Admit the Truth

I agree with Kos too.

This isn't a solution to anything other than the pressing problem of "how do we get more people killed."

We can talk about international assistance, but countries are cutting their losses, not doubling down or jumping into this mess. We can talk about training Iraq forces, but it just ain't happening (the only people paying attention in class will turn their guns on the Iraqi government as soon as we leave).

So congrats, ISG, you just proposed two more years of heavy American (and Iraqi, and allied) casualties without any real hope that the outcome would be any different than a quicker exit.

The most hilarious part of the ISG report is about how we should embed combat forces with the Iraqis at the company level and give them the lead in military operations. How has that worked out so far?

The bullets flew from every direction -- from rooftops, windows, alleys and doorways.

Soldiers from the Iraqi army's 9th Division were pinned against a wall. They were under a covered sidewalk. According to accounts from U.S. forces who were with them on Friday, a suspected insurgent with an AK-47 assault rifle aimed at them from a doorway. Pieces of concrete fell as the insurgent's fire ripped into the wall above the Iraqi soldiers.

That's when they froze.

U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Kent McQueen, 37, arrived to help. As he tried to get them out, he was hit. The night-vision goggles perched on his helmet fell down his face. They were dented. He had been shot in the head. "God was definitely on my side," McQueen said Saturday.

The scene played out during Operation Lion Strike, the U.S. soldiers recalled. The goal was to capture insurgents in the Fadhil district of central Baghdad. It was the first time the Iraqi army's 9th Division was to be in complete control of an operation in the two years it has been training under the Americans. Teams of U.S. advisers remained close, but planned to leave the fighting to the Iraqis.

"It started out that way. But about five minutes into it, we had to take over," Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter, 35, said.

The training of Iraqi forces has been a joke. They have no fealty to the Iraqi nation, and no desire to fight for it. Putting them "in the lead" means that everyone in the company will get killed unless the US troops push them aside. That's madness.

The members of the ISG are right that the situation is grave and deteriorating. They're unfortunately constrained by politics to prevent them from recommending what actually need to be done. So they put together this compromise pastiche based on wishful thinking and the power of hope. The report has the effect of admitting the truth without allowing anything to result from that truth.

UPDATE: Silvestre Reyes, the "compromise candidate" for the House Intelligence Committee, wants to add 20,000 troops. That's more wishful thinking, the idea that you can win this militarily at this point. Hell, there are 100,000 contractors and mercenaries in the country, why don't you shift them onto the battlefield? Reyes says they're needed to disarm the militias. The Iraqi government won't let us disarm the militias. This is more denial of reality.

UPDATE: The other thing I really liked was the admission that a solution to the Israel-Palestine problem is the only way forward to viability in the broader Middle East. America must return to its honest broker status. As good a guy as Anwar Sadat was, without Carter's involvement we wouldn't have sustained peace between Israel and Egypt.

But of course, the Bush Administration is likely to ignore that and anything else they don't like, so this is all a moot point.

UPDATE: The escape clause, where full removal of combat troops is seen as "a nice goal" but only in the event of the rosiest and most unrealistic scenario, is still in the report, rendering it almost meaningless. Matthew Yglesias is dead right.

It’s worth saying that from the beginning the Bush administration has always had a plan to withdraw the bulk of US combat forces from Iraq in 12-18 months. It’s just that the “plan” has always gone something like ‘we’ll do this super-awesome stuff, then the situation will improve, and then most of the combat troops will leave.’ The problem, of course, keeps being that the situation ‘unexpectedly’ fails to improve. The policy’s failure therefore becomes the justification for continuing the very policy that’s failing.

Amen. The notion that somehow we never thought to reduce the force levels is asinine.