Fabius Maximus:

January 21st, 2007 at 7:39 pm

Do you consider it worthwhile to start a poll at SWC: will the surge work before we must drawdown our troop counts? Will be interesting to see how many people, like Kilcullen, take this nonsense seriously.

On a different note, Iraq has shown that Bush’s critics were wrong and he did pay attention at Yale. As taught by scholars in the humanities and “soft” social sciences, reality is malleable. The “narrative” is all-important, the social construct we weave around events.

Fabius Maximus:

January 21st, 2007 at 9:05 pm

I did not realize it’s “opposites day” at Zenpundit! What pretends to be hard analysis is actually humor!

The Carl Conetta article shows that the left can be as delusional as the neo-cons. A civil war in Iraq is bad, but why not go all the way to a regional war?

Invite the Turks in to kill the Kurds. The Iranian Shia to kill the Arab Sunni. The Arab Saudi Sunni Arabs to kill the Arab Shia.

Fun for all.

Of course it might not play out that way. They might all gather in Iraq as peacekeepers and sing kumbayah. After all, that’s the assumption made by the Admin and DoD war planners.

Perhaps they were not wrong, just early.

Anonymous:

January 21st, 2007 at 10:53 pm

That Amazode tool is like watching water being poured on Gremlins.

mark:

January 21st, 2007 at 10:58 pm

Hi Fabius,

I sent Carl a note prior to posting but he has not yet responded to my observations, based on what you have already seen here from me.

I’d say go for it in regards to SWC poll. I think the key to the response though is the definition of what we mean by ” Did the surge work?”. I’m pretty confident that the irregulars will either withdraw temporarily or be chewed up if they are cornered and forced to fight.

But after that military moment you either have a viable political or diplomatic step ready to go or you don’t.

Dan tdaxp:

January 21st, 2007 at 11:36 pm

Thanks for the links!

Dave Schuler:

January 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 am

The point being made by Pat Lang (among others) is that there’s no politics to be had in Iraq. At least not what we mean by the word.

As to diplomacy… Pretty hard to come by when you aren’t on speaking terms with most of the prospective negotiating partners.

mark:

January 23rd, 2007 at 4:12 am

Hi Dave,

Yeah, the political moment has passed I’m afraid.

The not talking part I don’t get. Ok, perhaps not State if you want to have candid discussions and deal-cutting but that’s why we have a CIA and other backchannels. For those kinds of negotiations that won’t work in the light of day.

Anonymous:

January 24th, 2007 at 4:06 am

Hewitt and Barnett. I guess it might be a useful lab experiment to see what happens when intellectual dishonesty meets jargon-laced delusion, but otherwise…..
— sglover