Kagan: The surge is working
Allahpundit
Not Fred Kagan, the AEI scholar who co-authored the surge strategy on which the military’s own plan is based, but Robert Kagan, author and WaPo columnist. There’s not much new here and arguments can certainly be made the other way, but it’s getting some buzz around the ’sphere and good news is always welcome. So here you go. Sample:
A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, “many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city,” the Fadhils report. “This change in mood is something huge by itself.”
On the flip side, more stuff that we already know: ...
If America Wins In Iraq And No
One Reports It, Will It Make A Difference?
Ed Morrissey
The Washington Post, among other news outlets, made a stink last week about the lack of a publicly-stated Plan B in the event the surge strategy failed to make a difference in Iraq. However, with preliminary indications showing success, Robert Kagan wonders whether journalists have a Plan B for themselves:
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.
Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect. ...
The defeatists have received large boosts from journalists all too willing to write about the successes of the insurgents but mostly silent on the successes of the Coalition. This may have been especially true in 2006, which did not go well for the Coalition, but got portrayed as an unmitigated failure in the American media during the 2006 election campaign. It made little difference in the end -- the Republicans did more to ensure their defeat domestically than anything that happened in Iraq -- but the result has left the media screeching like harpies that the mission in Iraq is doomed. Democratic leadership has taken the ball and wants to run with it in Congress, but only if they can do so without actually accepting responsibility for the retreat they demand. ...
The mission in Iraq is critical, and failure fatal. The collapse of Iraq would create a terrorist haven exponentially more dangerous than Somalia or Afghanistan, with oil revenues gorging terrorists on the hard currency they need to launch attacks all over the world. That's the reality now, the one we have to face, and that means we have to find ways to defeat the insurgencies and allow the elected, representative Iraqi government to gain enough strength to take control on their own.
Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy seems to be showing remarkable results. Talking about defeat and retreat while we have not finished playing out our hand would represent an unprecedent capitulation by the US to an enemy in the field -- and not an enemy like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviets, with a military that should frighten us -- but an enemy that has so little support and so few combatants that they dare not show their face to American troops in the streets of their own cities. ...
