Its undeniable that the soldiers on the ground in Iraq generally have a much more optimistic view of the prospects for success than anyone short of Shawn Hannity.

There is plenty of blame to go around for this. The MSM doesnt report good news or context. Leading Democrats seem invested in failure. But George Bush is probably just as guilty as anyone. He has failed to provide a good definition for what exactly victory _is_, and how to recognize it. Its small wonder that a lot of people look at Iraq and dont see a lot of hope, because at the end of the day they dont know what they should be looking for. Thats the Administrations fault. Had they come out with a set of metrics for success (Parlimentary elections, Iraqi army reaching X,Y,and Z progress, attacks per day) and tied those things to how we would draw down our troop levels, Americans would have something to judge how well or badly things truly are going. Instead we get basically empty platitudes and 'stay the course' rhetoric. Its tough to stay the course indefinately when the Captain refuses to tell you where you are going and how he intends to get you there.

When I was a kid, we had a mechanical football game where player figures with small magnets in the base were placed on the game board, then an electric vibrator was turned on. The players would move around the board due to the vibration, then you would turn the thing off and start over.

Now, that game did not actually use goalposts. But you can imagine the problem if the goal line had not been painted on the board but was also free to move.

So tell me please, what does "succeed" mean in Iraq? What does it mean to George W. Bush? To Dick Cheney? To the majority of Republican Senators? To PNAC?

Would a democratic Iraq with free an open elections resulting in a Shiite south, a Kurdish north, most of the Sunnis dead or in re-eduction camps, women in subjegation, and heavy Iranian influence in the south count as "success"? Please tell me now. Thanks.

Cranky

It is axiomatic that the whole thing will fail.

The only question that should be asked is how it is that civilians in NYC with no military experience have been able to understand what the troops are experiencing so much more clearly than the troops themselves. In fact, throughout this whole disastrous adventure, people with no knowledge of the military at all have proven invariably to have an enormously more sophisticated and informed understanding of military matters than military professionals themselves. Just ask them.

The people trying to help us FAILURE understand the utter hopeless disastrous catastrophic apocalyptic unrelieved FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE of the FAILURE adventure in FAILURE FAILURE Iraq DEBACLE CATASTROPHE simply have a broader experience of conflict, and international affairs in general, than military people have: Why, most of them have travelled everywhere, from the Battery all the way up to Midtown, and many have even lived abroad, in primitive places like Brooklyn or Queens.

Militaries traditionally have great difficulty in determining success and failure in counterinsurgency. They usually end up relying on casualty ratios that are appropriate for conventional combat but at best ambiguous in COIN operations. Moreover, militaries are the site of powerful organizational dynamics that generate false optimism (self-evaluation is difficult; the organization doesn't want to admit lack of success; hierarchical structures create perverse incentives for information to be revealed; there is intense socialization into a "can do, never give up" attitude, etc). Take a look at the Sovs in Afghanistan, or the French in Algeria, or Americans in Vietnam and you'll see all of that. This doesn't mean the civilians eites are right on Iraq, but it does mean that military assessments should be taken with a large grain of salt.

We've heard all this rhetoric a million times before, there's no reason to think things will be magically different now. The army is fractured along ethnic lines despite recent reintegration attempts, the Interior Ministry forces are owned by Shiite parties and their death squads, the Kurds are holding onto their own pesh merga, the "wholesale Sunni engagement" with politics was to vote an overwhelming No to the constitution, and most of the major issues in said constitution have been punted down the road for further debate. Even if all the jihadists are killed, Iraq is still a mess. The best-case is to cobble together a semidemocratic consocational bargain along ethnic lines (i.e., basically what we have now). Max Boot can dream whatever bizarre dreams he wants, but the situation is hard to escape.

There is a stark contrast in the polls between the pessimistic lest the optimistic. That result of civilian elites gets as high as 60 points (give or take) where as the split in the military is just over 30 points.

When I see those numbers, I am inclined to think that they are using different definitions of success and failure.

P Froward:

The only question that should be asked is how it is that civilians in NYC with no military experience have been able to understand what the troops are experiencing so much more clearly than the troops themselves. In fact, throughout this whole disastrous adventure, people with no knowledge of the military at all have proven invariably to have an enormously more sophisticated and informed understanding of military matters than military professionals themselves. Just ask them.

Anon:

Militaries traditionally have great difficulty in determining success and failure in counterinsurgency. They usually end up relying on casualty ratios that are appropriate for conventional combat but at best ambiguous in COIN operations. Moreover, militaries are the site of powerful organizational dynamics that generate false optimism (self-evaluation is difficult; the organization doesn't want to admit lack of success; hierarchical structures create perverse incentives for information to be revealed; there is intense socialization into a "can do, never give up" attitude, etc). Take a look at the Sovs in Afghanistan, or the French in Algeria, or Americans in Vietnam and you'll see all of that. This doesn't mean the civilians eites are right on Iraq, but it does mean that military assessments should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Heh.

The military is suffering from greater delusions, but it isn't their fault. The qualities necessary for a first-rate military (perseverance, courage, willingness to endure hardship) make them ill-equipped to judge the progress of a nation. If they could sit back and reflect on the quality of progress it would impede morale, and consequently aptitude.

> In fact, throughout this whole disastrous
> adventure, people with no knowledge of the
> military at all have proven invariably to have an
> enormously more sophisticated and informed
> understanding of military matters than military
> professionals themselves.

I dunno. How was it that sitting in flyover country with nothing but the WSJ, NYT, openly available military trade press, and Google News I was able to determine that (1) Saddam Hussein had no nuclear or usable chem/bio weapons (2) Iraq posed no imminant threat to the United States of America? (3) the Administration was sexing up the intelligence to build momentum for war?

Quite a few of us ignorant yokels out here in the sticks figured that out, without access to the PNAC cocktail circuit, top-secret presidential briefings, or classified intelligence. Turns out we were 100.0% right, too. How'd we do that?

Cranky

"When I see those numbers, I am inclined to think that they are using different definitions of success and failure."

Precisely.

And Cranky's question is a fair one, though I expect you will get different answers from different officials. The question of what victory should or would look like is non-trivial.

I suppose first we have to set the context. Iraq is not going to be Eden any time soon. Its not going to be Belgium either. Everyone please recall what we started from.
How does this sound: I would say success in Iraq over the next 1-2 years would mean a model similar to how Afghanistan is right now. That is, a reasonably stable democratic regime (although containing ethnic and religious splits that arent ideal) invested in fighting foreign terrorists and local insurgents if only for its own survival, and aided by a minimum of US forces (say ~10,000 boots on ground by end of 07 with more in Kuwait). Now that is _not Eden_, and im not arguing that Afghanistan is a wonderful ideal of democratic bliss. But that model _is_ quite favorable to _our_ interests. It supplies a reasonably friendly regime in the center of the ME, a slowly developing democratic model for its neighbors, and an enemy of Al Qaeda (again, self-preservation). Even snuggling up to Iran doesnt really mean much to us pragmatically. We may not like it, but how does it really hurt our interests?
Now what exactly that 'victory' would mean in the long run is impossible to say. It could be decisive in transforming the ME as neo-cons posit, it could be just a ripple in the sea, or it could be a temporary glimmer of hope quickly swallowed back into tyranny and infighting. Only time can tell. But the point is America will have done all it can to test that theory. The blood our men and women have shed will at least give the Iraqis a chance.
Ok, there are my modest victory conditions for the next 1-2 years.

Your trackbacks don't seem to be working, so ping!

The problem is that, so long as we're taking casualties even at the very low level we're taking them now, there won't be much stomach stateside for simple sticktoitiveness (which might well be all that's required). However, the military is unrealistic, too. Unless we're prepared to stay forever, taking casualties all the way, the dynamics in Iraq must change for the new government there to have a decent chance. Pointing to the successes of democratic government there are just irrelevant. Sunni Arabs just have more to gain by insurgency than they stand to win any other way.

Frankly, I don’t think either group, the members of the armed forces or the civilian elites are ‘delusional.’ Rather, I think Max Boot’s rhetorical use of the term to be nothing more than hyperbole. Further, I believe that re-enlistment rates of the men and women who fight this thing tell the tale as noticed again and again elsewhere over time. Sadly, I believe that civilian ‘elites’ (and by that I understand to be the democrats and associated media of the same philosophy) have not accepted the fact that they have no real counter to the GOP success in prosecuting this terrible business at home or abroad. One has only to witness the tragic-comic infighting that does nothing to really end this thing. No I don’t think either group is delusional. Both are confronting incredible slogs with no exit strategy.

> Sadly, I believe that civilian ‘elites’ (and by
> that I understand to be the democrats and
> associated media of the same philosophy) have not
> accepted the fact that they have no real counter
> to the GOP success in prosecuting this terrible
> business at home or abroad.

Wow. Just - wow.

I hope we in the US survive the next 3 years, and the 20 after that. I really do.

Cranky

This exit strategy business is nonsense. Exiting is not the goal. Otherwise you should never enter. Drawing down troops in Iraq is simply inevitable, this idea of a neverending war is just the fallacious Vietnam obsession seeping through. Drawing down troops is not the goal, it is a cog in the wheel.

Cranky, at least, has chosen his moniker well.

I self-identify as a liberal. For me that entails a certain optimism about the ability of human beings to muddle through, sometimes even shine.

So long as the Democratic base is overrun by gloomy types like cranky, the chances of the party winning against sunnier "It's morning in America" Republicans is next to nil.

Who wants to vote for someone who keeps warning that the sky is falling? Furthermore, it really isn't falling, or at least we've heard it is so damn often we are inured to the possibility that it is. Crisis mongerers as just that: people who blow problems out of proportion. Who benefits?

The Dems only hope is that the Republican base will fall behind equally dystopic ideologians and political philosophies, or folks that can be portrayed as such. A sliver of hope there is, but it's not much.

Success is progress towards a liberal Iraq.

Long-term, USA-centric success is Iraq being able to independently maintain a iterative progress towards a Belgium-like future.

Cranky,

You can see the trees as well as any, but the forest seems beyond your grasp. Al Qaeda (and the organizations like it) are a response by dying cultures in the face of modernity. To reach a critical mass of dangerous capability they require areas of global instability. The Hussein regime was one of the prime creators of instability (or I should say, barriers to global stability, as it's obvious that the Iraqi people prefer access to global markets and free trade than the opposite).

Whether Al Qaeda reaches us one day, or a different organization with a different name and different individual members, it will be because they thrived on the periphery of the world's civilized places. We must "close the Gap" so that civilization (and hence, the FBI/MI6/whoever) can reach anywhere in the world and make sure terrorist organizations never reach their full, destructive potential.

Largely global order will self-organize around the capital markets and flow of ideas, but a few 'barriers' must be cleared away for that to happen. Saddam Hussein was one of them. Kim Jong Il and the mullahs in Iran are the other "Big Two". Castro, Chavez, and Mugabe are pikers, though in the same school. Before the world is truly safe, they'll all have to go.

Essentially, in a world with the internet, super-tankers, and jet travel, everyone's problems are your problems. We can't defeat terror (because that exists in the hearts and minds of all men), but we can defeat the conditions which allow terror to organize. The troops think we're making good progress in Iraq in that regard.

Been on both sides of the street. During the first Operation Iraqi Freedom rotation, while serving in the Sunni Triangle, I argued to anyone who would listen that there was more measurable progress than was being reported in the media -- burned up all of my scant internet access time e-mailing people back in the States that we were producing good things in Iraq.

Now, as a full-fledged civilian, I am quite a bit less sanquine about the situation.

What Pew shows us is that both sides are right; when you're in a Humvee, peering through a tiny little plastic window and scanning the roadside for IEDs, the world looks like THIS. When you're sitting in your university office, looking at the big picture, the world looks like THAT.

Neither group is "delusional." On the way back from a school I adopted, having just distributed hundreds of pounds of school supplies, candy, teddy bears, soccer balls, etc., and having seen the reaction of the children, their parents and teachers, I was sure we were going to "win."

Now I wonder how many of those parents have been accidentally killed or wounded and am by no means sure we'll "win."

Plus, I'm increasingly conscious of the fact that, if my town were occupied by a foreign military, and they came round and gave me some free stuff, I'd pretend to be really happy (and, by media/military inference, "supportive") as long a they were around. But later that night, I'd be hauling my rifle down from the attic, and....

As with any such survey, it's at least as important to know who responded and what questions were asked as it is to see what the statistics show.

For example, the military group is taken from retired senior officers. None of them will have Hemlock's "little plastic window view" of the current campaign. And probably none of them have routine, current contact with those who do. Similarly the "foreign affairs" group is drawn from the Council on Foreign Relations...okay, but how many of those who responded are tied closely to the current administration versus previous administrations?

I'd be willing to bet that each group has its "blind spots", and the overall numbers for the "elite" groups could be heavily skewed by only a slight oversampling of the groups most inclined to reject current policy (in many cases via an emotional rejection of the policymakers, rather than an objective assessment of the available and certainly incomplete and probably unreliable data available for analysis).

I see a comparison to the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Soviets and prosoviet afghans had no control of the countryside anywhere, and barely had control of the cities and roads. The insurgency was lead by several popular leaders, including Massoud, and had support among all major ethnic groups. Did Soviet soldiers really think they were going to win? Did they reenlist in large numbers?

It seems to me that this goes beyond a military culture of optimism. It goes to key metrics of whats going on in Iraq. AFAICT most Americans at home dont have the foggiest that the security situation actually differs in different parts of Iraq. They think everyone there is against us. They think that Iraqi forces are still performing like they did in April of 2004, when they broke and ran. all they hear is a daily litany of bombings. The military knows about the bombings, but can put them in context.

Well, we might be facing yet another Vietnam analogy. There, we also were making quite a bit of progress in the last year or two. Thing is, maintaining a large presence in Vietnam had become politically impossible due to the lies, broken promises, inaccurate statements, etc-- not to mention years of poor planning and ineffective execution.

I know Dan asked about it civilian vs. military outlook on the war, but isn't there a more important question about polling splits? "47% of Iraqis polled said their country was headed in the right direction, as opposed to 37% who said they thought that it was going in the wrong direction. And 56% thought things would be better in six months. Only 16% thought they would be worse..." So, who wants to wager that the Sunnis dominate those that think the country is going the wrong direction and things will be worse while the Shiite's and Kurds dominate the right track numbers? And if that's true (can't find the original numbers and if they split out), isn't that support for the whole notion that this thing is already civil war in slow motion? Is anyone confident that the Shiite leadership will actually make political concessions necessary to bring the Shiite into the fold?

Optimism: the Iraqi military units aren't collapsing! Likely Reality: that's because they are entire peshmerga outfits (or a Shiite militia running the Interior Ministry?) who just threw on "Iragi Army" uniforms and went off to fight the mainly Sunni insurgents. Who really thinks Iraqis and the various ethnic/religious/tribal groups goals really line up with ours? Does our definition of success matter? Or does the Sunni, Kurdish, and Shiite elites definition of success matter?

James, why not throw out the final peice of the puzzle where Democrats in Congress cut off all funding to South Vietnam allowing North Vietnamese tanks to roll into the South. America has a long reputation in much of the world of being a fickle friend. If we abandon the Iraqis (AGAIN) to their own devices, we probably deserve the disdain that will instill in both friends and enemies around the world.

"Is anyone confident that the Shiite leadership will actually make political concessions necessary to bring the Shiite into the fold?"

"Likely Reality: that's because they are entire peshmerga outfits (or a Shiite militia running the Interior Ministry?) who just threw on "Iragi Army" uniforms and went off to fight the mainly Sunni insurgents."

Peter, you have the familiar air of someone who doesnt know what the hell he is talking about. Have you been paying attention the last two years at all? Nothing that the listed above is correct.

I see a comparison to the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Soviets and prosoviet afghans had no control of the countryside anywhere, and barely had control of the cities and roads. The insurgency was lead by several popular leaders, including Massoud, and had support among all major ethnic groups.

Is that really analogous to Iraq? The insurgency has not several popular leaders, but one, who just made himself somewhat less popular by killing oodles of Muslims (a terrible faux-pas in Arab culture)...

To poll "Iraqi public" as one group demonstrates the complete lack of understanding of the situation on the ground.

To not stratify the population by Shia, Sunni and Kurds is an obvious and basic mistake.

Unless, of course, the intent was not to provide valuable data but offer propaganda... either way the numbers are meaningless for this discussion.

"My qusestion to readers -- who suffers from the greater delusions -- the military or civilian elites?"

Opinion does not equate to reality, but to perception. Many -if not most- people do not recognize reality until it affects them personally. As such, polls are useless as a tool for measuring reality (or delusion), but only viable as a tool for measuring confidence. And while confidence is important, it is not immediately relevant to the question.

Why not ask us if we believe in God Almighty, Savior of Us Only?

If killing Muslims were a "faux pas in Arab culture" one might have expected this to be reflected in Arab disdain for the current Sudanese and the former Iraqi governments. It has not be so reflected, because it isn't true. It is only non-Sunni Arabs killing Sunni Arabs that is offensive; the reverse is quite acceptable, and depending on the circumstances the killing of Sunni Arabs by other Sunni Arabs can be readily tolerated as well.

About the survey and comments on it I observe only that its focus is on what is good for Iraq. Which is fine, up to a point; Iraq is the issue of the hour. There are two problems with this emphasis. The first is that success in Iraq can ultimately be achieved only by Iraqis, and that on their conduct the United States has some influence but no control. This renders the optimism of even the best-informed Americans, including those in the military, basically a guess as to what other people will do. A policy that depends on such a guess being right needs one thing to succeed far more than any other: luck.

The other problem is that Iraq is one, mid-sized Arab country. American interests from the routine to the vital are greater in almost every other major area of the world, and the pursuit of these interests is seriously compromised the longer we maintain the current commitment in Iraq. I don't believe this consideration was taken into account in the survey; in any event most respondent groups (especially the military) would have been hard pressed to evaluate its importance.

But it is, in fact, extremely important. Whether we are on a track toward success or not, we cannot afford to maintain the vast expenditure of resources and the commitment of our best troops over the time frame some people take for granted. Sen. Warner's resolution had it exactly right: 2006 is the year Iraqis have to begin assuming the burden of shaping their country's future, and the year the American commitment to their country has to be wound down.

Neither party is delusional and I think the framework you chose to operate with "delusion" does not apply. Both are seeing the situtation correctly. The problem lies in the parameters they apply to judge the situtation.

For the military on the ground which is engaged in nation building-a policy the Republicans sneered and dismissed when running for the Presidency-sees visible progress as nation builders. What is of most importance to them is that they have slowly but surely diminished the number of attacks on themselves and by their training of the Iraqi police and military units on the civilian population(the lack of manpower prohibits them from keeping the economic infrastructure-electricity, gasoline, cooking fuel, refineries- from growing). The number of casualaties the military suffers is far less because they carry the protective armor that diminishes the effects of bombs of any type. The Iraqi military suffers fewer casulaties as they learn how to operate in the 4G environment of war. The civilian population suffers for two reasons. One, they are not carry armor and two, when you try to live a civilian lifestyle you act as thogh the possiblity of getting killed by bombs is minimal(I suspect for them the crimes of kidnapping and robbery are a bigger problem in their day to day lifes).

For the electorate at large I believe is operating under Clausewitz's dictum paraphrased here "War is a continuation of politics by other means". By this I mean the electorate believed the Bush administration when it put forth the idea we would be greeted as liberators or in the words of Rumsfield with roses. Despite the bombing of the UN Mission and its withdrawal the administration announced " Mission accomplished". For them that meant Iraq was secure and was going to begin to operate as a normal state IMMEDIATELY,i.e.it would revert to normal means of politics. Since this was never true from the beginning, that subsequent afteraction reports and investigations have verified this, the electorate has slowly become to question every premise of the war. That the administration's action and incompetence at home in responding to natural disasters, they have lost faith the administrations ability make the invasion of Iraq worthwhile.

For the civilian elite it is not just small "p" Politics that makes them think we are not winning. Many Republicans whom have served in the military realize that things could have been managed better and they do not see the administration responding except by denying their responsiblity. They see that the electorate that votes for them is unhappy and they seek to get on the "right" side of the issue. For Democrats whom have served they are constrained by the antics of the loony left in the party and the money they have to spend. For the Democrats and Republicans whom have not served each has now found they really have to find out what is going on to explain to their electorate what we have to do. As a result there are competing plans each constrained by national political concern.

For both parties winning has taken a back seat to domestic political concerns. This has always been the Achilles heel of the invasion of Iraq. For the Republicans each vote, took place with national elections at stake and after a murderous sucker punch attack where no one wanted to be seen as against striking back. It allowed to many votes on issues to the public not be discussed in the public forum and which the public has now seen their interests across the political spectrum abused(Schiavo and the results of FEMA in the Dept of Homeland Security). Now that the results of voting party line without long term thinking has them being correctly tarred w/ the brush of incompetence and corruption.

For the Democrats domestic policy concerns on social issues alone was just as grevious to their political health. Having opposed the Bush administration prior to Sept 11, 2001 on social policies and articulating a foreign/military policy that was premised on the staus quo, they bluntly could not articulate one with the change in circumstances with which to compete in the public arena. In their attempts to come up with one they could not move its articulation away from the words of domestic policy. Even now with the incompetence of the Republicans in excercising basic governence during natural disasters, the exposure of their corruption(Rove, Delay, Frist, Abramhoff), their treason during a war(Ask Bush Sr what he thinks it is when you expose covert agents of the USA intelligence agencies) and the blatant corruption of military values and regarding prisoners(torture and secret prisons in other countries)the best they can come up w/ is Murtha's plan.

s

It's striking, that 84% will-fail number from scientists and engineers. Not all that surprising, though.

Boot writes: "Their increasing success is evident on "Route Irish," from Baghdad International Airport. Once the most dangerous road in Iraq, it is now one of the safest. The last coalition fatality there that was a result of enemy action occurred in March."

This is disingenuous. They haven't just given up, they've moved to other less well-defended roads, making those highly dangerous.

It's excellent that Route Irish is safer, but it isn't evidence of a net increase in Baghdad's safety.

Perhaps the reasons behind the complaints from some about Iraq have nothing to do with the facts that those who are there are exposed to daily.

Namely, those complainers are driven by simple political motivations.

Meant to add that Boot is (as usual) spectacularly disingenous when he talks about Route Irish.

Sure, it's "safer" now than ever before. It's more heavily patrolled, barrier-ed, and policed than ever before. Plus, it was a terrible public relations problem, so CJTF dedicated a lot of resources to patching it up.

In fact, Route Irish is the best evidence one could deploy in support of the argument that BushCo failed miserably by under-resourcing the war and occupation -- see what you get when you have sufficient boots on the ground? A target too well-defended for opponents to attack.

Now if we had deployed sufficien forces to defend all of Iraq the way we are now defending Route Irish, we'd all be complaining about how we're getting bogged down in Operation Syrian Freedom....

Might also point out that, in the field, you have to believe just to keep pulling your trousers on every morning. Doesn't mean you "believe-believe," just means that pretending to believe is better than not believing at all.

If you want to see how the belief-perception disconnect works (and evolves in the average G.I.), watch the later episodes of the absolutely excellent Discovery-Times series, "Off to War," about the Arkansas National Guard in Baghdad.

Dan,

Garbage in, garbage out. Look at the definitions of elites.

War is not beanbag. Belief and conviction are not effective substitutes for firepower - ask Charles de Gaulle what August 1914 was like the next time you see him. He was a rifle company officer at the time.

Our enemies won't stop fighting because we do. They'll come after us at home.

Mark,

I have sympathy with your argument that we shouldn't abandon Iraq like we did the South Vietnamese. America losing interest in foreign involvements has certainly had tragic consequences in the past for others, and in one extremely notable case for Americans.

That said, you undermine your own credibility by being a prick. Thanks for insuting instead of answering... I'm sorry if my tone offended, but my questions were by and large genuine. In the future, links are acceptable evidence (I still am interested in the breakout of those polling numbers), suggesting I'm an itiot discredits your views in my book at least.

In case you're looking for dialogue:
My points and support.
1. Civil war
Intelligent people wondering about civil war (which I'm also wondering about)
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8869/iraq.html?breadcrumb=default

2. My rhetoric about the Iraqi Army is perhaps too harsh, but:
a. See the Interior Ministry torture articles from the past few days. If this isn't any problem at all, why the hell did we have to warn the Iraqi government to rely on the Shiite militias? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051117/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
b. Obviously someone in Iraq is playing off this: see the slaying of a prominent Sunni tribal leader and his family by gunment in Iraqi Army uniforms.
c. The potential pitfalls we face of recruiting a national army is that we're not necessarily actually putting together a national army. See: http://www.d-n-i.net/grossman/iraqi_army_will_disintegrate.htm Nut 'graph from a New York Review of Books piece:

In this deeply divided country, people are loyal to their community but not to Iraq, and the army reflects these divisions. Of the 115 army battalions, sixty are made up of Shiites and located in southern Iraq, forty-five are Sunni Arab and stationed in the Sunni governorates, and nine are Kurdish peshmerga, although they are officially described as the part of the Iraqi army stationed in Kurdistan. There is exactly one mixed battalion (with troops contributed from the armed forces of the main political parties) and it is in Baghdad. While the officer corps is a little more heterogeneous, very few Kurds or Shiites are willing to serve as officers of Sunni Arab units fighting Sunni Arab insurgents. There are no Arab officers in the Kurdish battalions, and Kurdistan law prohibits the deployment of the Iraqi army within Kurdistan without permission of the Kurdistan National Assembly.

And another article: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12885151.htm

3. Finally, will the Shiite leadership make the necessary concessions is a real question. Is it just me or did an overwhelming majority of Sunni voters just reject the new Iraqi Constitution! It's great they voted and all, but the fact is that they voted overwhelmingly against the fundamental document for their new government. Do these really sound like people on board with the political process? They seem pretty angry to me about the autonomous regions portion of the constitution, regions that would leave them largely in oiless central Iraq.

There are real problems in Iraq. Although some of my original tone may have been too harsh, I stand by every question I asked. There has been some real progress (which Max Boot certainly highlights, especially the GDP numbers are heartening. I'm sure you think I overestimate them. I think you underestimate them. If you want to send links that support you, show me where I'm ignorant, I like to think I have the capacity for learning. But maybe that's just me not knowing what the hell I'm talking about again.

Fans in the stands versus the team on the field.

Niether perspective trumps the other, but the team on the field is invested in a positive outcome and will rarely express open pessimism about a fight that they are currently engaged in.

When their leadership throws them into a meat grinder with vague goals based primarily on pet ideological wet dreams and political coverage of their own asses, then that leadership should needs to be fired and prosecuted.

Powerline too has noticed how skewed Pew's definition of civilian elites was.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012365.php

Like I said, "garbage in = garbage out'.

See John at Powerline blog for Nov. 24 on the subject of this latest "stench from Pew."

"Our enemies won't stop fighting because we do. They'll come after us at home."

Too bad we've spent almost three years making thousands of new enemies, when we ought to have spent that time fighting the enemies we already had.

JonH has just demonstrated the classic flaw in liberal thinking - an unshakeable conviction (identical to their definition of religious faith) that our enemies hate us for what we do rather than what we are.

He'd rather die, and that all the rest of us die, than admit that our enemies hate us for what we are. Only death will release him from this belief.

In which case, Tom, there's no way we could ever change their minds, which means that we will have no choice but to totally occupy and control Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East) forever. Which we can't. But then, Jon H.'s whole point was that not ALL Arabs hate us for what we are, as opposed to what we do.

Personally, while I remain extremely doubtful that we will ever be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again (take a look at the awesome differences in Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite attitudes in ABC's early 2004 poll: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/WorldNewsTonight/iraq_poll_040317.html?WNTad=true ; http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/GoodMorningAmerica/Iraq_anniversary_poll_040314.html ), I also suspect that our whole obsession with Iraq -- and, for that matter, with al-Qaida's ability to attack us using conventional weapons -- is going to be remembered by history as a minor sideshow in the real crisis: the growing ability of terrorists to get their hands on nuclear weapons. To the extent that the Iraq War is remembered at all, it will be remembered as a dangerous distraction from that overwhelmingly important central theme.

Jem - what you brought up about who was surveyed changes the whole terms of the discussion (and invalidates much of what was said above). Very insightful, and a question I'll have to ask myself on other polls in the future.

Peter - nice long post with good links. If you regularly put that much work into your forum discussions, I suggest you start a comments blog to archive them and let people who know you see what you're thinking about.

Tom Holsinger, you identify the problem exactly. I absolutely believe our enemies hate us for what we do and not who we are, and I probably never will give that up. This mainly comes from my personal experience, where all the people I hate I hate because of what they do, and not who they are. Meanwhile, the people who hate me are the least likely to care about who I am.

"In fact, Route Irish is the best evidence one could deploy in support of the argument that BushCo failed miserably by under-resourcing the war and occupation -- see what you get when you have sufficient boots on the ground? A target too well-defended for opponents to attack"

Rummy botched it != quagmire now.

Outside view: Iraq army progress
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
UPI Outside View Commentator

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- There seems to be a great deal of ignorance about the details of Iraqi force development and the level of progress that is -- and is not -- being attained. The risk is that rather than understanding that Iraqi forces may be able to achieve enough critical mass to allow major Coalition force reductions in 2006, the present lack of understanding will end in "snatching defeat from the jaws of uncertainty."

Iraqi forces are becoming more effective, and the United States and the Multi-National Security Transition Command (MNSTC-I) have provided substantial additional data on Iraqi force development in recent weeks. Key sources include the Bush Administration's Oct. 13, 2005, "Report on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq." They also include detailed insights into Iraqi force development that Lt. Gen. David Petraeus provided in his Nov. 9, 2005 briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The attached report provides a summary of those statements and other official statements by U.S. and Coalition officers and personnel. It provides detailed graphs and tables on Iraqi readiness, deployment levels, training, and equipment.

Key developments include:

-- A continued increase in the number of Iraqi units able to take the lead in combat operations against the insurgency. There are now 88 Iraqi army and special operations battalions conducting combat operations against the enemy -- an increase of nine since the July report. Of the 88 operational units, 36 are assessed as being "in the lead" or fully independent -- a 50 percent increase over units at these levels of readiness in the July report. There are 28 Special Police Force battalions capable of combat operations -- an increase of 13 since the last report.

-- Progress of Iraqi units in assuming responsibility for the battle space. Since the last report, Iraqi forces have taken responsibility for security in several areas of Iraq and now have the lead in one Iraqi province, roughly 87 square miles of Baghdad and over 450 square miles in other provinces.

-- A continued increase in the number of units and individuals trained, equipped, and formed into operational status. More than 87,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen have now been trained and equipped -- an increase of 10,000 since the last report. A total of 68,800 police have been trained and equipped, an increase of 5,500 since the last reporting period. These work alongside 35,500 other Ministry of Interior forces. Overall, this represents a 12 percent increase in Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior forces trained and equipped for counter-insurgency operations since July 2005.

The progress the Coalition has claimed does not mean that the Iraqi force development effort can, as yet, claim to be successful. Iraqi forces still do have major weaknesses, and the problems in the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Defense required a significant change in the Coalition advisory effort as recently as Oct. 1, 2005.

What is clear, however, is that very real progress is being made in many areas that have not received proper political and media attention, and that no political or journalist assessment of the insurgency campaign or Iraq's future should be made without at least considering the details of the Iraqi force development effort.

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Bruce Moomaw,

You assume that our enemies will be a threat to us (a) after we or their neighbors kill them and (b) that most of them can't be intimidated into sullen acquiescence of superior force and societal disapproval. Look at the thread above titled:
Al Qaeda has lost the Middle East

You also assume that foreigners are Just Like Us. Foreigners are, well, foreign.

Dan,

Why is is the military that is out of touch? They seem to agree with the general public. Perhaps it is the elites who are out of touch. The discrepancy in the responses between the two in so much of the rest of the Pew Poll suggests to me that this is the case.

http://freedomtobelarus.blogspot.com/2005/11/two-americas.html

One last point, Dan.

The civilian "elites" examined by Pew might believe what they see on TV. The public doesn't.

The civilian "elites" examined by Pew don't have sons or daughters in Iraq. The public does.

JonH has just demonstrated the classic flaw in liberal thinking - an unshakeable conviction (identical to their definition of religious faith) that our enemies hate us for what we do rather than what we are.

Tom H. has just demonstated the classic flaw in neocon thinking n unshakeable conviction (identical to their definition of religious faith) that our enemies cannot have a multitude of reasons for hating us, that they may be composed of different people with different ideologies and beliefs, some newly formed, some holding ancient grudges. Since Tom H. also believes that foreigners have a totally foreign way of thinking, that is completely alien to us, this opinion is not surprising.

Tom H's opinion seems to be dramatically at odds with the CIA whose new Bush appointed chief has said that the Iraq conflict has indeed led to the creation of new terrorist cells and leaders, some of whom will and had left Iraq to create cells elsewhere. His opinion is also dramatically at odds with the current Iraq leadership which is actually trying (with some success) to co-opt some Sunni rebels into putting down their arms and joining the governments, even saying that at times that they would offer amnesty for anyone who had not attacked civilians. Clearly, under the Tom H world view, this would be unthinkable.

His opinon is somewhat akin to a Soviet Communist during the occupation of Afghanistan opining that the mujahdeen hated them for that they were (atheistic godless Communists) rather than for what they did and that withdrawal would lead to a loss of face for the Soviets. Of course, as it turned out it was the occupation that steadily bled Soviet arms and money for a futile desire to save face.

He'd rather die, and that all the rest of us die, than admit that our enemies hate us for what we are. Only death will release him from this belief.

The TomH world view is also characterized by high levels of rhetoric and an absence of logic.

One of the problems with beleving a lot of the statistics about trained Iraqi forces is that we were told we had 140K trained forces in April 2004, and they proved to exist largely on paper. Given all of that, some degree of skepticism of the administrations claims is highly warranted although I believe that a lot of good progress has been made on that front.

On Iraq -- certainly most polls I've seen of the general public's view indicates a high level of skepticism in the belief that democracy could be established in Iraq.

Marc M.,

The subject is the war on terror. "Enemies" in that context means our enemies in the war on terror, i.e., it excludes our enemies in North Korea, Cuba, China, etc. ALL are enemies in the war on terror are Islamic, and hate us for what we are.

But you didn't stop there at taking things out of context. My post stating that foreigners are foreign was a response to Bruce Moomaw, not Jon H., and concerned Mr. Moomaw's admission that his opinion was based on his personal experience, i.e., with his American enemies in America.

Please, however, don't let the truth get in the way of your taking things out of context. That helps enormously in destroying your own credibility.

Tom Holsinger, you are a troll. I am sorry I responded to you above.

Why don't we just go with the assement offered by the Vice President when he is now talking about the possibilities that Al Qaeda will take over Iraq and have a new home base.

But the probility of that happening three years ago when Saddam ruled Iraq was essentially zero.

So even according to Cheney we seem to be making progress in the wrong direction.

The military are far more deluded - they believe that they will be allowed to win in Iraq. The civilian 'experts' know better - and will do whatever it takes to make their own predictions of disaster come true.

Glenn Reynolds has a long (for him) piece today on this thread's subject (embedded links at Instapundit but not here):

http://instapundit.com/archives/027093.php

"IT'S A REVERSE-VIETNAM: On Reliable Sources I said that the Plame scandal was a reverse-Watergate, with the press, not the White House, keeping the important secrets about what happened. But looking at the transcript, I see that Iraq is also a reverse Vietnam, as made clear in this statement from UPI correspondent Pamela Hess:

KURTZ: Welcome back to RELIABLE SOURCES.

Pam Hess, during Vietnam U.S. officials were often accused of distorting or even lying to the press to try to make it look like the war effort was going better than it was. When you were in Iraq did you feel like you were getting the straight story?

HESS: Certainly from the militarily I did. They have no interest in cooking the books, as it were, they -- they understand that they were blamed for Vietnam and what happened, and they don't want that blame again.

They want people to understand the kind of enemy that they are facing and how long it's going to take. And frankly, most of them said to me, "Please go back and tell them not to pull us out because we are finally at a point where we have enough people here now on the ground between soldiers and Iraqis that we can actually start doing some good and start turning things around. And if you pull us out, we're just going to be back here three years from now."

KURTZ: More optimistic, at least than some of the journalists.

HESS: Yes.

So you don’t have to wait for the official version of what’s going on, or for reporters on the scene to get their stories to the folks back home. The troops send email, or pick up the phone, sometimes a cell phone, and call. This has caused a lot of confusion, because the media reports of what’s happening are often at odds with what the troops are reporting. This has been particularly confusing in a year where there’s a presidential election race going on. The Democrats decided to attack the way the war on terror, and particularly the actions in Iraq, was being fought. Part of that approach involved making the situation at the front sound really, really bad. But the troops over there seemed to be reporting a different war. And when troops came home, they were amazed at what they saw in the newspapers and electronic media. Politics and reality don’t mix.

By the way, I often link Dunnigan's StrategyPage, but if you're interested in this kind of stuff you should really check out his books. There are quite a few, but I particularly recommend his primer on all things military, How to Make War, and his book on special forces, The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of U.S. Warfare.

While I was in New York I managed to have breakfast with Dunnigan and Austin Bay, and enjoyed listening in on their conversation. I wish we saw more of that sort of thing in major media -- but then it wouldn't be a reverse-Vietnam, would it?

UPDATE: This seems different, too:

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale -- with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale. . . .

Just three of 10 adults accept that Democrats are leveling criticism because they believe this will help U.S. efforts in Iraq. A majority believes the motive is really to "gain a partisan political advantage."

It's just not 1969, however much some people might wish otherwise."

The subject is the war on terror. "Enemies" in that context means our enemies in the war on terror, i.e., it excludes our enemies in North Korea, Cuba, China, etc.ALL are enemies in the war on terror are Islamic, and hate us for what we are.

So lets see if I can boil this down clearly
1) All our enemies in the war on terror (except those that are not Islamic) are Islamic. Brilliant insight there. Can you next tell us who is buried in Grant's tomb ?
2) What does this have to with Iraq ? Iraq was a secular dictatorship prior to the war.
3) Finally, you ignore the main point of my comment, namely that our enemies can have different motivations. As is clear from the way that the Iraqi leadership has itself tried to reach out to part of the insurgents.

My post stating that foreigners are foreign

Aha, looks like I misread above. The next brilliant insight from the keyboard of Tom H. was not about who is entombed in Grant's tomb, but it is to tell us that foreigners are foreign. This is reminscient of the Blackadder episode where we were informed that there were 2 things that we must know about the wise woman, to wit --1) she was a woman and 2) she was wise.

Please, however, don't let the truth get in the way of your taking things out of context. That helps enormously in destroying your own credibility.

When it comes to credibility, someone who asserts that "foreigners are well .. foreign" to bolster a claim that foreigners (not Islamic terrorists, mind you, not even Middle Easterners) think differently from us .. well all I can say is that it would be well to look at the planet in your eye before looking at the mote in others.

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