AMcMahon30's Blog

October 22, 2007
Yet the experience of the last four years suggests that anger at the U.S. presence is a durable commodity both in and out of Iraq. "Any extended U.S. force presence, even a reduced one, clearly validates the al-Qaeda storyline," says Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air War College in Alabama. "Every Arab Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to express outrage at this crusader intrusion into the Arab heartland is going to go after those forces, as we are seeing now." If so, that renders Petraeus’ draw-down plan untenable: Five Army brigades is too large a force to merely monitor Iraqi forces, as Petraeus’ plan envisioned, yet it’s vastly too small to make a difference if those Iraqi forces are overwhelmed.

The U.S. has real interests in Iraq -- ensuring a stable flow of oil, preventing a regional conflagration, and arresting the spread of al-Qaeda, among others. Yet the U.S. presence in Iraq has consistently proven counterproductive to its aims. American interests, says Paul Pillar, are "not served enough to a degree that outweighs the negatives of our presence: continuing Iraqi casualties, the image of the U.S. occupying a foreign land unjustly, and U.S. troops being caught in the crossfire."

Perversely, Bush, in his final months in office, operates according to the political logic of an Iraqi insurgent: He wins by not obviously losing. It’s unclear whether the Democrats have an effective response. According to Jim Manley, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s spokesman, the strategy over the coming year will be to relentlessly schedule war-re

There's alot of truth in all of it. But it's a giant game of back and forth. But some of us must fight the good fight. Whatever that is.

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