National government: still in gridlock with no sign of progress. Boycotts and resignations make immediate progress unlikely.

Local government: signficant progress, particularly in what were formerly the worst areas. Most tribes in Anbar and Diyala provinces (declared "irretrievably lost" 1 year ago) have stopped fighting the US and started fighting in surgents.

Civil war: significant progress in reducing sectarian violence. Many Shi'a militias have gone to ground. Many Sunni militias are attacking al Qaeda instead of Shi'i.

al Qaeda violence: undiminished, but losing effectiveness for its primary mission, which is to foment Civil War. The second bombing of the Samara shrine (unlike the first) had essentially no success in increasing the number of sectarian attacks.

Daily life: much improved in the worst places in Ramadi, Fallujah, Baquba, and other places that in 2006 were run by al Qaeda. Markets open, garbage collected, reconstruction, etc. Improvement in those districts in Baghdad that have been reached by the new strategy. Insurgents still preventing improvements in power generation, oil production, and other key metrics.

Civilian deaths: significantly down over 2006.

US casualties: too high with new strategy putting more soldiers and marines on the streets.

These boards have voted strongly for getting out of Iraq. If we leave, or if we hide in remote bases, Iraqis say that the government will fall and the civil war will resume in earnest. Civilian casualties could quickly move from 100/day to levels that we most recently saw in Rwanda, of multiple thousands per day. It could be much worse than Rwanda. Rwandans had only machetes. You can kill a lot more people with an AK than you can with a blade.

Less likely, but possible, is that the fighting spreads to other mixed Sunni/Shia areas in the region.

If we pull back and Iraqi or regional genocide ensues, what should our response be?

Certainly Zawahiri would claim jihad's greatest victory. If al Qaeda is stronger now than before, how strong will it be then?

George Bush thinks he going to win the war on terror, when in fact, he isn't. The only thing he is doing is getting our troops killed. What is wrong with Bush? Doesn't he have any brains? We are not getting nowhere in Iraq. Can't he see that? Bush needs to be kicked out of office, because he is not doing anything right. What is wrong with this country, letting Bush get away with what he does? Something needs to be done and soon. Let our troops come home and put them on our borders and keep the unwanted out and get the unwanted out of our country. Can't you see these illegal immigrants are ruining our country? This country is going down-hill and it's Bush's fault. I wish America could see that.

Ron:

George Bush thinks he going to win the war on terror, when in fact, he isn't.

I don't see how you can say that. If you had asked Lincoln early in 1864 who was going to win, he would have said "the Confederacy".

Ron:

What is wrong with Bush?

It's a mistake to focus on Bush. I prefer to focus on consequences. Right now our actions look like they might stop the outbreak of a much larger war, and prevent the death of possibly millions of people.

Ron:

Let our troops come home and put them on our borders and keep the unwanted out and get the unwanted out of our country. Can't you see these illegal immigrants are ruining our country?

Our country is incredibly strong and getting better all the time. We're living longer, and living better, than anyone has in human history. The trick is to keep the whole thing from falling apart. And immigration isn't going to matter either way. California has the largest number of illegals, and its economy is doing just peachy.

And remember, we're highly dependent on imported oil, mostly from semi-Islamic tyrannies. If we turn away from the world, and those countries blow up, where will our energy come from? And don't say ethanol. We'll be importing most of our energy for decades to come, even in the best case.

For all you people who back 'The Surge', who back the current government run by Maliki - explain this to all of us who are puzzled by your support of BUSH!

1. Attacking IRAQ was/is a disastrous decision that has only let OSAMA and Al Qa'ida reconstitute itself in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

2. Al Maliki is a member of the DAAWA party - a founded in Tehran, pro-Iranian, virulently ANTI-American party.

So tell us supporters of BUSH, how does being in IRAQ, supporting a Shiite theocracy which will spit in our faces as soon as we stop FUNDING them with OUR MONEY??

ArCoog:

Attacking IRAQ was/is a disastrous decision that has only let OSAMA and Al Qa'ida reconstitute itself in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

They've been reconstituting themselves for awhile now, to not much effect. And Pakistan is a nightmare to deal with. I don't think you're suggesting we invade that nuclear nation, are you?

ArCoog:

how does being in IRAQ, supporting a Shiite theocracy which will spit in our faces as soon as we stop FUNDING them with OUR MONEY??

If I add "make sense" to the end or your question, I can understand it. My answer is that we're not supporting the Shiites, we're trying to bring the 25 million Iraqis out of hell. If we support any group more than the others, it's probably the Kurds. Lots of Iraqis have been spitting at us since day 1, but what's interesting is that the Sunnis have largely stopped doing so since the surge began.

I'd also say that if we exit Iraq, there's a significant possibility that the the whole region blows up, which would wreck our economy.

So to answer your question, victory is getting Iraq to a reasonably stable state with a functioning government and protection for the minority populations and that presents no threat of a wider conflagration. If we're patient, it's doable.

The problem that I see, Larry, is that the new Iraqi government we’re trying to get built is rotting from the inside faster than it’s being constructed. The police and military have been heavily infiltrated by insurgents whose loyalties lie with their own sects rather than the central government. They work with the central Iraqi government and the U.S. forces while they’re on official duty, but spy for the insurgents and participate in death squads on their “free time.” The politicians are already so ineffectual and corrupt that they’re taking off the entire month of August because trying to salvage a real government at this stage is apparently too much trouble (not that they’ve accomplished much on the job so far anyway, I guess). Even the Bush administration’s own assessment of the situation, which as Kaplan notes is outrageously unrealistic, notes that insufficient progress is being made in the most critical areas.

Iraq was never a big enough concern for Americans to justify a half-trillion-dollar investment and the loss of thousands of lives and untold amounts of military equipment. Iraq was a dictatorial one-party state that was corrupt from top to bottom. There was never any precedent or rational scenario where such a society was going to be invaded by a foreign army and turned by force into a democracy in any reasonable time frame. Maybe in 20 or 50 or 100 years it might. But Americans can’t be expected to suffer the current burn rate of their dollars and their soldiers waiting for this unlikely event to happen—as if it mattered that much to us anyway. The Iraqis hate us and want no part of our ways. They are, sorry to say, incapable of cooperating with us or even with each other enough to create a successful society. They will, one way or another, sink back into ethnic strife, civil war and eventual tyranny no matter what we do, how much we spend on them, or how many of our soldiers we sacrifice to try to give them something they don’t seem to want.

When will you people get into your heads that this whole optimistic scenario you keep describing was nothing but the pipe dream of a handful of deluded neocons who’ve never succeeded in anything outside of the realm of U.S. politics? They’re not scholars, intellectuals, statesmen or military men. They’re political hacks. That’s all they ever were. They’re good at selling influence and appointing each other to important-sounding positions. They thought it would be cool to try this neat experiment in nation building on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime. The real tragedy is how much damage they’ve done with their big talk and their big plans, convincing so many people that they actually knew what they were doing. This truly has been a ship of fools.

about what Zawahiri might say about this or that. The jihadist threat to US security has been blown way out of proportion. They got in a good lick on 9/11, almost entirely due to apathy and incompetence on the part of US security professionals, and Bush et al made a meal of it. The only strategic threat that he and other jihadists pose to the US is that they might somehow disrupt the oil supplies out of the Gulf. So why don't we just concentrate directly on security of the oil patch which is a relatively small area. We could probably get the other endusers of Gulf oil in on such a project, if we had any diplomatic skill at all. It's good to have the US army on the ground in force in the Gulf, but only to protect the oil supply. Stay out of arab politics, or at least be a little more subtle about meddling. Why use blatantly prejudicial expressions like "hiding in remote bases"? Helping the tribes in Anbar fight foreign jihadists is useful, securing the oil fields to enhance production is useful, plenty of missions for the US army besides playing cop for Maliki. Let the arabs sort out who succeeds Saddam's regime and what form the governance takes.

In Kirkuk, a battle royal is shaping up between the Kurds who intend to legally incorporate the city into Kurdistan and the Arabs and Turkomans who've been displaced in recent years. Surgeman Bush is helping that one along by sending al Qaeda/insurgent elements north to strike where it's easy.

Shiite militias are locked in a more or less contant battle among themselves. Militias, not voters, dictate who the local officials are. The British have drawn their presence down to minimum and plan to get out this year.

The second bombing of the al Askari mosque didn't produce much effect for the obvious reason that the building was already mostly destroyed. Do you think Shiite Muslims are crazies whose buttons can be pushed by anything?

The Splurge is a stopgap, temporary measure that will change nothing in the long run. It has decreased violence somewhat in Baghdad, for the obvious reason that if you put cops on every street corner criminals will look for easier and safer places to work. They will come right back as soon as the troops are drawn down, which is inevitable given that the U.S. is at the end of its reserves. Meanwhile, the violence simply moves to Dilayiya, Kirkuk, etc. Your indicator of "progress" here is meaningless without significant movement towad a genuine national political settlement, which even the Bush administration admits isn't happening.

You don't mention that oil production is lower than it was in Saddam's last years, over 2 million refugees (including a good part of the educated middle class) have fled Iraq and 2 million more are internally displaced, 30 billion dollars of Amenican reconstruction money has been mostly wasted, Iraq remains completely incapable of controlling its borders, the Kurds are clearly going their own way, the Iranians continue to interfere, and, of course, the U.S. is perceived around the world (but especially in the Middle East) as an incompetent Brobdingnag. Oh, I forgot--we're half a trillion dollars in the hole on this caper. With no end in sight.

If we pull out, the terrorists win? Yup, they do. That's one reason lots of us thought Bush was being stupid in 2003. The Stalingrad analogy circulated in the Fray at that time. But of course the neocon-lovers shouted it down; they had to have their "cakewalk." Unfortunately, this was a consequence that could have been avoided only by not making huge blunders to begin with. Like, Hitler might have avoided Stalingrad by not invading Russia, or at least by not interfering with OKW strategic decisions. But when the Sixth Army was surrounded, it didn't do Hitler any good to order it to fight to the death. Similarly, it won't do us any good to go on killing Iraqis. We should have been looking to our own security all along--Afghanistan, homeland security (practically nothing real has been done, you know)--instead of wasting lives, money, time and goodwill in Iraq. But we can't save ourselves now by clinging desperately to a failed strategy.

What about the moral argument: we gotta stop the bloodbath? Yeah, right--like we're stopping it right now? And what makes you so sure there would be any such bloodbath? Item: a majority of Iraqis polled say that violence would decrease if the Americans left. Item: al Maliki said two days ago his army was capable of handling security. And even if there is a bloodbath, why is a short high-intensity civil war necessarily worse than a protracted low-intensity one? If the Iraqis need to have a civil war to settle things, then maybe they just need to get on with it.

The American government struggled for many years to prop up various South Vietnamese governments (that actually were pretty capable compared to the clown show in the Green Zone). In the end, the last one couldn't hold its own and everything we had fought for, all our dead and wounded, that all just went down the drain because Johnson and Nixon didn't place their bets well. Bush wouldn't fight in that war, but he went out and bet the farm on this one. Guess what, Sadie? He lost it. The sooner we face just how vast a blunder this war has been, the better off we'll be.

fingerpuppet:

The problem that I see, Larry, is that the new Iraqi government we’re trying to get built is rotting from the inside faster than it’s being constructed.

There's a difference between "slow progress" and "rotting". I don't think either of us really know which we have. We're blind men and it's our elephant. That's why I give it a failing grade. But there is more than one thing happening there.

fingerpuppet:

Iraq was never a big enough concern for Americans to justify a half-trillion-dollar investment and the loss of thousands of lives and untold amounts of military equipment.

That's not really the issue at this stage, so I'll leave it for the historians.

fingerpuppet:

There was never any precedent or rational scenario where such a society was going to be invaded by a foreign army and turned by force into a democracy in any reasonable time frame.

Nonsense. Such turnarounds have occurred often. E.g., Afghanistan is a work in progress, but there is progress.

fingerpuppet:

this unlikely event to happen—as if it mattered that much to us anyway.

It does matter. If the region implodes, the consequences for the US and global economy are literally incalculable, even if you give the people up for lost.

fingerpuppet:

The Iraqis hate us and want no part of our ways.

Some hate, some don't.

fingerpuppet:

They are, sorry to say, incapable of cooperating with us or even with each other enough to create a successful society.

More nonsense. How can you justify these categoricals? They have gotten along adequately well for a long time. The proof is in the many mixed Baghdad neighborhoods and marriages.

fingerpuppet:

this whole optimistic scenario you keep describing was nothing but the pipe dream

What optimistic scenario? I'm not predicting the place will turn into Iowa, just that stability and progress can be progressively achieved. More than that, my argument for persisting is much more about the consequences of failure, than about anything else.

fingerpuppet:

They thought it would be cool to try this neat experiment in nation building on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime.

They, in particular, Bush, hated the whole idea of nation building. That's why they didn't plan for it. They thought that all they had to do was kill the tyrant. Nope. There is a huge problem there, to which we have no short-term solution. But that problem isn't going to disappear, and as Iran goes nuclear, it's going to get even more dicey.

You don't say whether you advocate pulling back or pulling out, but I have yet to see either group concretely address what we should do if genocide ensues. What would you do?

gmat:

about what Zawahiri might say about this or that.

I suppose we could ignore what our enemies say/think, but that seems rather dumb.

gmat:

apathy and incompetence

Not exactly. The real problems were institutional as I read them.

gmat:

The only strategic threat that he and other jihadists pose to the US is that they might somehow disrupt the oil supplies out of the Gulf.

I suppose there is some definition of "strategic threat" that would exclude things like nuking a city or setting off a global war between Muslims and the rest, but I can't go that far.

gmat:

concentrate directly on security of the oil patch which is a relatively small area.

That's important yes, but I'm not sure what it means. The danger is of a region-wide free-for-all amongst sects, tribes, nations, and militias, not to mention the humanitarian issues that ongoing genocide involves.

gmat:

Stay out of arab politics, or at least be a little more subtle about meddling.

The Gulf region is undergoing tremendous strains that long predate Iraq. We can't turn our backs. I don't know if you consider Clinton/Albright the epitomy of subtlety, but their policies got us nowhere

gmat:

Why use blatantly prejudicial expressions like "hiding in remote bases"?

Because that's all the pullbackers are willing to countenance, other than a few SOF strikes. The thing they're trying to avoid is casualties, and the only way to do that is to hide.

gmat:

Helping the tribes in Anbar fight foreign jihadists is useful, securing the oil fields to enhance production is useful, plenty of missions for the US army besides playing cop for Maliki.

If we don't continue, the government will likely fall. Even if it survives, there is likely to be a dramatic expansion of the murderous sectarian cleansing that we have begun to get our arms around with Petraeus' forward strategy.

gmat:

Let the arabs sort out who succeeds Saddam's regime and what form the governance takes.

That they are already doing.

Fritz Gerlich:

In Kirkuk, a battle royal is shaping up between the Kurds who intend to legally incorporate the city into Kurdistan and the Arabs and Turkomans who've been displaced in recent years. Surgeman Bush is helping that one along by sending al Qaeda/insurgent elements north to strike where it's easy.

The Kurds have shown they can defend themselves quite well.Al Qaeda has lost much of its support base (another reason it had to flee its strongholds.)

Fritz Gerlich:

Shiite militias are locked in a more or less contant battle among themselves. Militias, not voters, dictate who the local officials are. The British have drawn their presence down to minimum and plan to get out this year.

The militias are much less active than BP (before Petraeus.)

Fritz Gerlich:

The second bombing of the al Askari mosque didn't produce much effect for the obvious reason that the building was already mostly destroyed. Do you think Shiite Muslims are crazies whose buttons can be pushed by anything?

Not completely, but crazy enough to let the first bombing get thousands killed.

Fritz Gerlich:

It has decreased violence somewhat in Baghdad, for the obvious reason that if you put cops on every street corner criminals will look for easier and safer places to work.

Yup. But it's buying time.

Fritz Gerlich:

They will come right back as soon as the troops are drawn down, which is inevitable given that the U.S. is at the end of its reserves.

With time and some kind of alternative to war, people can settle down. That's part of the recipe for defeating counterinsurgency.

Fritz Gerlich:

Meanwhile, the violence simply moves to Dilayiya, Kirkuk, etc.

But in much smaller volume. Without their Anbar support base, they are much less effective.

Fritz Gerlich:

Your indicator of "progress" here is meaningless without significant movement towad a genuine national political settlement

Enabling, not meaningless. I started by assessing the national government's failings, because progress there is essential. But security buys them time, also, and lowers the temperature of the debates. These people coexisted adequately well for centuries before Saddam. They can do so again.

Fritz Gerlich:

You don't mention that oil production is lower than it was in Saddam's last years, over 2 million refugees (including a good part of the educated middle class) have fled Iraq and 2 million more are internally displaced, 30 billion dollars of Amenican reconstruction money has been mostly wasted, Iraq remains completely incapable of controlling its borders, the Kurds are clearly going their own way, the Iranians continue to interfere, and, of course, the U.S. is perceived around the world (but especially in the Middle East) as an incompetent Brobdingnag. Oh, I forgot--we're half a trillion dollars in the hole on this caper. With no end in sight.

I focused on the progress in the last few months, not what came before. This isn't the first war where we began by making terrible mistakes and still found our way to success.

Fritz Gerlich:

If we pull out, the terrorists win? Yup, they do.

But this matters more than your offhand dismissal implies. We really need to win. If this isn't the way, we have to find one.

Fritz Gerlich:

Stalingrad

There were lots of analogies circulating, most of them, including Stalingrad, inapt.

Fritz Gerlich:

fight to the death.

But we're not fighting to the death. Casualties seem high because we all get to see each one on tv, but...you know the rest.

Fritz Gerlich:

We should have been looking to our own security all along--Afghanistan, homeland security (practically nothing real has been done, you know)

Lots has been done (much of it dumb) but the bottom line is that we've avoided attacks.

Fritz Gerlich:

What about the moral argument: we gotta stop the bloodbath? Yeah, right--like we're stopping it right now?

Um, the new approach has significantly reduced casualties, which were rapidly increasing BP. And they could easily become 10-100x worse than they were.

Fritz Gerlich:

And what makes you so sure there would be any such bloodbath?

The trend that was accelerating before we changed course.

Fritz Gerlich:

Item: a majority of Iraqis polled say that violence would decrease if the Americans left. Item: al Maliki said two days ago his army was capable of handling security.

Perhaps, but on the ground, blood flows far more voluminously where we aren't than where we are.

Fritz Gerlich:

And even if there is a bloodbath, why is a short high-intensity civil war necessarily worse than a protracted low-intensity one?

Because a lot fewer people die.

Fritz Gerlich:

If the Iraqis need to have a civil war to settle things, then maybe they just need to get on with it.

I'll quote you on that one down the road.

Fritz Gerlich:

The American government struggled for many years to prop up various South Vietnamese governments (that actually were pretty capable compared to the clown show in the Green Zone). In the end, the last one couldn't hold its own

It was doing fine until we stopped funding them. Is there a parallel here?

Fritz Gerlich:

The sooner we face just how vast a blunder this war has been, the better off we'll be.

I think it's been faced. The question is "what now?" I judge from your comments that if we did get Rwanda++ that your move would be to blame Bush but otherwise ignore it? Please correct me..

Thanks for your thoughtful answers. I honestly don’t know what the best course of action to leave Iraq should be. But I’m not seeing any evidence—despite the promises of “turning corners” that we get every six months or so—that the overall pattern has changed at all since the start of the insurgency, and I think that the only solution is to draw down in a responsible way (whatever that may be).

As it is, we put troops into one place, the terrorists hide or go blow things up somewhere else, like they’re now doing in Kurdistan while our troops “surge” in Baghdad. It seems likely to me that our presence there is (1) an antagonist that is not winning the peace, but rather inspiring the recruitment of new enemies, and (2) only delaying the final violent confrontation that decides who gets to be the next tyrant in Iraq. And despite what you say, it’s clear that corruption is rampant: in the government, in the police and military, and in civil society. Soldiers working with their counterparts in the Iraqi military now often report that they can’t trust anyone. When and if things ever stabilize, who’s to say if it will be qualitatively different than Saddam’s regime? Was Saddam’s brutality the only thing that kept this country together? I think there’s a strong case to be made for that.

But getting back to leaving, it was an interesting story that came out just today about war games being conducted by our military. Conclusions were made about how a post-withdrawal Iraq would be “ugly” but not “apocalyptic.” As one analyst said, paraphrasing Churchill, "I posit that withdrawal from Iraq is the worst possible option, except for all the others."

To me, the bottom line is that, however misguided the Iraq invasion was, our troops and many other well-intentioned Americans have done their best to give the Iraqis an opportunity to better their country. A majority of Iraqis have responded (according to polls) by saying that they think it’s acceptible for insurgents to attack our troops. In other words, when given a golden opportunity, a majority of Iraqis have responded by withdrawing into the crassest sort of ethnic bigotry. So fine. We tried to make the best of a bad situation, but we can’t do it by ourselves. This mess is not worth what we’re paying for it, and even if it were, the current rate of expenditures—both in terms of manpower and funding—is simply no longer sustainable.

We should get out in a way that minimizes the mayhem and bloodshed as much as possible. But it’s time that the Iraqis settled the score themselves, whatever that means. Dangling our troops in the middle of Iraq trying to save the Iraqis from themselves is a no-win situation that we can’t afford, and in my opinion it was never worth the price.

But thanks, Larry, for an interesting discussion. You hold up your end of the argument very well, even if I don't agree with you about a lot of it.

We really need to win. If this isn't the way, we have to find one.

As von Rundstedt was being forced back across France in the fall of 1944, OKW at one point cabled him plaintively asking for a recommendation. He is said to have muttered, "Sue for peace, you fools."

Note that he muttered it; it was dangerous to be heard saying that. German soldiers were getting shot for suggesting that victory was beyond reach. Not just in 1944--in April, 1945, as the Russians closed in on Berlin. There is no limit to patriotic madness.

When victory (whatever that might mean to Bush this week) is no longer possible, you're a fool to keep doubling down for victory. Yet, far from being uncommon in war, this is the second commonest error of all, handily immortalized in the words Sieg heil! The commonest error is to start wars unnecessarily in the first place.

Carry on, good soldier Schweik.

Thank you for keeping things civil, which is not the norm on these boards.

On the substantive point about what we do if things turn much worse, I don't think it's feasible for the world to turn away. Apart from the shameful nature of such a move, the whole region could go up in flames, which would send the world economy down in flames.

But it doesn't. It's not as though our withdrawal returns the area to a predictable state, which was the case in WWII.What happens after is critically important, and could be horrific beyond anything we have seen.

If your thinking is stuck in the 40's, the better analogy is the Battle of the Bulge, but even there the parallel quickly breaks down and even reverses.

We have just separated the enemy's best troops from their base of support. Their "move" north takes them away from their strongholds and puts them into the embrace of their strongest opponents, the Kurds.