrick Fitzgerald will remain the Federal Prosecutor in the Northern District of Illinois 2) he will veto the Fairness Doctrine if it is brought to him and 3) he will veto card check if it is brought to him.

There are plenty of folks that are worried that President Obama will help his corrupt buddies back home by quietly removing Fitzgerald who has crusaded against the likes of Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevic and most of the Chicago area political structure. Making this announcement will make it clear that President Obama is not about to do any special favors for the corruption back home. By annoucing two and three, Obama also announces that he will not be directed by the far left.

If President Obama does all of this, he will have a wildly successful first term and ride a massive wave toward a second term. In fact, if he does all of this, I might have to think about voting for him next time.

The Legacy of John McCain

McCain's concession speech last night was vintage McCain.


When John McCain says the country must come together, he is one of the few politicians out there that really does mean it. McCain will never hold the highest office in the land, but I believe that when history is written it will be much kinder to him than many that have.

Few folks in the history of this nation have ever been greater patriots than John McCain. From the moment he entered the U.S. Naval academy all John McCain has done is serve this nation and serve it with honor. He went to war. He spent time as a P.O.W. Then, he spent the rest of his life in public service and he continues to do it into his seventies. Very few in the history of this nation have given so much of themselves back to it. For this, I believe John McCain's legacy will stand the test of time and like a fine wine only get better with age.

John McCain will win no favors in the legacy of any ideology. He was in some ways a cross between Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt, however he could never decide which to follow on any given issue. He was generally a tax cutter. He fought long and hard against wasteful spending. (even helping to create the group Citizens Against Government Waste) Yet, at the same time, he wasn't afraid of stiff and harsh regulations against the likes of big tobacco. His campaign finance reform bill, McCain/Feingold is an aversion to most true blue Conservatives. He cemented his legacy as the Conservative scourge when he got into bed with Teddy Kennedy on illegal immigration. Of course, all the liberals that so championed him for years also now have their problems after he supported the surge and fought Obama so hard in this election.

Where history will be most kind to him, I believe, is on the issue of the Iraq War. His steadfast support of the surge in the spring of 2007 was one of those thankless principled stances that won him absolutely no favors or political gain, in the present. Yet, it is on the issue of war where legacies are made. Despite the insistence of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, McCain was the most right politician on Iraq. He immediately observed that we didn't have enough troops and he called for the surge as early as 2004. Then, when supporting increasing operations in Iraq was near political suiciden, he proclaimed that he would be the last man standing if necessary in support of the surge. His support of the surge is best characterized by this brillian speech he gave at VMI.


In my opinion, only General Petraeus himself will be given more credit for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in Iraq. There is no more important thing than being on the right side of history in war. John McCain's legacy will endure as the politician most singularly responsible for bringing that victory to Iraq.

Legislatively, John McCain's legacy will be as a doer. Especially in the last ten years, John McCain has been in the middle of nearly every single important piece of legislation. The aformentioned McCain/Feingold will certainly irk conservatives however they won't be the only ones contributing to his legacy. The gang of 14 was one prime example of McCain's ability to bring a coalition of legislators from both sides together to get things done. McCain always more firmly believed in the spirit of bipartisanship than he ever did a particular ideology. That may have done him in as a Presidential candidate, but I do believe it will enhance his legacy as time goes on.

Iraq: The Next Step

I had an opportunity to see Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institute over at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last evening. Pollack laid out what the next layers of challengs in Iraq will be. First of all, Pollack, formerly of the Clinton administration, stated in no uncertain terms that the surge succeeded fabulously in most of its goals: reducing violence, breaking the backs of the militias, and providing necessary stability. Second, Pollack stressed that Iraq is much like an onion. Once one layer of challenges is met, what you uncover, and often create, is a whole new set of challenges. While he never said so outwardly, I got the impression that Pollack would not favor a timetable for withdrawal as Barack Obama advocates. Pollack sees four main challenges facing Iraq in the near term

1) Refugees

There are roughly four million refugees that left Iraq during the most violent period of the war that must be re integrated into Iraq. On the panel with Pollack was a former Jordanian diplomat (who's name slips my mind) and he mentioned that his country, Jordan, has about 5 million citizens. He estimates that about one million Iraqis crossed the border into Jordan when refugees were flowing out of Iraq. He said that unless they are re integrated back into Iraq his own country will face a demographic evolution with all sorts of unintended consequences.

The problems of re integration are three fold. First, many of these folks lef their homes because their homes were destroyed. Others left their homes and now someone else occupies said homes. Still others will find that their previous neighborhoods and cities have seen demographic revolutions of their own. For instance, Baghdad, which used to be fairly mixed, is now more than 80% Shia.

Pollack suggested a system of vouchers where the central Iraqi government would help these folks buy new homes or build new homes. Pollack mentioned that home vouchers have worked for refugees in other nations.

Unless these folks are fairly re integrated back in Iraqi society, the threat of a re newed civil war continues.

2) Sons of Iraq

These are the Sunnis, once allied with AQI, that flipped to our side. These folks are extremely well armed, mostly Sunni, and with no one to fight they can just as easily turn on the government and re ignite a civil war. They must be integrated into Iraqi society as an organized and legitimate force. The most logical step is to turn most of these folks into police or military. Of course, if they are integrated into either force, they will also have to deal with a mixed ethnic military force, one they currently aren't dealing with.

3) Kirkuk

This city in the the center of a lot of problems, history and potential. It used to be mostly Kurdish except that Saddam "Arabized" it in the 1980's in order to weaken the influence of his rivals, the Kurds, on this city which is oil rich. Right now, both Arabs and Kurds are laying claim to that city and as a result there is not enough housing for the amount of people that want to live there. Because ethnicity is once again at the center of this struggle, if this is not worked out properly this city can again become the flashpoint for a civil war

4) The economy

Rising oil prices have created a budget surplus in Iraq of about $79 billion. Unfortunately, these so called petro dollars have not trickled down to the bulk of the population and Iraqi unemployment continues to hover at a staggering 25%. Pollack made a point to mention that often times when wealth is created in the Middle East that can end up boomeranging. For instance, the Iranian revolution happened, at least in part, because the Shah promised that the explosion of oil prices would trickle down to the rest of the population. When those promises weren't met, the people revolted. The same thing can happen in Iraq. The folks know full well that the country is gaining wealth as a result of high oil prices. There is only so long that they will accept their own economic struggle while the country grows in wealth. In fact, much of the failure of moderate politicians in the Middle East in general comes from their inability to deliver on their economic promises.

Fortunately, in General Petraeus' counter insurgency strategy, the third part is the build portion. The first two are clear and hold. Those have largely been accomplished. The building portion is supposed to bring the exact economic development that Pollack insists must happen or we will see Iraq devolve into chaos again. If the last part of his strategy works as well as the first two, we can rest easy that economic development is on its way in Iraq.

These four areas of concern are the ones to watch in the next few years as we continue to guide Iraq into a functioning Democracy.

McCain's Warped World View?

That's the title of this Robert Sheer column (without the question mark) but in reality the only world view that is warped is Sheer's himself. He starts like this.

The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the imminent government nationalization of much of the U.S. mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There you have it - in a capsule, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational mélange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is bankrupted by out-of-control military spending?

What's peculiar about this beginning is that McCain has acknowledged that the nation is facing troubles. In fact, here is an ad in which he acknowledges as much. Here it is. Furthermore, mortgages aren't about to be nationalized they have been since Fannie and Freddie were created as Government Sponsored Entities.

Now, while the beginning of the piece is peculiar and dishonest, the rest of the piece is painful to read. That's because Robert Sheer can't come to grips with the idea that we have succeeded in Iraq and thus he insists on turning our success into failure.

While Mideast oil-rich nations we protect refuse to fully open the oil spigots as payback for our military efforts, McCain celebrates Gen. David Petraeus as his No. 1 hero for "victory" in Iraq. Aside from the reality that victory there is now defined as returning to the level of stability provided by Saddam Hussein, whom the Bush administration admits had nothing to do with the bin Laden-led terrorists, even that goal requires the cooperation of our former sworn enemies, Iran's ayatollahs.

Presumably McCain envisions a more favorable outcome for Georgia, to whom he has committed the unqualified support of the United States with his outrageously overreaching statement that "we are all Georgians." If Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had been in contact with the leader of a nation before and after that nation provoked a war, his campaign would be in a shambles. Not so McCain, who is acting as if he is already the elected commander in chief of a reconstituted neoconservative-dominated White House. By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been reduced to a blustering bystander.

Sheer seems to miss one very important point about present and past Iraq. The reason there was relative calm past Iraq was because Hussein forced calm through a police state. Now, there is relative calm in a DEMOCRACY. I suppose to someone like Sheer there is no difference. Furthermore, McCain never once linked Saddam to 9/11, nor did anyone in the administration. The only people that ever link Saddam to 9/11 are opponents of both in claiming either did.

His second paragraph is bizarre. In Sheer's world view, it is a bad thing to have personal relationship with an ally and a Democratic leader. He furthermore takes the blame America first world view that Georgia provoked the war and Russia is merely practicing self defense. Then, he has the chutzpah to proclaim that it is McCain with the warped world view. He continues.

That military victory in Iraq and any other trouble spot is the key selling point of the McCain campaign is odd, because McCain's credentials derive from participation in a war that resulted in the most ignominious defeat in U.S. history. How else to think of the sacrifice of almost 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese in a war that even McCain has long since not seriously tried to defend. Surely McCain accepted the notion that a Communist Party-run Vietnam was compatible with U.S. security interests when he, along with Sen. John Kerry, led the fight for recognition of Vietnam.

Wouldn't it have been grand if McCain, who made his own pilgrimage of reconciliation to Hanoi, would draw the proper lesson from that sad chapter in American history - that victory isn't everything it's cracked up to be? Or by extension, the recent Olympic festivities in still-red China, where Bush was photographed quite happily near portraits of the once-dreaded Chairman Mao, whom U.S. propaganda had long described, quite erroneously, as chief sponsor of the Vietnamese communists.

These two paragraphs are among the most despicable things ever written by any columnist. He slanders McCain because he served in a war that the U.S. lost. Worse than that, it is among the most intellectually dishonest analyses ever written. Isn't the fact that McCain participated in a losing war all the more reason that he understands the value of winning. Not in the view of Sheer, Sheer would like McCain to acknowledge the deficiencies of winning, deficiencies which he conveniently doesn't list in this context.

Sheer concludes...

We are reminded of how brilliant Republican Richard Nixon was in rejecting the neoconservative addiction to the Cold War that McCain embraces when the late president traveled to Beijing to make peace with the bloodiest communist dictator of all. It turns out that the various communist movements were nationalist above all else, and when we "lost" in Vietnam, the result was not attacks on the United States but a war between China and Vietnam.

The lesson McCain should have learned is that the world is a complex place, today's enemies may be tomorrow's negotiating partners - as Obama has at times dared to suggest - and that the neoconservative view of a Pax Americana is a dangerous fantasy. And a costly one at that - not only in lost lives and blowback from the regions we destabilize, but also in the dollars that American taxpayers must waste.

Thanks to the absurdly misdirected war on terrorism that McCain so enthusiastically supports, we spend more annually in inflation-adjusted dollars on the military than in any time since WWII, even more than during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Vote for McCain and forget about funding to solve the Social Security, Medicare and subprime mortgage disasters or anything else that truly would make America stronger.

Of course, China and the U.S. were never really allies, nor are we now, but merely we shared at the time, and maybe still now, a common threat, then the Soviet Union and now Russia. A similar analogy could have been made between FDR and Stalin. We became tenuous allies for a few years and immediately became rivals after WWII. What I am having trouble understanding is his point. Is he saying we should be more even handed because we never know when we will be able to negotiate with Putin?

Furthermore, in Sheer's view, the GWOT is a myth, a fabrication made by war mongers. To him it is money wasted that our military budget is almost as high as it was in Vietnam. Of course, during war the military budget ought to be high. In Sheer's view, the proper course of action is to negotiate with the terrorists and their sponsors, and furthermore, it appears to be a position Sheer seems to think that Obama will take. Furthermore, rather than the fact that most of the Middle East is run by tyrants and despots, it is our expansionary foreign policy, in Sheer's view, that causes their instability.

What frankly shocks me about pieces like this is not their intellectual dishonesty and ludicrous conclusions. What shocks me is that someone writes a paycheck to Robert Sheer to write something so absurd that a high school student could do better. The fact that Robert Sheer earns a living, a good one at that, to write such mumbled nonsense speaks wonders about where our media is at today.

U.S. Now Winning War in Iraq

(H/T to Hot Air) That is the headline from this piece from the Associated Press.

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

The important part is not the substance of the article but rather the source. Of course, if you have paid attention to Iraq, you would have seen that the counter insurgency strategy has been winning the war for months. In fact, Michael Yon concurred with this thought earlier this month. (Yon has spent nearly five years in Iraq as both a special ops officer and then as a journalist)

The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my
estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.

This thought was echoed by Michael Totten (another journalist who has spent years in the war zone)

As recently as the first half of 2007, the idea of an American victory in Iraq seemed like a fantasy to just about everyone, including me. General David Petraeus surged additional troops to Iraq, however, and he transformed the joint American-Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy into what nearly all observers now acknowledge is a remarkable and unexpected success. Few bothers to argue otherwise anymore. What remains ambiguous and contested is the definition of an American victory.

It’s slightly tricky for a couple of reasons. Pinpointing the exact date when a counterinsurgency ends – not just in Iraq, but any counterinsurgency – is impossible. There are no final battles. There can’t be. And if we don’t know when the war is over, it can be difficult to figure out what over even means in the first place. So how will we know if we’ve won?

Of course, neither Yon or Totten would ever be found in any mainstream publication. This comes from the Associated Press and so it may likely be filtered to newspapers everywhere. So, now that the MSM has declared victory in Iraq, will they notice that Barack Obama is trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with his 16 month timetable for withdrawal.

Counter Insurgency: The Key to Our Iraqi Success

I think that any objective observer will have to say that so far Barack Obama's overseas trip has been successful politically. He has looked comfortable, statesmanlike, and he has commanded respect. Furthermore, this was the difficult part and he still has the softballs of Europe left. That said, his weakest area has been his insistence over and over that voting against the surge was not a mistake. It was something he told Terry Moran on Nightline and something he repeated to Katie Couric on CBS News last night. Furthermore, he has tried to cloud the issue by suggesting that the surge was not primarily responsible for the stunning turnaround in Iraq.

In fact, the surge per se was not primarily responsible. John McCain often says that it wasn't merely a surge of troops that made the difference but a change in strategy. It was. When things were at their worst, John McCain once referred to our strategy as whack a mole. By this he meant that our search and destroy missions would eliminate a target in one area only to find that or other targets pop up in other areas. Our problem during the difficult days from 2003-2007 was that our troops would move into an area and attack a target. After their mission was complete though, they would move back to their base. The enemy would wait until our troops had left the area and move back in to cause havoc. Since the locals could not count on the coalition for constant protection, the rise of militias occurred.

Each of the militias didn't merely attack those of other sects, they also provided protections for those of their own sect. This is what brought the country to the brink of civil war.

As such, General David Petraeus, who had recently finished writing the U.S. Army Counter Insurgency Field Manual, was brought in to execute a strategy of counter insurgency. Last August, I debated a liberal friend of mine on the fundamentals of counter insurgency in Iraq. Following the KISS (keep in simple stupid) philosophy on counter insurgency, it boils down to three words: clear, hold and build.

The clearing portion of counter insurgency is the most difficult and most dangerous. The extra troops were most necessary for this portion. This involves going into each and every locale with any modicum of terrorist activity and engaging them in street hand to hand combat. This is brutal and bloody, but ultimately necessary. Many will remember that the beginning of the surge brought a spike in violence. That's the unfortunate effect of the clearing portion. If you take the fight to the enemy, there will be more casualties. That said, once the enemy is defeated and driven from an area, the hardest part is over. In fact, the so called clearing portion is still going on in remnants. The coalition, along with Iraqi troops, only a couple months ago confronted terrorists in Basrah, Sadr City, and Mosul.

Once the clearing portion is successfully accomplished, the next step is holding an area. This requires maintaining a significant though smaller presence within each area. It works much like the military version of police precincts. By maintaining a presence, the locals feel a permanent sense of safety. This portion of counter insurgency also involves very dangerous military activity. Much of it involves house to house searches. During this portion of counter insurgency, the coalition must make sure that all the remaining remnants of the terrorists are identified and removed. The terrorists wear no uniforms and blend in with the locals. As such, this involves sophisticated interrogation. Beyond that, this also becomes the military equivalent of grass roots politics. This portion involves reaching out to local leaders and attempting to flip bad guys to our side.

By holding an area, the enemy is denied a base of operation. Many may remember stories from the fall and winter of last year that surmised that the sphere of space that AQI could operate in was becoming smaller. That's because the coalition was moving into territory once controlled by them clearing and holding it. Thus, the enemy couldn't come back. It was successful clear and hold that turned Ramadi from one of the most dangerous areas in the world to one of the safest Iraqi cities.

Once the hold portion of counter insurgency began to blossom, this is when we saw much of the militias crumble and disintegrate. That's because they were no longer needed for protection. Once the locals had no use for their protection, they began to see them solely for the evil creatures that they were. As most remember, Sadr began to lose significant power during the fall of last year. That's because clearing began to take hold and thus his JAM militia became flat footed.

The final portion of counter insurgency is building. This involves serious money being thrown around for economic development. The locals must feel as though a better day is ahead. The only way that happens is when they see their economy blossom. If safety is followed by economic misery, their good will won't last. That is what is happening throughout much of Iraq now.

Clear, hold and build happen with their own dynamic, and thus, different portions of operations happen in different areas. Still, this textbook implementation of clear, hold and build is what turned the dire situation in Iraq into one in which we are on the verge of victory.

There is no doubt that the so called Sunni Awakening was a significant help in implementing the counter insurgency. It is further true that the awakening happened before the counter insurgency was implemented. As I pointed out earlier, flipping important community leaders is a hallmark of counter insurgency. It is, however, naive and uninformed to suggest that the Sunni Awakening would have had any effect had it not been for the counter insurgency strategy. To suggest that these Sunni locals would have been able to take on AQI on their own without the massive reinforcements of the coalition's counter insurgency strategy is naive and irresponsible. This suggestion by Senator Obama is nothing less than exhibit A of his utter ignorance of the military situation in Iraq.

Of course, the surge and counter insurgency wouldn't have worked without local cooperation and the increasing competence of the central government. In fact, proper counter insurgency creates a dynamic in which all of these things begin to function with each other. For Senator Obama to suggest that any of them would have worked without the counter insurgency strategy is simply naive and outrageous.

Make no mistake, we are on the brink of victory because General David Petraeus along with several hundred thousand of the bravest and finest military personnel performed a picture perfect textbook implementation the counter insurgency concepts of clear, hold and build. This is the strategy that was supported in its infancy by John McCain and opposed by Barack Obama. Make no mistake, without it, we would be mired in a bloody genocide that no one wants to imagine. We can debate future strategy, however, there is no debating what got us here.

The MSM Muddies the Water on Timelines

Today's political coverage is full of word that Barack Obama and Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki have come to an agreement over timelines for withdrawal. For instance, we have this.

It may not sway many voters, but on Friday, as Barack Obama embarked on an extended trip abroad intended in large part to relieve concerns about his commander in chief bona fides, the terms of debate on Iraq began a dramatic shift that appears to favor his candidacy.

President Bush, who’d been opposed to any timetable for removing American forces from Iraq, reached an agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to set a
“general time horizon” for a withdrawal.

“It’s a devastating blow to the McCain campaign — not just that Maliki moved to Obama’s position but that Bush did as well,” said Richard Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations for the Clinton administration.

...and this

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Iraqi government found agreement in Baghdad on Monday for a 2010 withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, a timeline that continues to face criticism from Republican Sen. John McCain.

As Obama laid eyes on the Iraq war for the first time in more than two years, he emerged from a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, calling it “very constructive.”

The trip follows Republican attempts to diminish Obama’s foreign policy experience and a challenge from McCain, who complained that Obama was wrong to plan for troop withdrawal without having visited since January 2006. McCain has visited Iraq eight times since the war began. The Arizona senator has said Obama’s foreign policy plans are naive and that he is untested.

The MSM can do this because the difference between what Maliki and Obama want is an important but small shade of gray. It is a shade that most of the media have no intentions of putting into context. While Maliki agreed to the 16 month timeline, he agreed to it only as long as the situation permits it. Here is the question and the response.

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

The small, but vital, difference is that Maliki wants to win, and Obama simply wants to leave. Maliki's timeline is based on the assumption that things will continue to improve as they have. In other words, Maliki's sixteen month horizon is a goal. For Obama, this is a hard and fast rule.

Yet, the media is treating this as though McCain is the odd man out. He isn't. What Bush and Maliki agreed upon is a time horizon that is based on conditions. Obama's timeline is set in stone. If, in fact, Obama's timeline is not set in stone, then his position is no different from McCain's.

Furthermore, the waters were muddied even more because the New York Times published an editorial by Barack Obama but refused to publish John McCain's response. Had they published McCain's response, here is what their readers would have found out about this so called timeline.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops

Focusing on timelines is silly and inconsequential. All military plans are only good until they are actually started. No one knows if we will be able to leave in 16 months, 20 months, or 20 years until the military operation is executed. Anyone that purports to know is the military equivalent of a snake oil salesman. That's why John McCain refuses to be tied down to a timeline. Timelines are only good until they are implemented.

What the media continues to refuse to focus on is what McCain said later in his op ed.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

It is here where Barack Obama stands in far cry from everyone else deeply involved with Iraq: Prime Minister Maliki, George Bush, General David Petraeus, and John McCain. Everyone else is looking for victory. Barack Obama is looking to simply end the war. While the media is fixated with Obama's agreement with Maliki on timelines, they are totally oblivious to the fantasy that Obama peddles. Unlike Obama's rhetoric, wars are NOT ended. They are either won or lost. If he continues to insist on merely ending this one, he is in effect trying to lose it. Rather than focusing on meaningless timelines that never materialize once they are put into place on the battlefield, the media ought to ask Barack Obama whether or not he plans on winning the war.

Withdrawal Timelines: Maliki Vs. Obama

Much has been made of the Iraqi government's "insistence" on timelines for withdrawal. Of course, this current narrative is yet another example of what happens when our press is corrupt and incompetent. In such a case, it is vital that the press provide the proper context. The press of course has no interest in providing proper context to the story. In geopolitics and war, there are timelines and there are timelines. In the world of political spin, timelines are whatever the spinmeisters make them.



Prime Minister Maliki recently did an interview with a German magazine, Der Spiegel. (H/T Hot Air)In that interview, Maliki seemed to indicate that he agreed with Obama's 16 month time line. Maliki has since tried to correct the matter. Essentially, Maliki sees 16 months as an ambitious goal that he would like to meet for troop withdrawal. Yet, Maliki, like McCain and Bush, sees troop withdrawal as a function of conditions in Iraq.

The question is how does Barack Obama see troop withdrawal. Obama has been rather unclear on this point. On the third of July, he initially indicated that troop withdrawal may in fact be a function of conditions in Iraq. Once the media played this up as a flip flop he immediately tried to correct himself and insisted that 16 months was a hard and fast rule. Furthermore, in his New York Times editorial, Barack Obama once again reiterated his commitment to a sixteen month timeline for withdrawal.

Ultimately, the question is not how long any party wants troops in Iraq. I am certain that PM Maliki would like the coalition troops to leave Iraq yesterday. I think that General Petraeus would concur and certainly the troops would like nothing better than to leave and go home. The difference is that each want to leave because the situation on the ground is stabilized enough for them to leave.

As for Barack Obama, he appears to intend to leave in sixteen months no matter what. That brings me to his overall point. He wants to end the war not win it. Back in the Summer of 2006, many of the embedded reporters with the Israeli soldiers indicated that military sources on the ground were telling them that the Israelis felt that they were weeks if not days away from finally putting away Hezbollah. We'll never know if that was a realistic prediction or wishful thinking. That's because Israel chose to end rather than win the war. At this moment, Barack Obama seems to be making the same plan. Rather than making decisions based on performance, he intends to make them based on the calendar. That's exact what the Israelis did in 2006 and suffered a humiliating result as a result.

That, in fact, is the difference in timelines between Maliki and Obama. One sees the timeline as a goal, and that goal is still ultimately a function of performance. The other sees the timeline is a function of the calendar. We all should have learned our lesson from the Israel/Hezbollah war of 2006 of what happens when wars are ended rather than won, and yet, Barack Obama continues to insist on making the same mistake again.

Moving the Iraq Goal Posts

Most recently, Barack Obama has been claiming that the success the surge has had in tamping down the violence.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

He has been saying this as though he predicted this all along. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The very success that we see in tamping down violence was something that Barack Obama predicted would NOT happen when the surge was first announced. Powerline breaks down his many statements at the beginning of the surge that were skeptical.

I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.

...

We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality -- we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don't know any expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.

...

E]ven those who are supporting -- but here's the thing, Larry -- even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.

These sorts of statements no longer fit the reality on the ground in Iraq, and so Barack Obama, like most Democrats, has started a clever shifting of the goal posts of success in Iraq. Harry Reid, for instance, famously said this in April of 2007

I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,

...

know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically

When General Petraeus came to Capitol Hill in September of last year, Hillary Clinton famously said that Petreaus' tempered report on progress in Iraq required a "willing suspension of disbelief".

In other words, while it was still unclear that the surge had produced a sustained reduction in violence, the Democrats continued to claim that the surge had done nothing to reduce violence.

Of course, the surge began reducing violence in May, but beginning in September, that reduction became apparent. Once that happened, most of these same Democrats that refused to acknowledge that the surge would tamp down violence, now moved the goal posts. Now, they proclaimed that the surge was failing because even though violence had been reduced that didn't lead to any political reconciliation. Here is how one Democratic strategist described their plans in November of last year.

Right. Or so says the New York Times, which had the latest installment of the suffering-Democrats chestnut Sunday in the form of Patrick Healy's front-pager, "As Democrats See Security Gains in Iraq, Tone Shifts." Healy says the leading Democratic presidential candidates are "undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging ... success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy."

"Lately, as the killing in Baghdad and other areas has declined," Healy writes, "the Democratic candidates have been dwelling less on the results of the troop escalation than on the lack of new government accords in Iraq -- a tonal shift from last summer and fall when American military commanders were preparing to testify before Congress asking for more time to allow the surge to show results."

The evidence of this "tonal shift"? Healy cites this statement from Hillary Clinton: "Our troops are the best in the world; if you increase their numbers they are going to make a difference ... The fundamental point here is that the purpose of the surge was to create space for political reconciliation, and that has not happened, and there is no indication that it is going to happen, or that the Iraqis will meet the political benchmarks. We need to stop refereeing their civil war and start getting out of it."

The same Hillary Clinton, who only two months earlier was proclaiming that any belief that reduction in violence was sustainable and substantial required a "willing suspension of disbelief", was now proclaiming that of course the surge had reduced violence but that didn't lead to any political reconciliation. Thus, the surge was still a failure.

This was the first stunning movement of the proverbial goal posts by Democrats against the surge. Of course, their problem was that just like they were wrong about their initial assessment about the surge not reducing violence, they would eventually be wrong about political reconciliation.

Throughout the fall and winter, the Iraqi central government made small but tangible progress. They passed a de Baathification law, scheduled regional elections, and beefed up their own security forces. Then, in May, the central government took a step of historic proportions. They simultaneously sent the Iraqi militar to take on JAM in Basrah and AQI in Mosul. The Iraqis lead this operation against terrorists within their borders and the terrorists included folks from both the Sunni and Shia sect. As a result, Nuri Al Maliki gained newfound respect, authority and leadership. Here is how liberal columnist Joe Klein described a cabinet meeting recently.

Indeed, the successful operations in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul have had a completely unexpected effect on the stature of the formerly hapless Nouri Al-Maliki: At a recent cabinet meeting after the Sadr City operation, the entire room stood when Maliki entered, a sign of newfound respect for a leader who was regarded as little more than a place-holder only months ago.

Then, came the clincher. The U.S. embassy in Iraq determined that the Iraqis had met 15 of the 18 benchmarks "satisfactorily". In its aftermath, the Democrats are now choosing their words very carefully. Take a look at how Barack Obama described Iraqi political reconciliation yesterday.

Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

He singles out the oil sharing law because that is one of the three that is still not met. He then uses the vague term "political accomodations" to continue to present a case of lack of progress. In fact, in that same Op-Ed, Obama decided to move the goal posts to what will likely be the new reason for the failure of the surge, according to the Democrats.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

Now, the Democrats are likely to claim the surge is a failure because things have turned south in Afghanistan. In fact, in a stunning turnaround, more troops have been dying in that country than in Iraq for the last couple of months.

Leaving aside the validity of that argument (and it is debunked rather well, in my opinion, in this piece by Christopher Hitchens) it is quite remarkable to watch the exact same folks move the goal posts for success not once but twice. Either the surge would tamp down violence or it wouldn't. Either the lessening in violence would lead to political reconciliation or it wouldn't. At some point enough is enough. Afghanistan is a separate theater. The operation isn't even being headed by the U.S. but rather NATO. If a change in strategy is necessary, then we need to have one. If more troops are necessary then we need to send them in, or even better, have some of our NATO partners provide more. It's success or failure has nothing to do with the success of the surge in Iraq. Furthermore, this disingenuous moving of the goal posts needs to stop. Politicians hate nothing more than admitting they were wrong, but they can't be allowed to change the terms of success in the middle in order to make themselves look right either.

The Changing Political Dynamics in Iraq and their Domestic Political Implications

The month of May of 2008 may one day be recognized in the history books of Iraq as the month when the central government really turned a corner. In that month, Nuri Al Maliki called a haphazard military operation in Basra and took on JAM there. The operation started out clumsily and the coalition forces weren't even initially made aware of the operation. Still, the Iraqi forces hung tough and eventually they wound overpowering JAM not only in Basra but in the streets of Sadr City, JAM's main launching ground. Maliki wasn't through. Nearly without a break, he then sent his troops into Mosul to take on the remnants of AQI. Maliki was so forceful in confronting the terrorists, of all sects, that he even made an appearance in Mosul himself to inspect the situation. With that the government showed real willingness not only to take on the terrorists, but more importantly even, to lead.



Here is how liberal commentator Joe Klein described Maliki's new leadership posture.

At a recent cabinet meeting after the Sadr City operation, the entire room stood when Maliki entered, a sign of newfound respect for a leader who was regarded as little more than a place-holder only months ago.

Just recently, with regards to the so called benchmarks, the White House delivered more good news.

Well, if the benchmarks were all-important to Democrats in the fall of 2007, they have become meaningless to them in 2008. When is the last time you’ve heard a benchmark reckoning from Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? The reason for the deafening silence on this matter is simple. The military and political progress in Iraq has proved so monumental that the majority of the benchmarks have now been met.

Seven of the 18 benchmarks relate to Iraq’s national security. We can just about put a check next to each one. We can even look at some of those and marvel at the low expectations behind them. Number 9, for example: “Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.” There are far more than three battle-ready brigades in Baghdad. The galvanization of Sunni Awakening groups who have wrested their country back from al-Qaeda and the decisive efforts of Iraqi forces in Basra and Sadr City have been the two most vital developments of the entire post-Saddam period.

The other eleven benchmarks are the political ones. And these are not so easily sniffed at. However, with Iraq’s parliament passing three critical laws in February and the Maliki government’s surprising tenacity, the four most challenging of these benchmarks have been met: a plan for provincial governance, de-Baathification reform, an amnesty for former insurgents, and legislation on the procedures to form semiautonomous regions.

Of the remaining benchmarks, some were always too ill-defined to be worthwhile. (Consider 18, for example: “Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi Security Forces.” Can we even say with confidence that America’s political authorities are not making false accusations against our own armed forces?) Others are also subjective, but admittedly important — equality under the law being one. And on these there is continued and demonstrable progress.

According to the White House, 15 of the 18 benchmarks are being satisfactoriy met. Of course, there will be spin from both sides on this issue since of course it is the White House doing the analysis. Not everyone was quite so rosey. The GAO's analysis was significantly more mixed. Still, there is no denying that along with significant military progress we are now seeing tangible political progress.



This is of course vital not only because political progress and reconciliation is crucial in Petraeus' counter insurgency strategy. It is is also important because war detractors have dismissed drops in violence by pointing to perceived lack of political progress. As progress becomes more and more evident, that argument becomes less and less tennable. Furthermore, the fall will bring regional elections in Iraq and further signs of political progress.



Of course, nothing in Iraq is cut and dry, and analyzing political implications are no exceptions. However right the supporters of the surge have been proven and vice versa for detractors that doesn't necessarily mean that this will be rewarded politically.



In fact, the positive political progress in Iraq leads to a terribly confusing domestic implications here at home. The war remains terribly unpopular and most folks still want to see the troops brought home. Some Democrats have even used the enormous progress to call for more rapid withdrawal. (a cynical ploy given that these same folks used the chaos to make the same call) It is unlikely the war will ever be popular with the public at large, and thus the political progress in Iraq may or may not lead to a political opportunity at home.



The Republicans best political advantage is General David Petraeus himself. This is of course a dicey ally. The public is not going to appreciate a General being used as a political pawn, and the General himself will appreciate it even less. The simple fact of the matter is that war detractors are going against the direct wishes of the very General that has lead such a stunning turn around in Iraq. The Republican's position is simple...let the general finish the job. The Democrats' position is much more difficult.



In order for the Republicans to enjoy the benefits of political Iraqi progress they must take the debate to the Democrats. Have them explain how they would change the mission right from under one of the greatest generals of all time. The Democrats main ally is the public's total disgust and exhaustion with the war. Their position matches the public's emotions on the subject.



Of course, as if we didn't have enough political variables, we have this. The Iraqi government is now asking for a timetable for coalition troop withdrawal to be tied to a long term security agreement. Of course, like everything else, this particular bit of news is not cut and dry either. First, I am of the opinion that this is a negotiating tool. There is no way the Iraqi government wants to see the U.S. leave on a timetable. This is very likely a ploy by Maliki to show his domestic political allies and adversaries that he is a strong leader.That is essentially the view that commentator Max Boot takes as well.

How concerned should we be about demands emanating from the Maliki government for a withdrawal timetable for U.S. troops? Unless something changes dramatically, the answer I would give is: not very.

That's not because the situation in Iraq is so stable that we can pull out American forces without doing any damage. Despite recent gains in security, the situation remains fragile and U.S. forces will need to remain in Iraq for years to nurture this embattled democracy--and not so incidentally to protect our own interests in the region. The good news is that Prime Minister Maliki, along with every other major figure in Iraqi politics, understands this. But they also understand that the people of Iraq are impatient for the return of full sovereignty and for the departure of foreign troops from their soil.

With provincial elections coming up in the fall, there is every incentive for Maliki and other Iraqi politicos to show they are not puppets of Uncle Sam. They are driving a hard bargain in the negotiations over a Status of Forces Agreement and a Strategic Framework Agreement that will set the future conditions of the U.S. military presence. And they are blustering about the need to withdraw U.S. troops-eventually. But note that, unlike Barack Obama, they are not attaching any timelines to this withdrawal. Certainly they are not calling for U.S. troops to be gone by 2010, a pledge that the Democratic candidate once made and hasn't quite renounced.

Thus, Democrats would be wise to temper their Maliki references for two reasons. First, this is very much likely nothing more than a negotiating ploy. Second, it isn't very wise for them to get to close to the same individual they have spent the last two years criticizing incessantly. So far the only Democrat I have seen invoking Maliki's demand has been Alan Colmes. I don't see his demand for timetables as much of a political winner though, and I doubt the Democrats will use it much.



In conclusion, the situation in Iraq remains fluid and its political ramifications here at home are just as fluid. The situation presents an opportunity for Republicans who backed the winning strategy to take the political fight to the Democrats who backed the wrong strategy. Now, it is up to the Republicans to take advantage. We will wait and see.

Stuck Between Iraq, Petraeus, the Left Wing,and a Hard Place

Last night on the Factor, Bill O'Reilly summarized the conundrum facing Barack Obama with regards to Iraq. He ran on the far left platform of withdrawal at any cost. His opposition to the war from the beginning became the only difference in policy between he and Hillary Clinton. This was a wildly popular idea in the primary. It is frankly a popular idea in the general election. The problem is that our own electorate is psychzophrenic on this issue, like many.

While withdrawal is popular, General David Petraeus is emerging as a General of epic proportions. He is fast becoming mentioned in the same breathe as Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower. While withdrawal at any costs may poll well, it is in sharp contrast with the steady and effective plan currently being carried out.

I certainly will not be privvy to conversations between Obama and Petraeus however it is not very likely that Petraeus would endorse any sort of withdrawal plan tied to anything but victory. Furthermore, we are on the brink of victory.

As such, if Obama insists on sticking with his plan on withdrawal at any cost then he is at odds with one of the greatest Generals of our history. The public at large is much more comfortable allowing the General on the ground to dictate strategy not some arrogant first term Senator with no foreign policy experience.

On the other hand, if after visiting Iraq, he changes course and endorses General Petraeus finishing the mission, he will have stabbed his most zealous supporters in the back. The left wing has thus far generally looked the other way on his numerous jaunts to the middle. They are rather upset over FISA however not upset enough to make any legitimate voting difference. That won't be true on Iraq.

Obama's insistence on ending not winning the war was the central platform of his campaign. He can't suddenly do a 180% turnaround on that issue. It is one thing to be wishy washy on the 2nd amendment. That was never central to his platform. It is quite another to reverse course on Iraq.

Now, O'Reilly, much like most of the media, still doesn't recognize the central problem for Obama. He was wrong. He, from the beginning, thought the surge would fail. Carrying a faulty policy all the way toward primary electoral victory doesn't make that policy anymore right. Here is how the RNC summed it up.





He is stuck where he is because for the last year and a half he has been saying that the surge would fail. He has been saying it would add to the problems. He has been saying that it wouldn't lead to political reconciliation. In other words, for the last year and a half, he has been wrong.



That's why he finds himself stuck between a legendary General and a base of voters as wrong as him. He was wrong and he carried millions of people with him. Now, that base, which refuses of course to admit they are wrong, wants him to continue down the same wrong path.



He is now caught in the most difficult political double edged sword. If he crosses the General and insists on faulty policy, everyone but the committed far left will turn on him. If he goes with the General, everyone on the far left will turn on him. Such are difficult consequences of advocating the wrong policy.

Check out Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and Roger Simon at Politico for similar arguments.