COIN: On "The War as We Saw It"
Grim Beorn

This Sunday, the New York Times published a piece called "The War as We Saw It" by Specialist Buddhika Jayamaha, Sergeants Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, and Staff Sergeants Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy.  These gentlemen are assigned to the 82nd Airborne, which needs no introduction here.

I wish to begin by conveying our respectful appreciation of their service, and our hopes that their Staff Sergeant Murphy will recover quickly and fully from his injury.  It will surprise no one that I am going to argue against some of the conclusions they offer, but I do not wish disagreement to be read as disrespect.  Their service honors our nation, as does the fact that they feel they can provide a frank assessment of their observations to the public.

The piece they have published offers a despairing look at the situation in Baghdad, where elements of the 82nd have been operating for fifteen months.  I do not intend to challenge their understanding of the facts on the ground, as they are based on direct observation.  I assume the truth of every fact they report.  What I wish to challenge is their conclusions about how events will, they seem to say "must," develop.

See also: 82nd ABN NCOs in the NY Times

Today's must-read: How The New Republic Got Suckered (H/T)

Truth Laid Baird
James Taranto

This is a very heartening story from the Olympian, the daily newspaper in Washington's state capital:

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said Thursday that his recent trip to Iraq convinced him the military needs more time in the region, and that a hasty pullout would cause chaos that helps Iran and harms U.S. security.

"I believe that the decision to invade Iraq and the post-invasion management of that country were among the largest foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. I voted against them, and I still think they were the right votes," Baird said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

"But we're on the ground now. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work." . . .

Baird said he would not say this if he didn't believe two things:

• "One, I think we're making real progress."

• "Secondly, I think the consequences of pulling back precipitously would be potentially catastrophic for the Iraqi people themselves, to whom we have a tremendous responsibility . . . and in the long run chaotic for the region as a whole and for our own security."

The distinction Baird makes is a crucial one, and one that war opponents usually elide. Whether Congress made a mistake in authorizing Iraq's liberation is a separate question from what to do now. Yet war opponents act as if favoring a precipitous withdrawal logically and necessarily follows from regretting the decision to liberate. ....

The Perfect Conspiracy-Theorist Foil
Ed Morrissey (H/T: Lorie Byrd)

For the last seven years, Karl Rove has served as the focus for some of the worst vitriol thrown in the political and media arenas. When he decided to retire last week, his resignation captured the top spot in newspapers and news programming for days. Howard Kurtz wonders whether all of the fuss reflected the reality of Rove's work, or whether it served a synthetic narrative that the media created out of laziness: ...

Fundamentally Flawed
John Hinderaker

On Tuesday evening, CNN will debut a three-part series called God's Warriors. The series, devoted to an examination of "religious fundamentalism," is created and hosted by Christiane Amanpour; the first segment, to be aired Tuesday, is called "Jewish Warriors;" Wednesday's show is "Muslim Warriors," followed by "Christian Warriors" on Thursday.

While these three topics are treated as though they were on a par, there are some obvious distinctions. Like, the Christian "warriors" are home-schooling their children, while the Muslim "warriors" are blowing people up. If this Associated Press account is accurate, CNN's series is devoted to obfuscating such obvious differences rather than elucidating them.

For example: ...

Quick hits:

• Hillary to VFW: We’re making military progress, so let’s pull out;
  Update: Dems fret that Petraeus may report progress;
  Update: Petraeus to testify on 9/11?

• Feminist radio flops
  Michelle Malkin: Brian Maloney reported last week on the failure of Jane Fonda’s femtalk radio network. Apparently, the women who promised to empower their sisters on the airwaves are now set to stiff their own employees. Wimmin oppressing wimmin. How…liberating! Carrie Lukas has more in today’s NYPost on what women do and don’t want to hear: ...

• No more sanctuary for Elvira Arellano? Update: Deported back to Mexico
• Good riddance

• Hitting Tehran where it hurts
  If the new sanctions imposed on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) by the Bush administration are to have any meaningful, positive effect on Iranian behavior, they have to be seen as a first step toward pressuring Europe and Japan to curtail their financial relationships with the Iranian regime. Already confusion has emerged through leaks to The Washington Post and New York Times about how far the sanctions actually go. ...
• For Iranian Guards, life is rich

• Barack Dukakis