How badly will success in Iraq hurt the Democrats?

[tomndebb]

@Evil One

In the past couple of months, American military deaths, Iraqi military/security and cililian deaths are all down. Many more of the locals are working with the military against the insurgency. AQ has been driven from Baghdad. Anbar province is now considered secure. Five thousand troops are set to come home soon. More shops are opening and other signs of a normal life are returning to Baghdad and elsewhere.

Define “many more of the locals.”

Baghdad and Anbar are secure because we saturated those locations with troops while leaving much of the rest of the country in the hands of the insurgents. Basically, we have been playing whack-a-mole chasing little insurrections around the country. Even with our increased troop levels, much of the “peace” in Baghdad, (and some of the “peace”) in Anbar is the sort of “peace” that was experienced in Sarajevo following its bout of ethnic cleansing. In fact, the majority of the reduction in violence in Iraq has been the result of the Balkan-like movement of people, separating likely factions into separate neighborhoods as Shi’a and Sunni are each forced from their homes to cluster together for defense. There is no reason to believe, under current conditions, that the moment U.S. forces are pulled back the majority neighborhoods will refrain from entering and obliterating their neighbors.

The current conditions include the fact that al-Maliki continues to play a destructive power game. Many Shi’a factions are vying for power, and quite a few deaths are the result of Shi’a on Shi’a power grabs. Al-Maliki is trying to undercut al-Sadr’s support by portraying himself as the resolute opponent of Sunnis while relying on al-Sadr’s army to support his attacks on Sunnis and blasting the U.S. on every occasion for doing anything to protect Sunnis. Meanwhile, in the North, the Kurds are bracing for a Turk invasion with no reason to believe that al-Maliki will have the resources, even IF he had the will, to defend them and no one in the Iraqi government is making any serious effort to get the Kurds to rein in attacks on Turkey.

By the time of November 2008, we will be holding together a toatally fragmented country filled with armed camps that “refrain” from destroying each other only under threat of U.S. retaliation and the party that proposes that we can “win” this debacle will need to assure the American people that they need only commit to providing 500 - 700 deaths and thousands of injuries a year for the next ten years or so and we’ll have this all wrapped up. (Meanwhile, the one place we should have been fighting, before Bush removed the necessary troops to go play in Iraq, is beginning to crumble and by November 2008, the Pakistan situation may well have blown up into a really serious crisis.)

The electorate can be fickle and I will not predict any votes eleven and a half months from now, but I will gurantee that however those votes turn out, it will not be based on any false claims that we “won” in Iraq.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@Sam Stone

If that’s the case, then Hillary is probably better positioned than the others. She refrained from the overt, “The war is lost” rhetoric that some of the other candidates engaged in. As usual, she’s been very canny. If things turn around by the next election, she can point fingers at the others while having no ‘smoking gun’ of her own.

Or did I miss her flat-out saying that the surge was hopeless and should be abandoned? She’s usually more careful than that.

Hillary is already so certain that she will be president She’s playing her cards with a view to public reaction and her legacy in the oval office. She’ll need options.

It is a political benefit to all candidates if the situation continues to improve. Hardly anyone mentions that it was the revered presidencies of the democrats Kennedy and Johnson that got America into Vietnam and the Nixon administration that paved the way for the exit.

Furthermore, I don’t think any candidate, as commander in chief will want to let down the troops and pull out prematurely without at least something to show for the troop’s efforts.

[BrainGlutton]

@Evil One

But politics being what it is, it’s time to discuss how the premature investment in defeat is going to impact the Democrats next year.

“Investment in defeat”?! If only! Not one of the Dem front-runners has promised to end the occupation ASAP, and the Dem-controlled Congress has chickened out at every chance to defund the war! I’m very much afraid that if in November '08 the Dems increase their majority and capture the WH, we’ll still have troops there two or three years later!

[tomndebb]

@The Flying Dutchman

It is a political benefit to all candidates if the situation continues to improve. Hardly anyone mentions that it was the revered presidencies of the democrats Kennedy and Johnson that got America into Vietnam and the Nixon administration that paved the way for the exit.

I don’t know how it is reported in Canada, but Johnson is widely despised for his role in the escalation in Vietnam and Nixon withdrew under conditions identical* to those that were in place at the time he was elected (with his secret plan to end the war).

• They were not exactly identical, of course, several tens of thousands of people had died and a lot more infrastructure had been destroyed by then, but without actually admitting he had done so, Nixon basically followed Sen. George Aiken’s (R-VT) 1966 advice to declare victory and bring home the troops.

[elucidator]

U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity (Published 2007)

U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections…There have been signs that American influence over Iraqi politics is dwindling after the recent improvements in security — which remain incomplete, as shown by a deadly bombing Friday in Baghdad. While Bush officials once said they aimed to secure “reconciliation” among Iraq’s deeply divided religious, ethnic and sectarian groups, some officials now refer to their goal as “accommodation.”…

They’re not aiming for success. They’re just hoping for Defeat Lite.

[marshmallow]

This is like analyzing whether the Crips or the Bloods will be able to add a new street to their territory. It’s interesting, but good god, why would you root for either of them?

Say what you will about the American people, but they tend to form opinions slowly. And once they have notions in their head they hold onto them. I find it incredibly unlikely that, even in the face of success in Iraq (which I take to mean a trough in the death statistics of U.S. servicemen) the American people will suddenly migrate to the Republicans, who they currently view as incompetent liars on this issue. If you’re a Republican strategist, you don’t want voters thinking about the word Iraq very much.

The Democrat’s line for quite some time is that Republicans are bungling fools who don’t know what they’re doing – “vote for us because we know how to run this empire and we know how to pacify shithole backwaters like Iraq and Afghanistan,” basically. If there is a sustained reduction in the death of U.S. troops going into the 2008 election season I would expect Democrats to attempt to tie it to the fact they were controlling Congress and “supervising the children,” as it were. Given even minimum media supplication I find this an easy scenario to envision working, especially with the appealing post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. “Well, after we voted the Dems in things started to get better…”

I don’t know what the GOP should do, given potential future Iraq success. They could say that things could be even better if it weren’t for the obstructionist Dems, but I don’t know if anyone outside the 30% would buy that. Ignoring it is also dangerous, since when it comes up later the public might ask why we still have 160,000 soldiers there if things are going so well. I think the best the GOP can do is torpedo the Dem’s attempt to take credit and make it a neutral field on the topic of Iraq, then focus on some other issue. I hear the gay Mexicans are all the rage these days.

This all, again, assumes the American people will come to perceive Iraq as getting better. It’s a possible path but it will take many, many months to occur. Color me skeptical.

@BrainGlutton

I’m very much afraid that if in November '08 the Dems increase their majority and capture the WH, we’ll still have troops there two or three years later!

You’re cute. Try twenty or thirty.

[elucidator]

Doubt it. Not the thing about BG being cute, I’m sure he’s as cute as a cross between a Munchkin and a penguin.

But a long standing troop presence would be the result of one of two scenarios.

Number one, the Bushiviks fondest dreams come true, the Iraqi electorate discovers a wild enthusiasm for everything American, votes us their best friends forever, and turns into South Korea with camels, steadfast ally in the War on Terra, blither blather, you know the drill.

Possible, I suppose. Lord knows, stranger shit has happened. But when a proposition is strange and wonderful, it requires some pretty powerful evidence of feasibility. If anybody has such evidence, that the Iraqis have recently fallen madly in love with us, this would be a good time to whip it on us.

The other scenario, of course, is that it remains shit and for some brain-dead reason we decide to keep bleeding ourselves white in the Godforsaken Desert. I’m pretty sure we’re not this stupid, but we did elect Nixon. Twice.

[Ocean_Annie]

@Evil One

A tiresome and annoying question for many of you, I’m sure. But…reality must intrude.

Much like in the national press, Iraq has been off the SDMB radar screen for quite a while now. Given the turn of events over the past couple of months, it’s quite understandable. But politics being what it is, it’s time to discuss how the premature investment in defeat is going to impact the Democrats next year.

For starters, It puts the Democratic presidential contenders in quite a bind. Bill Richardson has apparently made the choice to continue to pretend that it’s November 2006 instead of 2007 with his statements about the situation in Iraq. The surge is not working he says in the Las Vegas debate.

Umm-hmm.

Is he (a) delusional? Or (b) trying to cynically play to the far-left base of Democratic primary voters?

I don’t think any spin on Iraq is going to persuade most voters. The US is fighting a trillion dollar ghost. The shock and awe campaign successfully toppled Saddam Hussein, reduced Iraq to rubble, incited a civil war, incurred massive US debt, and diverted much needed attention away from the real problems facing the vast majority of Americans. There is nothing to win. We can only hope to salvage and restore faith in the US government.

[Steve_MB]

@Evil One

I’m assuming that will be the case. I could be wrong about the positive developments continuing, but I don’t think so.

It no longer matters whether positive developments begin or continue. The administration has so squandered its credibility trumpeting dubious good news that actual good news will be assumed to be more BS, and ignored.

[Frostillicus]

I agree that Iraq is now a magnificent success story. Therefore, we can bring the troops home.

[elucidator]

And if they get off the boats and planes, and go straight to Washington, DC for a month long “Gosh, Do We Ever Love George Bush and the Republican Party”, and then are bussed to every precinct in the country to register Republican voters…I don’t* fucking * care!

Just home. ASAP, not FUBAR

[Little_Nemo]

I guess this shows you can make a success out of any situation if you set the bar low enough. If the goal was just to reduce American casualties, then the anti-war people will point out that their plan - a quick withdrawal of all Americans from Iraq - would work better than the surge plan. The surge was supposed to create enough peace in Iraq that the Iraqis would be able to form a stable and self-sufficient government. And I don’t think we’ve reached that level of success yet.

And what’s with “investment in defeat”? Is that the new conservative buzzword? I can see where it came from - a lot of conservatives have “invested in victory” and are finding the value of their portfolio is dropping.

[Squink]

@Little Nemo

And what’s with “investment in defeat”? Is that the new conservative buzzword?

It’s been around for a year or more:

Investor’s Busines Daily, February 16, 2007: The Democrats’ Investment In Defeat
Boston Globe, August 29, 2007 good news is bad news for the Democratic left, where opposition to the war has become an emotional investment in defeat.
Townhall November 14, 2007: Reid’s threat provides a great moment of clarity about the Democrats’ deep investment in defeat.

I think the right is just getting more strident as they begin to realize the magnitude of the electoral hole they dug themselves into. It’s a good thing the nation’s stridency receptors are long since maxed out, or the spin might actually make headway.

[elucidator]

Pressure for Results: The Politics of Tallying the Number of Iraqis Who...

A New York Times article about the political and numerical realities behind the glowing reports of Iraqis returning by the thousands due to “increased security”. There’s too much to excerpt meaningfully. If you want the dreary facts there’s the link, if you’re lazy (and what sensible person isn’t?), suffice to say, in the words of Sportin’ Life, It Ain’t Necessarily So.

But then, you probably knew that.

[mhendo]

@Evil One

You can continue to dig for these sorts of things and find political comfort in them if you wish. But to continue to deny that deaths nationwide are down and other improvements are being made daily is delusional.

Let’s try a more broadly-calculated definition of success then.

Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT and with the National Bureau of Economic Research, published a paper at the end of September called “Is the Surge Working? Some New Facts.” You can download the paper from here (scroll to the bottom of the page for the links).

Greenstone sought to use criteria that, he hoped, would weed out the political biases and predispositions that so many people have about the US venture in Iraq, and would focus on more accurate indicators of Iraq’s mid- to long-range prospects. Accordingly, he looked at the market for Iraqi bonds on the world financial markets, arguing that the only concern of those trading in these instruments is to make a profit. Because profit is all that concerns these traders, they are more likely, he argues, to eschew “personal biases” in making their decisions about the future of the Iraqi economy. His conclusions rests upon an assertion that, because profit motive outweighs personal bias, it “isn’t surprising that financial markets have a good track record of predicting future events.”

Here are some relevant paragraphs from his conclusion. First, before discussing the question of bond prices, he notes:

The security situation has improved insofar as civilian fatalities have declined without any concurrent increase in casualties among coalition and Iraqi troops. However, other areas, such as oil production and the number of trained Iraqi Security Forces have shown no improvement or declined. Making sound decisions about how to proceed in Iraq based on such conflicting indicators is challenging and uncertain. Moreover, this uncertainty may allow analyst judgment and politics to play too large a role.

Then, after a paragraph summarizing why the financial market data is relevant, he says:

I examine the price of Iraqi state bonds, which the Iraqi government is currently servicing, on world financial markets. After the Surge, there is a sharp decline in the price of the Iraqi bonds, relative to alternative bonds. This decline signaled an increase of approximately 40% in the market’s expected annual probability of default. This finding suggests that, to date, the Surge is failing to pave the way toward a stable Iraq and may in fact be undermining it. In many respects, it is consistent with recent assessments that fail to find that the Surge has led to substantial progress in meeting many of the 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for progress in Iraq (GAO 2007).

The paper has graphs and everything!

I’m not completely convinced by his rather blithe dismissal of political and personal factors as a component of economic and financial decisions, but he offers some food for thought to those who want a more nuanced yardstick for success that “How many people were blown up today?”

[don_t_ask]

@ITR champion

To me, all these things look like evidence of failure. But no doubt Evil One will soon explain why they’re actually evidence of success.

Perhaps he is alluding to the fine David Niven, Alberto Sordi film The Best of Enemies where Niven’s English officer is berating Sordi for the Italian army’s failures and Sordi asks what recent success the British army has had. As best I recall:

Niven replies, “Dunkirk.”
Sordi laughs and says, “But Dunkirk was a retreat, a disaster.”
“Yes,” replies Niven, “and it is a tremendous success to see that as victory.”

[tagos]

I don’t suppose we can see some cites about the Surge working rather than just assume it with an airy wave of the hand can we? The Surge is/was about breathing space for political reconciliation not a reduction in violence per se.

Surge working?

BAGHDAD — The sniping is incessant, the skirmishes bruising. For months, the verbal warfare between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and his Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, has been escalating.

Now Iraqi politicians and American diplomats and analysts fear that the very public feuding between two of Iraq’s most influential leaders will doom even the minimal hopes that exist for progress on a host of key benchmarks — such as holding provincial elections and equitably sharing oil revenues.

“This is not merely about personalities quarreling over something trivial,” said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Middle East for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “It’s about control of the state. … It’s about basic interests, factional and sectarian, and survival.”

Despite a dramatic decline in violence, there’s been no sign of reconciliation among Iraq’s leaders and no progress on many key issues, according to U.S. and Iraqi assessments. Without progress, the open warfare between Iraq’s many factions that seems to have eased in recent weeks, is likely to resurge, once the United States begins reducing the number troops in Iraq.

And while the fissures of Iraqi society are much deeper than the sniping between Maliki and Hashemi, their dispute shows neatly why the American troop surge hasn’t ended Iraq’s troubles, despite a 55 percent decline in violent attacks since June.

Maliki’s latest lob came Tuesday when he accused Hashemi of using his position on Iraq’s presidency council to block legislation passed by Iraq’s Shiite-dominated parliament. The prime minister also belittled Hashemi’s party, the Iraqi Sunni bloc, as unrepresentative of the country’s minority Sunni Arab population — despite being parliament’s largest Sunni bloc.

Hashemi has clashed with Maliki on a number of human rights and security issues. A former military officer who never joined Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Party, he’s pushed for amnesty for thousands of Sunnis who’ve been detained. He recently visited crowded prisons, with television cameras in tow, to criticize Maliki’s government over alleged mistreatment of detainees, the vast majority of whom are Sunni Arabs.

Maliki called it political grandstanding.

Hashemi, who lost three siblings to sectarian violence, charges that Maliki’s government has turned a blind eye to the activities of Shiite militias and promotes sectarianism — a charge that enrages Maliki.

“It’s becoming more than political; it’s becoming personal, and that’s unfortunate. I blame both of them. I hope they can just get over it, because it’s affecting the credibility of the government,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament. “At this moment, they should be together now that the security situation is better. Iraq needs teamwork.”

U.S. officials express frustration that Iraqi leaders aren’t acting quickly enough to resolve long-simmering disputes. The chief U.S. Embassy spokesman earlier in the week urged Iraqi officials to put their differences aside.

Iraq’s “leaders have to take advantage of this opportunity to continue serious work in focusing on the most important matters at hand to move the country forward,” the spokesman, Phil Reeker, said. “I think it’s very important that the Iraqi people are looking to their leaders to provide them with progress, with security, with services, with jobs, and it is legislative activity that is going to lead to that.”

A status report released last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Iraqi government continues to be woefully behind its goal of achieving most of the 18 benchmarks established by the United States as signs of progress.

The GAO blamed sectarianism within the government for undermining the reconciliation effort. Few see a quick resolution.

Cordesman said the disputes are deeply historical — among Iraq’s population of Shiite and Sunni Arabs and Iraqi Kurds. “There is not going to be reconciliation because of some magic agreement that will make everybody forget” past grievances, Cordesman said.

So - no the Surge is not ‘working’ so far. Troops are already being drawn down with no guarantee that a non-sectarian force is able to step into the breach. What happens when the Mahdi Army calls off its ceasefire?

What happens when the ‘enemies of our enemies’ in Anbar etc decide the Shia government has not held up their implied end of the bargain?

I know they are a tiresome bunch of ingrates but let’s see what the Iraqis say shall we?

September poll

The results of the poll reflect a great degree of dissatisfaction with the US “surge”, with a vast majority of respondents considering the move to have made the situation in the country worse rather than better.

“How long do you think US and other Coalition forces should remain in Iraq?”

The autumn 2007 poll reflects growing disillusionment with the occupying forces’ presence in Iraq. There is a growing consensus among respondents that coalition troops should leave the country immediately.

Some 47% of respondents now back an immediate withdrawal, compared with 35% in February.

The poll also shows dwindling support for troops remaining in the country, even in support of the Iraqi government and security forces. Only 10% of those surveyed favour coalition forces remaining for that purpose.

IS VIOLENCE JUSTIFIED?

“Thinking about the political action of other people, do you find each of these items to be acceptable or not acceptable?”

Attacks on coalition forces
All Sunni Arab Shia Arab Kurds
Acceptable 57% 93% 50% 5%
Not acceptable 43% 7% 50% 94%
One of starkest statistics from the poll is the overwhelming support for attacks on coalition forces among Iraq’s minority Sunni population; 93% of those surveyed said they considered it acceptable.

Iraqis polled in the latest survey are increasingly disillusioned with the government, figures suggest. More than a quarter of those polled in 2005 said that they thought the government was doing a “very good job”, whereas by August 2007, this figure has fallen to just over 5%.

HOW DO YOU RATE CONDITIONS WHERE YOU LIVE?
			All	North 	Central South	Shia	Sunni
					(inc 
					B'dad)
Security situation 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	%
Very good 		15 	33 	4 	16 	16 	27
Quite good 		28 	31 	14 	46 	46 	25
Quite bad 		24 	14 	31 	23 	23 	25
Very bad 		32 	22 	51 	15 	15 	42 

Does this look like ‘working’ to anyone?

Maybe this thread could be moved to the Wishful Thinking Forum?

[Steve_MB]

The mutable definition of “success”.

[Merijeek]

@Steve MB

The mutable definition of “success”.

Nah, if you do that I might miss out on the sequel: “How Badly Will Getting Too Many Votes Hurt Democrats?”

-Joe

[BrainGlutton]

You know, Evil One, you really ought to review this thread for a reality check before posting further in the current thread.