"But that critique has gone about as far as it can go. A significant majority of voters today agree with Democrats that the decision to invade Iraq was wrong, and that the conduct of the occupation and attempts to rebuild the country have been failures. A large percentage of Americans believe the Bush administration misled the country on Iraq in the first place. Those opinions are solidly held and highly unlikely to change."
"This presents a unique opportunity for Democrats. Having used the Iraq War to win over millions of Americans who were previously disposed to support the other side, they can now build on that momentum by turning to other issues to seal the deal with voters who remain on the fence."
To be clear, I'm not agreeing with Joe Biden's ex-counselor on his first cluster of points about voters - I don't know what the majority of the nation thinks about all that. But what I did call in the air last week was the fact that harping on the war wasn't going to make any more friends, and that the Democrats would have to find something else. Still, to be totally honest, I'll be surprised if they end up following Johnathan Meyer's lead in a significant way in changing the subject, so I'll cut this little victory dance off at "ha!"
There's some very good news from Iraq today, if Maj. Gen. Gaskin is correct:
"Positive trends in Iraq’s Anbar province are permanent, the commander of coalition forces in western Iraq said today."
I suppose one way to drop "cautious" is to replace it with "permanent," and so much the better if it turns out to be true. There's really no doubt that Iraqis have turned on terrorists like AQI, and unless the jihadis start fixing water mains, taking out the trash and getting to work generating jobs, that's not going to reverse itself - if Gaskin is correct, then the Iraqis have won al-Anbar province, and that would be cause for celebration. But let's be clear as to what the situation is.
AQI may be a serious enemy, but they're not the insurgency's whole story. Michael Totten's latest dispatch highlights another driver of insurgent activity:
“Who were these guys in 2004, exactly?” I said. Most of the Sunni Triangle has been largely pacified lately, but it was a genuine rogues gallery not long ago, bristling with terrorists and guerrilla armies that flew many flags. “Were they Al Qaeda, the 1920s Revolution Brigade, Baathists?” I said.
“I think a lot of them, honestly, were looking for work,” he said.
This particular insurgency driver may defy Western sense, but there it is: Iraqis need jobs, or they might kill people to get paid (actually, that does sound like some parts of America). The focus in Anbar province needs to shift towards gainfully and usefully employing Iraqis to keep their families fed and their hands off the detonators, and right now the fastest way to do that is with American effort - have Iraqis work to better their communities in jobs commissioned and paid for by the American military. Yes, the Iraqi government should be commissioning these projects and hiring people to get them done. yes, the IG should pay them, instead of us. Yes, they should do things tolerably rather than having us do them well - but here's where T.E. Lawrence's genius lies: the key word is "tolerably".
As it stands, the IG is intolerably slow and intolerably corrupt, and until they get their act together, they will continue to lose out on legitimacy-building opportunities like local reconstruction projects and job generation - which is really a shame, because it's probably the best way there is to ease the Sunni-Shi'a tensions that exist between the IG and the Awakening movement. That doesn't mean the IG won't improve, and it doesn't mean Anbar can't advance, but it does mean that American forces have to stay for a while and get/keep those projects rolling in the absence of any guidance from IG, lest Anbar end up backsliding due to the spread of Devil's Workshop Syndrome.
I'm siding with Secretary Gates over Maj. Gen. Gaskin on this one; the Marines have to stay, because the progress is still reversible if it's left to idle hands and bad leadership.
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