Catch-43

A careful, methodical and lengthy analysis of the latest chapter of the Dear Leader’s Forever War is documented here in the Washington Post:

Surge to Nowhere

Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, January 20, 2008; B01

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.

In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons.

…
In an essay entitled "Mission Accomplished" that is being touted by the AEI crowd, Bartle Bull, the foreign editor of the British magazine Prospect, instructs us that "Iraq's biggest questions have been resolved." Violence there "has ceased being political." As a result, whatever mayhem still lingers is "no longer nearly as important as it was." Meanwhile, Frederick W. Kagan, an AEI resident scholar and the arch-advocate of the surge, announces that the "credibility of the prophets of doom" has reached "a low ebb."

Presumably Kagan and his comrades would have us believe that recent events vindicate the prophets who in 2002-03 were promoting preventive war as a key instrument of U.S. policy. By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina.
…

Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome.

First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate.

...

It is a long and interesting deconstruction of the strategy of the Perpetual War Party, whose formulation of --

1. Suspension of civil liberties, due process and the rule of law is permissible during war
2. We are now at war forever.
3. Ergo you may now kiss your fucking Constitution one more time before we take her out behind the chemical toilets and slit her throat.

-- makes Modern Conservatives positively cream in their WalMart discount “Desert Fighter Underoos”, and makes Good Americans ask impolite questions like “So remind me again what ‘ideals’ are we fighting to protect?” and “So having lied us into a war, and then used that war as an excuse to gut our Constitution, does any thinking person doubt anymore who is it that really ‘hates our freedoms’?”

But if you want a shorter, fictionier explanation of what is really going on, perhaps this (which I readily admit to ruthlessly appropriating from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and tarting up in Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck panties) rests a little more more salty/sweet on your tongue:

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: The Surge Worked! Ask anybody. Ask McCain, Kristol, Mittster, tell him!

American Citizen: The Surge Worked?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: The Surge absolutely Worked. The war is Largely Over. All of my experts and media agree.

American Citizen: So if the Surge Worked and the war is Largely Over, we can start bringing the troops home.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Oh no. Not at all. The Surge Worked and the War is Largely Over, which means we have to stay in Iraq forever.

American Citizen: But that's crazy!

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: No. It’s patriotic. Or are you a fucking traitors who doesn’t support the troops?

American Citizen: So you can only support the troops…by leaving them in Iraq forever?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Precisely!

American Citizen: But when you win a war -- when your Surge Works and the war is Largely Over -- then you bring the troops back home.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: That's true.

American Citizen: So did the Surge Work?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Of course it did.

American Citizen: Then why not bring the troops home?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: No they have to stay until there is Peace and Iraq has become a stable ally in the Global War on Every Bad Thing.

American Citizen: And then we can bring the troops home?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: No. Then we absolutely cannot bring them home.

American Citizen: Why not?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: There's a catch.

American Citizen: A catch?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Sure, Catch-43. If there is Peace because the Surge Worked, we cannot bring the troops home because their presence is the reason there is Peace.

American Citizen: And if they leave?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: If they leave, there is the threat of Conflict. And given the threat of Conflict we cannot bring the troops home because the threat of Conflict must be preempted, so that Peace can be created with more Surge.

American Citizen: But we’re occupiers. As long as we’re there, the Iraqis will hate us. As long as we’re there, there always be a threat of Conflict.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Now you’re getting it!

American Citizen: Getting what?!

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: And as long as we are there, the Iraqis will hate us. And as long they hate us, the threat of Conflict will remain. And as long as there is the threat of Conflict there can be no Peace. And as long as there is no Peace, we must remain.

American Citizen: Let me see if I got this straight. We cannot bring the troops home until the Iraqis stop hating us enough to have Peace?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Correct.

American Citizen: But the fact that we are staying is what is making the Iraqis hate us.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Correct.

American Citizen: But the Surge worked?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Obviously.

American Citizen: And the War is Largely Over?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Yes.

American Citizen: So in order for there to be Peace...we have to remain at War. And the Surge Worked...only so long as we never leave.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: That’s exactly right.

American Citizen: And all of this makes sense to you somehow?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Oh it makes perfect sense to anyone who is not a fucking-traitor-who-doesn’t-support-the-troops.

American Citizen: That's some catch, that Catch-43.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: It's the best there is!