What Does It Mean, if You Have to Proclaim that the Surge is Succeeding in an OpEd?

If you have to say we're winning in the oped section, it means that you don't have the goods to prove your talk.

A newspaper is always more precise than the babbling heads of TV news.  It is also still, even today cheaper and able to stuff in more ads than TV news so able to take less expensive deals on advertising.

TV news tends to gear itself towards what is acceptable to the neocons and has a lot less depth than a print newspaper.

Therefore, if you can't get your assertion printed in the regular news sections, there is a reason.

And there are other problems with Mr. Kagan's column.

For one, Mr. K, early March is only 3 months from most of December, not four.  If you had used your fingers to count, you would have known that.  It's not that important of a point, but it shows sloppy journalism. 

Mr. Kagan acts like the surge was some magical beast that materialized and sat on Baghdad and other cities.  His words let you know that the bad guys are just escaping to the rural areas, but his tone glosses over that.   Just don't think for yourself about  when these bad guys will be coming back.  Maybe anytime within the next twenty years in which we want to pull out?

The problem hasn't been solved, Mr. K. just driven to the countryside to hide.

And when we want to pull out in a year or so the problems will come back to Baghdad and the cities.

And so we can't pull out.

It has been noted many places that this civil war cannot be won militarily, without wiping out vast populations.  It needs to be negotiated away by the Iraqi government acting as a fair mediator between the various populations.

And that is not happening, and will not happen as we work on Baghdad to secure the city in which most of the Iraqi government lives.  If they feel more secure they will realize they have a tremendous bargain by keeping American troops and money flowing their way.

How long will we have to stay there and maybe even add more troops to police their civil war so Shiites don't have to play fair with their countrymates?

Mr. Kagan's column itself shows this all works as long as we stay. But suppose we want to stop dumping billions into Iraq so Exxon and Chevron can get cheap oil?

Another point Kagan forgets is that the last big idea worked for a few weeks and neocons declared victory over that too.

On the other hand, Kagan's column would make a good submission for the Bradley foundation's annual batch of quarter million dollar prizes.

Good luck on that, Mr. K.

I'd like to link you to another blog post by someone who has actually been to Iraq on Kagan's column.  This person, of course is more knowledgeable than yours truly's.  I'm glad that such a person sees much of what I see about the surge, and about the vast hordes of bloggers that act like a cheering section for the Bush administration.  Michael Fumento also informed me that Robert Kagan's most important affiliation for what he was saying in his column today is that he is a member of the American Enterprise Institute.  In fact, that affiliation colors his column so deeply that not listing the affiliation is tantamount to lying about a source of bias.  Bad move, Mr. K.  And now I know you're trying to win the Bradley Foundation prize.

BTW, Michael Fumento has much more  on Kagan, the surge, and Iraq here.  (Wikipedia says Fumento is also associated with AEI and other groups that sound pretty similar, and was embedded in Iraq.  He also talks, on his own blog about writing for the Weekly Standard.  I consider those affiliations actually add importance to what he says about Kagan's column.)

Hat tip to Herschel Smith at The Captain's Journal where I first learned of Fumento's post.

tags: iraq  bush  insurgents  death squads  surge  news media  american enterprize institute  

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