Centerfield

I am a huge fan of Senator Obama's. I know he was not forceful yesterday but, I believe the problem lays with the party and not the man.
I believe they are working on how to reign in Bush. And yes, the people as a whole want Bush constrained, us out of Iraq and Bush put in his place. They are alarmed by his warmongering, his doing as he pleases and his beating the drums on Iran. They want him weakened. they don't care how.
He scares the country and they see him as a loose cannon able to bomb anyone rather than use diplomacy.
I believe Obama will be more forceful in his answers once this crisis is past us and he is running.
And I do hope he is most forceful in shutting down Hillary.

"Obama said he supports a 'surge in diplomacy' in tandem with a phased redeployment. The U.S. has to bring in the regional powers like Iran and Syria, he said. The problem is, he said, Bush's plan is already set in motion."

That says alot. Obama seems to have accepted the Democrat “plan” to avoid defeat: return US forces home and pursue the realistic option of "surge diplomacy" with Iran and Syria. Is he being sarcastic with the word surge or is he running to garner the anti-war vote? This will allow Hillary to seem more centrist.

Examine the new context of Obama’s prescription (old Kerry). Leaving Syrian behavior aside for the moment (see Iraq and Lebanon)), the newly elected officials in Iran from conservative to reformer are aghast at their President's Anti-Semitic remarks, bombastic threats and dangerous acceleration of their nuclear programs, not to mention his terrorist friends and monthly trips to South America.. Pollution is deadly, gasoline is in short supplies and the economy is suffering despite the oil revenue (where is it going?). A shut down in the Gulf is likely to be worse for Iran than America. The Arabs are concerned about Shia Jihadists. Does Obama want us to further destabilize the Middle East and, having eliminated Iran's biggest threat, withdraw from the region leaving Israel and Moderate Arabs to deal with a conflagration of extremism? Would Obama provide new leadership that could exploit our adversary’s weakness and increase our national security? Or would Obama as President bet on regimes that proliferate weapons and monies to terrorists and seek WMD? Would that be centrist of him? Wonderful. If he starts to parrot he will lose his uniqueness, which at least Hillary and McCain have been able to maintain.

The DLC even promotes withdrawal as a "new direction" forward. Hillary is in Iraq posing with troops. Good move. Perhaps it is her keeping up with the McCains (in a strange Bissarro-world way) while voicing snippets of opposition, as Edwards, Richardson, Obama, Kucinich, Biden all line up with the same code words. Lieberman would never be comfortable with this escalate-the-chaos-crowd and their Orwellian talking points.

The last line of Obama is most revealing. Bush is already to blame for everything associated with Iraq (he has put it in motion) and Democrats will continue to call redeployment(retreat the better plan while opposing Bush every step of the way. They will call this leadership. McCain plays their bluff. Two threads under this Obama move. First, Left bloggers are claiming Bush policy is designed to polarize politics and has little to do with Iraq. Pretend that opposing the surge is simply opposing Bush politics and not any real chance of victory. Second, the Left rants in a polarizing way about Bush "surging" to attack Syria and Iran, which they religiously oppose. At the moment, McCain has encouraged this developement because, once again, it forces Democrats to 1. likely appear impotent in stopping Bush (and here comes Moore) or ruining themselves trying 2.promote a defeatist option as security policy in the face of terror poker and then be cornered into calling it their "new direction" 3. commit general Partyicide through polarizing friction inside the democratic Party.

Thought this relevant:

Doves v Hawks

Surge in diplomacy as a realistic option? I am not so sure of that. Look, I am a big fan of diplomacy over war, but let's fully consider how realistic that option is here. To be diplomatic with another nation you need a common interest, I am not so sure that exists between the leadership in Syria and Iran, who are both sworn enemies of the west and its allies, and the United States. Can you be diplomatic with countries like that? Sure you can, but not without leverage. Iraq is just that. Without an American presence there, I am not sure why it is exactly Iran and Syria would bargain in good faith with the United States. Take the Cold War for example, had Reagan not committed to out building the nuclear capability of the Soviet Union and threatened the development of Star Wars, would Gorbachev ever have cut a deal? Maybe, but not as soon and as dramatic as he did.

I believe the problem lays with the party and not the man.

That could very well be.

And yes, the people as a whole want Bush constrained, us out of Iraq and Bush put in his place. They are alarmed by his warmongering, his doing as he pleases and his beating the drums on Iran. They want him weakened. they don't care how.

The American people or the readers of the Daily Kos? They want him weaker? Are you really arguing that the American people want a weaker President? This is why liberals don't get it. When Congress has taken on the President in the last 25 years, or attempted to blunt actions that the American people believes is the responsibility of the Commander in Chief, whether it be Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or the current President, Congress has lost.

It is my opinion that although the American people are skeptical of the proposed plan, they do believe that is the President's job to run the war, and the Democrats are going to find this out the second they cut funding, or take any other action to block the troop surge.

I was being sarcastic myself. Nothing realistic about pinning hopes of stability on negotiating with those actively seeking to defeat us. Wishful yes, but hardly realistic.

Lots of us may not like the prospect of undertaking diplomatic negotiations with nations we regard as untrustworthy, to say nothing of those we regard more simply as enemies. But if we can't get our plans to work and establish sustainable Iraqi democracy via our current approach, then that's what we face. All the steadfastness in the world won't change that, not by itself. And there may come a time when steadfastness is no longer a virtue, but rather the flaw of unrealistic stubborness.

The clock is ticking, tick-tock, tick-tock, and if a majority of Americans continues to believe our approach isn't working 8, 10, 12, 14 months from now, it's likely to be game over as Americans prepare to vote for the next president and his or her suggested approach to Iraq. The showdown between prospective candidates McCain and Obama ought to be seen in THAT light. How will their views sound next winter.

Personally, I hope our current steadfastness carries the day. But I am happy to acknowledge that the desire to reduce our future involvement and pursue diplomacy is a rational response to the disappointing results we've seen so far.

FWIW, I object to the use of the term "warmonger" to describe Bush. I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who suggests that Bush is engaging in war simply for its own sake, rather than for the sake of achieving an important national objective.

After 4 years, is there anyone here willing to admit that this policy is a disaster? If the definition of "warmonger" is someone that fights wars just to fight, I agree that Bush isn't a warmonger. But he sets a far greater store on military action than most presidents have, he went into Iraq with faulty (and possibly manipulated) intelligence, and he keeps pursuing unrealistic goals at the cost of American lives. Who cares if he isn't a warmonger by definition? People are sick of this war and it's not making the country safer, it's making it less safe. The Middle East is far less stable and much more violence prone now than it was even before the war. I'm skeptical myself about an immediate pullout, but what I see here has a sort of head in the sand look. Granted, the Democrats don't have any good ideas, but that is partly because the only options are bad options thanks to Bush's stupidity (yes, I called him stupid).

so marc, would you have accepted Hussein as a proper counterweight despite what he was doing? Many Dems in 2002 said such for fear of the ME falling apart, BUT they still voted to give W. permission anyway. Are you willing to call those Dems stupid?

After 4 years, is there anyone here willing to admit that this policy is a disaster?

Define disaster. :-) Within context, of course. And with regard to the liklihood of other contemporary alternatives that were likely to meet with success.

I don't think it's been a disaster, but there's still plenty of time. It's sure been a disappointment. Maybe not to me, because I didn't expect us to be able to democratize Iraq, which Is why I opposed the invasion in the first place. If there's going to be true disaster in Iraq, IMO that's most likely to occur if we conduct a determined withdrawal in the shadow of our failure to stabilize the nation.

That's why I supported our policy after we chose to invade, as a nstion, with congress's support. Are we stuck with crappy options now? You betcha. the current policy is "you break it, you bought it." As unpopular as it is the responsible choice. But better than"you break it, you leave it writhing on the floor in agony, left to the tender mercies of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, et. al."

People are sick of this war and it's not making the country safer, it's making it less safe. The Middle East is far less stable and much more violence prone now than it was even before the war.

That's just laugh-out-loud funny, in a morbid sort of way. The first statement is pretty much unprovable (as is its opposite) and I'd challenge you to show any evidence that we're less safe now than five years ago.

As for the second, I'm simply LMAO. Yeah, the Middle East was SO stable and peaceful before Bush was elected! IT MUST BE HIS FAULT!

A Slate article on Iraq

I think Democrats who voted for the war and are now proposing phased withdrawals, and not an alternative to actually win in Iraq, look weak and stupid.

In analyzing the politics, as opposed to offering my own opinion, that assumes that enough of the public think that there is a chance of victory. If they do not believe so, then for them the proper course of action would be to minimize the cost of defeat. In order to convince the people that we should not withdraw as a means of minimizing the cost of defeat, it will be necessary to convince them that there is a realistic chance that an alternative strategy would lead us to victory (no, increasing troops, even to 1 million is not a strategy, it's just a tactic).

For my own opinions, I'll take a stab at why victory may still be possible. In conventional wars, victory is won by asserting control over territory. In this war, victory will be won by gaining the support of the people. Our competitors for their support are either have objectives to which we can reconcile thus accepting their victory as our own, or have a strategy for gaining based entirely on intimidation. In the past, with the exception of a few commanders' areas of operations (AOs), we have tried to play our enemies' game of winning support through intimidation. However, if we shift our strategy to one of providing hope for a better future, the Iraqi people would likely want to take our side, if they feel they can do so safely. Thus we would also have to provide protection against those who operate through intimidation, and demonstrate either a willingness to stay or provide a visa program for anyone who helps us so that the Iraqis could be confident that they would not pay a future price if we were to withdraw while the others remain a potent force.

One other thing I would add. Get Petraeus in front of Congress. He has a track record in Iraq that would be problematic for the retreaters.

Does that mean Americans want to withdraw from Iraq before the job is completed? Ask Ned Lamont what he thinks about that.

I spent Election Day in Conn. helping Lieberman, largely over that issue. That does not mean that I believe that a majority of Conn. voters think the way I do. It is also possible that a majority of Conn. voters feel that the job cannot be completed and therefore we should withdraw to reduce the costs of failure, but that not enough of those holding that view made it a trump issue and thus leaving enough voters open to Lieberman to secure him the election.

It is sad we are missing an opportunity. Shall we retreat and allow Iran's regime to be able to tell its people they are actually winning? Why would Democrats ignore the opportunity to further isolate the Iranian regime from both Iraq and Iranians? Great poker players.....

Something I found today in the newsgroups:

COIN TOSS

[posted at 8:15 am on January 18, 2007 by Bryan
Send to a Friend | printer-friendly]

"Thanks mostly to political environment, we’ve all been mired in a debate over whether Iraq is in a state of civil war or not. What should be a cold assessment of truth on the ground in Iraq has, like every single aspect of the war, become politicized. If you describe the situation in Iraq as a “civil war,” it’s taken as an implied or direct criticism of President Bush more than your opinion of the actual state of play in Iraq. If you resist calling it a “civil war,” you’re usually seen as an apologist for the Bush administration and its policies.

Why everything has to revolve around Bush is a mystery to me. Making everything about him trivializes the war and personalizes it to the point that real policy debate becomes impossible. It makes our politics petty and hinders our ability to see reality for what it is and learn to adjust to it. It’s childish, but it’s where we are as a country.

Nevertheless, I’m going to wade into this. Having seen a little bit of Baghdad up close and talked with the troops serving there, I don’t believe Iraq is in a state of civil war. Before you liberals run off declaring me a neo-con or Bush apologist, hear me out. You can always mischaracterize me later, but at least do me the honor of using my actual words. And before any war supporters cheer, hear me out.

As I said in my first post since returning from Iraq, calling the situation there a “civil war” misunderstands and oversimplifies the conflict there. We’ve all seen the movie Mad Max, right? Iraq is something like that–chaotic and hyper violent in places, but the world of that film isn’t orderly enough to be called a civil war. Well, parts of Baghdad are a lot like that film. Parts aren’t. Most of the violence is confined to areas where the Sunni and Shia mix, along with insurgent Haifa Street. The rest of Baghdad, the vast majority in fact, isn’t terribly violent unless the insurgents or terrorists mount attacks there to draw in US forces and press coverage.

Which isn’t to say that things are safe even outside Baghdad. Several contractors have been abducted in the past couple of months around Basra, and the environment for Iraqi journalists remains lethal all over the country.

The truth is, a real civil war might be a welcome development, as it would probably be less complicated than what it actually going on over there right now. A civil war might clarify who is on which side and what they want. Their reasons for fighting might even be clear enough that we could take a side in good conscience and help that side win. But like everything else about Iraq, the violence that is going on over there is too complicated to be distilled down to those two words–civil war.

Lt Col Steve Miska, commander at FOB Justice in Baghdad, put it this way: “There are so many different enemies out there, and then there’s the complexity of the fight…There are so many different cats and dogs running around the battlefield that you could take the enemy (the insurgents and al Qaeda) away and we would still have a hard time trying to synchronize all the activities.”

One of those dogs is Moqtada al-Sadr, boy cleric and warlord of the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM for short). He’s not the titanic moster we tend to think he is, and by that I mean that he’s not all-powerful and doesn’t wield the same kind of influence that Sistani does. According to Vali Nasr, Sadr has a nickname–Mullah Atari–because as a teen he spent more time playing video games than boning up on his Islamic law. He’s seen as a student, not a master, and as a hothead, not a great leader–by most Shia in Iraq. Nevertheless, I’m on the record wishing our troops had been allowed to kill him two years ago. He has attacked US forces and is a menace. But he also leads a legal political entity in Iraq now, so we can’t go after him directly without him making some very big and serious mistakes. And going after him now would destabilize the Maliki government. That may not in itself be a bad thing, but we had better have a plan for dealing with what destabilizing Maliki could do to the overall battle space. It could, for instance, precipitate a civil war. Which could be a bad thing, or a good thing. Clear enough?

Sadr’s JAM is itself an army of cats and dogs, what the troops at FOB Justice refer to as “good JAM and bad JAM.” Good JAM are local men who have joined JAM not because of ideology, but either because they need the money or because they want to work within the only group in their neighborhood that has the clout and firepower to keep a lid on ordinary crime and violence, and in their neighborhood JAM is that group. So they join up. They couldn’t give two flips for Sadr, and they might join up with the Iraqi Army or police if they thought those groups were stronger than Sadr or could protect their families after they split with Sadr, but for now they’re just local anti-crime security agents. Politically, they’re potentially good guys. But soberingly, they see the Mahdi Army as stronger than the police–and they’re probably right. And the police are full of Sadrists anyway, so to some extent what’s the difference between joining the police or JAM? In some places, the differences are vast. In some, there is no difference at all.

Then there’s bad JAM, Sadr’s real loyalists. These guys are very dangerous. They form some of the death squads that hunt Sunnis, torture them and kill them. They foster organized crime to pay for their weapons, and they threaten local authorities who don’t go along with their way of thinking. They’re an Islamic version of la cosa nostra with the ambition to take over Iraq, and they’re flexible enough to use Maliki or mortar rounds, whichever they deem would be most effective on any given day. They’re very bad news. They’re aligned with Iran ideologically, too, and are getting training and weapons from Tehran’s Hezbollah goons.

The trick for our troops is to sort out good JAM from bad JAM, and that’s about as easy as it sounds sometimes. How do you know why any given Madhi fighter has joined the JAM? Our troops have to stay in an area long enough to get to know who the local players are and what their goals are. Our troops have to generate good, reliable intelligence on the ground, which means getting out of their “urban submarines” and walking around on foot talking to people on the street. That takes equal measures of guts and patience, and it takes knowing how to read people and watch for threats even while you’re engaged in conversations over chai. They have to hold meetings with local sheiks and sort out the good ones from the radicals. And they’re working from within bases and behind a language barrier, with a foreign culture thrown in just to make it more fun. To make it even more fun, the Pentagon has the annoying habit of having units train together away from Iraq and then splitting them up once they’re sent to Iraq. And, putting them in, say, Samarra for one rotation and Baghdad the next. The threat environment in Samarra versus Baghdad is totally different, and our troops end up burning up a third to half of their deployments just figuring out who’s who. And then they move on, and the next unit has to start that ground work all over again, because there is very little overlap in unit rotations.

Beyond the JAMs and the Badr Brigades, there are foreign arms dealers working a lucrative trade in Iraq. Captain Stacy Bare has seen them on the streets near FOB Justice, working what is currently the world’s biggest weapons bazar.

CPT Stacy Bare, civil affairs officer at FOB Justice;

“There hasn’t been a really big war for people to profit off of in the arms trade, and you’ve got French traders, Russian traders, Portuguese traders, Brazilian traders coming in. And you hear people say things and you wonder ‘What’s this German guy doing here?’” He continues, “You hear people talk about, well there’s Germans and French and they’re the problem…they’re just here to make a buck. You’ve got mafia guys that are here to make a buck. Like Col Miska said, take away the insurgency and we’ve still got a problem.”

That problem is organized crime, Iraqi and international. Organized crime certainly shows up in modern civil wars, usually providing drugs and arms, but its heavy influence in Iraq hints at least to me that we’re looking at something other than a classic civil war.

The troops don’t call it a civil war. They call it an insurgency, and their strategy, counterinsurgency, or COIN. And they’re working Iraq along classic COIN doctrine, working with the local people as if they are the principal war terrain, and working to co-opt as many of the “enemy” as possible without having to fight and kill every last one. I only put “enemy” in quotes because there isn’t any one enemy to deal with; Iraq is full of enemies, who hate the US, or hate each other, or will work with each other against the US or with the US against each other. Very few of them have national ambitions, and some are agents of Iran and to a lesser extent Syria.

If the troops aren’t treating the war they’re fighting as a civil war and they’re not calling it a civil war, it’s a good bet that whatever fight they’re in, it’s not a civil war. In the case of Iraq, it’s too chaotic and the violence is too uneven to be called a civil war." -Bryan from Iraq

Something I found today in the newsgroups:

COIN TOSS

[posted at 8:15 am on January 18, 2007 by Bryan
Send to a Friend | printer-friendly]

"Thanks mostly to political environment, we’ve all been mired in a debate over whether Iraq is in a state of civil war or not. What should be a cold assessment of truth on the ground in Iraq has, like every single aspect of the war, become politicized. If you describe the situation in Iraq as a “civil war,” it’s taken as an implied or direct criticism of President Bush more than your opinion of the actual state of play in Iraq. If you resist calling it a “civil war,” you’re usually seen as an apologist for the Bush administration and its policies.

Why everything has to revolve around Bush is a mystery to me. Making everything about him trivializes the war and personalizes it to the point that real policy debate becomes impossible. It makes our politics petty and hinders our ability to see reality for what it is and learn to adjust to it. It’s childish, but it’s where we are as a country.

Nevertheless, I’m going to wade into this. Having seen a little bit of Baghdad up close and talked with the troops serving there, I don’t believe Iraq is in a state of civil war. Before you liberals run off declaring me a neo-con or Bush apologist, hear me out. You can always mischaracterize me later, but at least do me the honor of using my actual words. And before any war supporters cheer, hear me out.

As I said in my first post since returning from Iraq, calling the situation there a “civil war” misunderstands and oversimplifies the conflict there. We’ve all seen the movie Mad Max, right? Iraq is something like that–chaotic and hyper violent in places, but the world of that film isn’t orderly enough to be called a civil war. Well, parts of Baghdad are a lot like that film. Parts aren’t. Most of the violence is confined to areas where the Sunni and Shia mix, along with insurgent Haifa Street. The rest of Baghdad, the vast majority in fact, isn’t terribly violent unless the insurgents or terrorists mount attacks there to draw in US forces and press coverage.

Which isn’t to say that things are safe even outside Baghdad. Several contractors have been abducted in the past couple of months around Basra, and the environment for Iraqi journalists remains lethal all over the country.

The truth is, a real civil war might be a welcome development, as it would probably be less complicated than what it actually going on over there right now. A civil war might clarify who is on which side and what they want. Their reasons for fighting might even be clear enough that we could take a side in good conscience and help that side win. But like everything else about Iraq, the violence that is going on over there is too complicated to be distilled down to those two words–civil war.

Lt Col Steve Miska, commander at FOB Justice in Baghdad, put it this way: “There are so many different enemies out there, and then there’s the complexity of the fight…There are so many different cats and dogs running around the battlefield that you could take the enemy (the insurgents and al Qaeda) away and we would still have a hard time trying to synchronize all the activities.”

One of those dogs is Moqtada al-Sadr, boy cleric and warlord of the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM for short). He’s not the titanic moster we tend to think he is, and by that I mean that he’s not all-powerful and doesn’t wield the same kind of influence that Sistani does. According to Vali Nasr, Sadr has a nickname–Mullah Atari–because as a teen he spent more time playing video games than boning up on his Islamic law. He’s seen as a student, not a master, and as a hothead, not a great leader–by most Shia in Iraq. Nevertheless, I’m on the record wishing our troops had been allowed to kill him two years ago. He has attacked US forces and is a menace. But he also leads a legal political entity in Iraq now, so we can’t go after him directly without him making some very big and serious mistakes. And going after him now would destabilize the Maliki government. That may not in itself be a bad thing, but we had better have a plan for dealing with what destabilizing Maliki could do to the overall battle space. It could, for instance, precipitate a civil war. Which could be a bad thing, or a good thing. Clear enough?

Sadr’s JAM is itself an army of cats and dogs, what the troops at FOB Justice refer to as “good JAM and bad JAM.” Good JAM are local men who have joined JAM not because of ideology, but either because they need the money or because they want to work within the only group in their neighborhood that has the clout and firepower to keep a lid on ordinary crime and violence, and in their neighborhood JAM is that group. So they join up. They couldn’t give two flips for Sadr, and they might join up with the Iraqi Army or police if they thought those groups were stronger than Sadr or could protect their families after they split with Sadr, but for now they’re just local anti-crime security agents. Politically, they’re potentially good guys. But soberingly, they see the Mahdi Army as stronger than the police–and they’re probably right. And the police are full of Sadrists anyway, so to some extent what’s the difference between joining the police or JAM? In some places, the differences are vast. In some, there is no difference at all.

Then there’s bad JAM, Sadr’s real loyalists. These guys are very dangerous. They form some of the death squads that hunt Sunnis, torture them and kill them. They foster organized crime to pay for their weapons, and they threaten local authorities who don’t go along with their way of thinking. They’re an Islamic version of la cosa nostra with the ambition to take over Iraq, and they’re flexible enough to use Maliki or mortar rounds, whichever they deem would be most effective on any given day. They’re very bad news. They’re aligned with Iran ideologically, too, and are getting training and weapons from Tehran’s Hezbollah goons.

The trick for our troops is to sort out good JAM from bad JAM, and that’s about as easy as it sounds sometimes. How do you know why any given Madhi fighter has joined the JAM? Our troops have to stay in an area long enough to get to know who the local players are and what their goals are. Our troops have to generate good, reliable intelligence on the ground, which means getting out of their “urban submarines” and walking around on foot talking to people on the street. That takes equal measures of guts and patience, and it takes knowing how to read people and watch for threats even while you’re engaged in conversations over chai. They have to hold meetings with local sheiks and sort out the good ones from the radicals. And they’re working from within bases and behind a language barrier, with a foreign culture thrown in just to make it more fun. To make it even more fun, the Pentagon has the annoying habit of having units train together away from Iraq and then splitting them up once they’re sent to Iraq. And, putting them in, say, Samarra for one rotation and Baghdad the next. The threat environment in Samarra versus Baghdad is totally different, and our troops end up burning up a third to half of their deployments just figuring out who’s who. And then they move on, and the next unit has to start that ground work all over again, because there is very little overlap in unit rotations.

Beyond the JAMs and the Badr Brigades, there are foreign arms dealers working a lucrative trade in Iraq. Captain Stacy Bare has seen them on the streets near FOB Justice, working what is currently the world’s biggest weapons bazar.

CPT Stacy Bare, civil affairs officer at FOB Justice;

“There hasn’t been a really big war for people to profit off of in the arms trade, and you’ve got French traders, Russian traders, Portuguese traders, Brazilian traders coming in. And you hear people say things and you wonder ‘What’s this German guy doing here?’” He continues, “You hear people talk about, well there’s Germans and French and they’re the problem…they’re just here to make a buck. You’ve got mafia guys that are here to make a buck. Like Col Miska said, take away the insurgency and we’ve still got a problem.”

That problem is organized crime, Iraqi and international. Organized crime certainly shows up in modern civil wars, usually providing drugs and arms, but its heavy influence in Iraq hints at least to me that we’re looking at something other than a classic civil war.

The troops don’t call it a civil war. They call it an insurgency, and their strategy, counterinsurgency, or COIN. And they’re working Iraq along classic COIN doctrine, working with the local people as if they are the principal war terrain, and working to co-opt as many of the “enemy” as possible without having to fight and kill every last one. I only put “enemy” in quotes because there isn’t any one enemy to deal with; Iraq is full of enemies, who hate the US, or hate each other, or will work with each other against the US or with the US against each other. Very few of them have national ambitions, and some are agents of Iran and to a lesser extent Syria.

If the troops aren’t treating the war they’re fighting as a civil war and they’re not calling it a civil war, it’s a good bet that whatever fight they’re in, it’s not a civil war. In the case of Iraq, it’s too chaotic and the violence is too uneven to be called a civil war." -Bryan from Iraq

Sorry for the double posting.

Agree with Scott. People with strong records are leading the plan in the midst of an Iraqi Mad Max. FOCO gone loco. Today it is reported that many Shia were detained in Baghdad. I wonder how right Bryan is about troop rotation and deployment with its negative effect on counterinsurgency operations.

Here at home:

"The McCain Plan to Escalate
Going From Bad to Worse" ….runs a new ad by MoveOn.org.
Gees...I thought “they” were coming for the Democrats.

So let me summarize the daily spin: what is really happening is that the Baker Report AND the Bush administration agree that a Going Long strategy is best (with critical mission differences notwithstanding). Without the added force component and more aggressive mission directives of Bush and Gates, they are similar. McCain seems to favor Go Big (although he knows that won't happen) but supports the surge along with the Bush “expectations of Maliki”. In a sense, he advocates a reformed and more aggressive stay-the-course with some new shock troops and better game plan for faster effect. Hillary seemed to favor the same approach but under Left attack, she now favors necessary conditions for our sustained help as well as some reductions or caps in force size. Obama has escalated a harder line, but lacks strong conviction and left himself some outs. Still, he clearly conveyed in a series of interviews that he considers Malaiki AND Iraq as lost, redeployment strongly suggesting undeployment and "fixing" the ensuing Middle East disaster through negotiations with Syria and Iran.

As I mentioned in the Hillary thread, voters have short memories. Obama counters Edwards peace fever with a more "intellectual" rejection of the "The Bush Doctrine". Left Side of Counsel of Foreign Relations. He's walking on thin ice as soon or later he will be asked about Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. He will undoubtedly be questioned about Sudan and Somalia. Saying we need to negotiate with fanatics without advantage makes him look a bit lame as everyone knows Deal or No Deal depends on your existing hand. This is probably as foolish as Biden's rant following the non-binding resolution. Every expert opposed invading Iraq? Every military expert objected to Cobra ll BEFORE we invaded? By Biden’s logic the Steeler should have sat out the previous year’s playoffs instead of retooling and redesigning their approach. Same might be said for the Bears if they succeed.

So Clinton moves to cap troop size in Iraq (which she knows will flounder in Congress). Obama might reconsider any bets on relative global calm or his Left of Hillary plan. He is trying to isolate her from the base instead of securing his security image with the Middle who did not vote to leave Iraq with a wimper.

China tested the first space weapon today (ignoring those land based lasers which China also has). Would Obama support (clandestine or declared) deployment of counter anti-satellite systems to protect our critical high ground from attack? Why would China feel the need to militarize space in the present global climate? Where is Obama on this one? Will Obama support deployment of 100kw lasers and pain rays? Will Obama support the warrentless interdiction of wmd materials and delivery technology imported or exported from sanctioned countries? Does Obama support the freedoms of people in Central Asia and Eastern Europe against illiberal hegemonies? Will we deploy defense “shields” and alliances with those most threatened with terrorism and hostility? Should we form new alliances and challenge partners who jeopardize our security through apathy or even through arms and technology sales.

I have a sense of what McCain would say. Much is based on what he HAS said. Obama's in the same mess with the base as Hillary if he plots a centrist line. He won’t win ultimately playing to the antiwar wing. McCain has done some brown nosing in the past, but has always kept his strategic thoughts somewhat consistent. Playing to the doves makes Obama easier prey for a moderate hawk of Independent, Republican or Democratic persuasion (who besides Clinton lately?) given the rate of global escalation. This dangerous trend exists independently of the US and cannot be swept under the rug by political rhetoric, whether it is Obama or McCain. Now both figures have many unanswered questions but Obama’s seems to be betting on our having lost Iraq and McCain is betting that we can still avoid the worst case scenarios which would further inflate our dangerous adversaries' confidence in their behavior..

Karbala