Eeyorepundit at Hot Air hearts NYT

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Quite obviously we are at a pivotal moment in Iraq; security operations have done what they are supposed to, reduce the violence to a level that politicians could swing some deals but that has yet to materialize. I realize that it would have been ideal if the Iraqi Parliament had stayed in session and passed an Oil law and reconciliation procedures, but like every other legislature including ours, they took the hottest month of the year off and went home. I don't recall any expectations being laid out that political progress would track right alongside security, as a matter of fact common sense ought to have pointed toward that as a follow on to less killing. It is tough to think about peace in the midst of battle. Well things have cooled down and we have made amazing progress in Anbar, which even 6 months ago was de facto ruled by AQI, and Baghdad is hardly pacified but it is much safer.

In the face of this we have plenty of skeptics and pessimists and there is plenty to be skeptical and pessimistic about. Before I knee him in the neck let me say I love 99% of Allah's work at Hot Air, but sometimes he gets out of his depth. Today Allahpundit at Hot Air continues his trend of skeptical pessimism and you can almost hear the "We're doomed Christopher Robin", as he hugs the skirts of the NYT's Damien Cave. In a piece he titles NYT survey: Surge has largely failed, Allah joins Cave in concluding the surge has likely failed because there is no instant political reconciliation. Cave quotes a US officer:

He said, “I think we have essentially stalled the sectarian conflict without addressing the underlying grievances.”…

Allah then comments:

The boldface part sums up the dilemma: if they’re not making things better but they are keeping things from getting worse, is that in itself enough of a justification to keep troops there long term?

WTF? Even if you simply take that statement as gospel with no context it hardly means the surge has failed. We are about 6 months into this effort and we have already made large gains in many areas. The fact that Cave and his stringers can find Iraqis who think they are doomed as well is hardly surprising. Things have been sucking for a long time, hope is tough to find after so much carnage. But the idea that this piece by Cave is somehow particularly noteworthy is a stretch. Now Cave came in for some well-deserved praise when he refused to parrot Bill Maher's idiotic ideas about Iraq, but given the abject stupidity of Maher's questions all he really did was disagree that things would be better if Sadaam was still in power and that we owe it to the Iraqis to fix what we broke. Noble sentiments but hardly a step out on a limb.

Allah seems to feel that this and Cave's rep as an honest broker give tremendous weight to his assessment of current affairs in Iraq. I do not. Cave is a reporter for the NYT, and despite Burns and Gordon's solid work on the war, that is still a strike against you. If we are to listen to the sage analysis of Mr. Cave one would assume that he has expertise in military affairs and national security right? Mr. Caves' bio from his Phillips Foundation fellowship

Damien Cave
Full-time Fellowship
Project: "Beach Blanket Capitalism," focusing on four aspects of the Cuban government's effort to increase tourism: American laws and their effect on Cuban travel policy; the changing fortune of underground entrepreneurs; the effects of "tourism apartheid" on local citizens; and the role that tourism training schools play in exacerbating prejudices against race, class and political creed. Damien is now a reporter for The New York Times. He previously worked as an associate editor at Rolling Stone, a senior writer for Salon.com, and as a staff writer for the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire. He received a B.A. in English from Boston College and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.

And there you have it, he was a technology writer for Salon, wrote for a little paper on local stuff, wrote for that noted defense industry journal Rolling Stone and now he brings all that relevant experience to bear informing the rest of us on a counter-insurgency operation following an invasion that deposed a brutal dictator in a situation complicated greatly by religious strife. Right, I mean that's just like when the  guys in Motley Crue forced Vince Neil out because of sectarian oh wait no, maybe like when at the Keene, New Hampshire city council meeting when Mrs Jones argued that the Catholic Church social was trying to sabotage the Presbyterian bake sale, oh wait no.

Actually Damien Cave is as qualified to write on war as I am to write on neuro-surgery. I could research a piece and talk to some doctors and sick people and read some stuff and go to some hospitals and watch some surgery and take some pictures, and in the end I would produce a piece that was mostly factual, but provided no actual insight or really useful information. It would be a ignorant layman's look at an incredibly complex topic. Anyone who used my piece for any important decisions would be a fool.

Well I will answer Mr. Cave quite simply, I don't dispute a single thing he reports. I simply don't consider him a valuable source of information on the conflict and neither should anyone else. Just because the NY Times thinks he is qualified to be a war correspondent doesn't make it true, actually it probably works against his credibility. Allah would be well advised to take his skeptical eye and consider his sources. Sadly he drops a link to Bill Ardolino, who is in Fallujah right in the middle of this sob fest and then says read Cave for the last word, that was some weak shite. He would have been better off quoting large chunks of Ardolino and throwing Cave the little bone.

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Comments

[eaglesdontflock]

My faith is restored..I spoke too soon.

[MICHAEL in MI]

AllahPundit has been pushing his pessimism, negativity and fatalism about pretty much everything (except the Amnesty Bill, since his boss would fire him if he allowed his pessimism to rear its ugly head there) for the past few months. Where have you been, UJ. I let him have it the last month or so in the comments, since he was depressing the readers of HotAir with all his negativity and I was effing sick of it. He runs one of the most popular so-called Conservative blogs on the internet and uses it to depress his readers.

Not to mention that he fails to link to places like Mudville Gazette, Michael Yon, Blackfive, NRO THE TANK or any of the other tens of military blogs out there linked in Mrs. Greyhawk's DAWN PATROL each week whenever he is giving his almighty analysis on the war effort. Pisses me off to no end.

Especially since, as I said, he does not do that when he talks about the illegal immigration issue, since he knows that is the pet issue of Michelle Malkin. I have flat out asked them there at HotAir in the comments whether they support the war effort or not, since I don't see them working to inspire the American public to support the war effort as they all did to inspire the American public to stop the Amnesty Bill.

In my opinion, AllahPundit has gotten as bad as the Lefty blogs with regards to his reporting on the war effort. He cannot post anything without putting a negative spin on it. He would NEVER do that with the illegal immigration issue. So I questioned whether Michelle Malkin and the HotAir community are even in support of the war effort anymore. Interestingly enough, the next day Michelle Malkin had a post at her site regarding the Move America Forward efforts and all those who were supporting it and added links to embedded bloggers. Which is nice and all, but I have asked AllahPundit on numerous occassions to include links to military blog analysis and not just the defeatist propaganda BS coming from the mass media. Yet he is reluctant to do that. And even when he does, he puts his fatalistic crap spin on it.

Like you, I respect the work he does at HotAir in compiling news reports and digging to get a lot of the facts together about news stories and such, in many cases reporting on many things that the mass media fails to report. However, I am beyond PO'ed with his negative reporting and analyzing on the war effort, especially when he fails to actually link to military blog analysis.

I still remember he reluctantly linked to GRIM's analysis a few weeks ago (with regards to COIN I think it was). The guy seems to go out of his way to find every negative report and analysis from the mass media, but fails to do even a little research of the milblogs to find their analysis.

I'm glad to see you criticize him. The guy complains more about not having a stupid freaking iPhone and brags about being a negative, pessimistic, arrogant atheist than he acknowledges the threat of Islamism and how it is part of the overall war effort.

[jordan]

Most of the war reporting is still too mired in partisan politics and news cycle trivia to be insightful. As you say, it's not "war reporting". Victor Davis Hanson's latest piece (Why We Study War) gives some perspective on this, a bird's eye view. Iraq is bigger, and this point in time more critical, than most of us realize. He might say that's just the narcissistic tendency to think our time is the most important, our issues the most momentous, in hsitory. But you can put Iraq in it's proper historical context, and still feel today's events are uniquely momentous. When you're trying to decide whether to win or lose a war, you can't approach it any other way.

He says it's not just the fundamentals of warfare that reporters lack, it's understanidng how warfare builds and drives history in a larger sense. They don't RESPECT warfare, so why should they study it? Their scorn comes through in their reporting, and in turn dismays the public. Their complaints about the Iraq War are really complaints about war itself, but they think it's unique to this war -- Bush's war. Anyway, these aren't new ideas, but his piece is a good reminder that once a society stops believing it has a right to be victorious in war, it's pretty much on a downward slope. Here's hoping the country decides right.

[Uncle Jimbo]

I don't say this as much as I think it, but Jordan you always provide quality commentary, and Mike in MI I don't always agree with your level of outrage I always enjoy your perspective.

Thanks to all the B5 commentariat. I smell a scrap with Allah brewing.

Cordially,

Uncle J

[Allan]

Uncle J,

I think it is inaccurate to say that the surge has not failed. The administration clearly set out the objectives for the surge and they have not been met. I guess you are like the calculus student who wants partial credit.

Perhaps we should give partial credit and not grade the surge on a pass/fail basis. But that is a different post...

IMHO,, however, it is accurate to say that their have been gains in Iraq as a result of the increase in troops and that keeping troop levels at the current levels would be good. But, then, we don't have "surge" do we?

[Uncle Jimbo]

Actually Allan you would have a hard time being wronger,

The grading was determined by a Dem Congress specifically to undermine any success. If you make grades pass/fail a 99% is the same as a 69%.

Progress is progress, we are making it and no BS will change that.

Cordially,

Uncle J

[Don Miguel]

"... he was a technology writer for Salon ..."

I don't see how Cave's bio made him qualified to write on technology either. Regardless of what journalists believe, a J-school degree does not give or infer domain knowledge.

[Allan]

Uncle J,

Progress may be progress. But that is not the measure of success for the "surge". It never was. As late as July 2007 the White House wrote: "The current strategy in Iraq is a temporary surge in military, civilian, and diplomatic resources." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070710-3.html (number 4). Thus, part of the strategy is to reduce the number of troops to the pre-surge level in a relatively short time. That is, the extra troop levels would be temporary.

You are advocating keeping the troop levels high for an extended period. That is, changing the surge into an escalation.

While I think you are correct that keeping troop levels as they are (if not increasing them) would be beneficial, it is an admission that the surge strategy has failed.

One more thing. Unless, somehow, we find more troops, would you not agree that the escalation is unsustainable.

[liontooth]

from the article:
The “awakening,” as it has been called, has brought early dividends. Suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad are down — partly because those areas manufactured bombs and sent them into the capital.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html?ei=5088&en=5d732c4254cadf37&ex=1346990400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

General Petraeus initially said the goal was to reduce the massive bombings that were triggering the sectarian violence. The surge was initially aimed at that and al qaeda. The article acknowledges this has succeeded.

So why would anyone expect that Petraeus intended on going after al qaeda and Sadr at the SAME TIME? We as of yet have NOT seen what the plan is to go after Sadr and his minions. Or should we assume the top US military COIN expert is unaware of this Sadr fellow?

[Rich Casebolt]

A lot of the criticism about the surge, falls along this line of thinking:

It's annual performance review time, and the salesman sits down in front of his boss.

BOSS: "So, tell me how this year went ..."

SALESMAN: "As you recall, I told you I was going to land that big customer this year, to make my $10M sales goal ... well things didn't work out with them. However, I found several smaller, new customers, and still pulled in $10M ... and these new customers hold more promise for stable, future business.

BOSS: "You're fired."

SALESMAN: "What?!! I made $10M for this company, and have good prospects for more!

BOSS: "But you didn't do what you told me you were going to do".

The salesman cleans out his desk, and leaves ...

... two years later, his boss ends up doing the same, because those new customers weren't "on his radar". As a result, they took their business elsewhere, as that big company also kept their business "elsewhere".

Methinks that some people are more interested in straining at every gnat to "grade" the President, than they are about the facts on the ground.

Keep in mind - "elsewhere" in the case of Iraq, means either Iran, or Al Quada.

Let's keep these "customers" ... Whatever. It. Takes.

(and it doesn't take the Powell Doctrine ...)

[TBinSTL]

Having been a confirmed fan of Hot Air from it's founding, I also have been aware that AP(Allahpundit) takes great pleasure from his "Iconoclast" role. He likes to put on the hat now and then and just poke at people. It's usually confined to religion but he likes get his digs in on other topics occasionally. I expect he wore sunglasses in high school and pretended to ignore the pretty girls. "Heavy disassociated artist type" is how I would picture him. There are always those that like the "non-conformist" role so much that they will do things that they know they shouldn't just to earn their bones.

[liontooth]

I stumbled across this blog post at small wars journal Al Qaeda in Iraq – Heroes, Boogeymen or Puppets? from July 9. The article deals exclusively about the insurgency and the Surge and mentions AQI, former regime, and Saddam Fedayeen.

After reading the post (written 2 months ago) notice how al qaeda and the sunni insurgency NOW have largely disappeared.

[Sniper One]

Between the Anti-Mormon spin that always hits when Romney's name is mentioned, and Eeyore's general pessimism, I've all but stopped reading HotAir.

[Ymarsakar]

The administration clearly set out the objectives for the surge and they have not been met.

Objectives are like wishes, you rarely get all, if any, of them.

I guess you are like the calculus student who wants partial credit.

In this, the answer depends upon what an insurgency is doing to counter the insurgency. There is no universal mathematical formula for defeating human enemies, where you plug in numbers and out comes the ambrosia.

That is, changing the surge into an escalation.

Bush thinks he knows where to put the resources, like into Petraeus' hands, better than you do, Allan. Escalation? Call it re-allocation of resources to somewhere in which you disagree and would have wanted somewhere else.

it is an admission that the surge strategy has failed.

It is your strategy that has failed. You admit that temporary means to be beholden to a time limit you personally set. That's not what temporary means.

Unless, somehow, we find more troops, would you not agree that the escalation is unsustainable.

So you now disagree with yourself that the surge is escalation rather than temporary? Or is escalation different from temporary only in that escalation is not your prefered way to do things?

If you end it now, it would succede in your view because it would be "temporary" by your standards, but your view isn't what matters, now is it.

[Kat-Missouri/USA]

Well, I hate to hi-jack a thread, but I had two really important notes of interest for Blackfive readers:

1) Remember the 3000 Marines from the 13th Fighting Marine Expeditionary Unit that signed up with Soldiers' Angels within 48 hours? Well, thanks to great milblogs like Blackfive, they got adopted and they sent a Thank You! that must be shared with everyone that made that possible:

Semper Fi! 3000 Marines

2) Yesterday, September 8, Soldiers' Angels Kansas City was in a little town called Cleveland, Missouri at a small town fair on Main St. By a miracle or sheer coincidence, we met Bob and Shirley Hemenway. Their son, Ronald J. Hemenway, ET1, USN was killed on 9/11 at the Pentagon. His family lives in our area.

They have a special message for our troops: Meeting the Hemenways: 9/11 Is Not Forgotten

The Hemenway's also had another message that I know the readers of Blackfive would love to hear: Support the Troops! Support the Mission!

I quote Mr. Hemenway: "How can you say you support the troops and then say you want them to lose?"

Of course, Soldiers' Angels is a non-partisan, non-profit organization. That last part of the message was from Mr. Hemenway to Kat-Missouri to all of you.

Thank you for your continuing support of our mission!

[MICHAEL in MI]

Kat - Thanks for those links. That is wonderful to know the Marines received their Angels. And a great message from the Hemenways. Thanks for passing those along.

And thank you to the Soldiers Angels for all the work they do. They say behind every good man is a good woman. I think there needs to be a saying, Behind Every Good Soldier is a Soldier's Angel.

[jordan]

...and thank you for giving me a place to vent.

[Allan]

Ymarsakar,

So, tell me, what does temporary mean? To me it means one rotation or less. Some of the surge has been in effect for up to 6 months now and, if we are going to withdraw the troops after one year, we have to start now.

I guess, if our goal is to withdraw all troops sometime in the next century, we could call that temporary. But, I do not think that is what the president intended when he proposed the surge.

As for what I prefer. I prefer something that works or getting the heck out of dodge. I did not and do not oppose escalation. I oppose the Orwellian concept of calling an escalation a surge.

My bottom line assessment of whether the surge was a success has two components: 1) the Iraqi government made significant progress and 2) we can draw down to the pre-surge level.

What was your assessment of the objectives of the surge in January and February of this year? Back then, how much of how many of the objectives had to be accomplished would have meant success? Have the objectives been accomplished?

Without setting out the measurements and determing whether the objectives have been met, there is no way to determine whether anything is successful or a failure.

The administration all but guaranteed a miracle with a surge. And, if memory serves, you, Jordan, and Michael bought into the plan and the predictions. My thought back then was that the surge would not work, although I had hoped it would.

Bottom line: the surge did not produce the results the president insisted it would produce. It is not a success.

Want to change my mind? Show me something, anything, from February 2003 that indicated that the state we are in now would be considered a success.

[Rich Casebolt]

I don't care about what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do.

... Gene Kranz, "Apollo 13"

Signs of success:

... finally, a weapons-inspection process that can be trusted ... and the end of a Crude-for-Food porgram that couldn't be.

... Saddam, Uday, Qusay, Zarqawi ... DEAD-AY! ... along with many others who would, given the chance, kill us.

... bin Laden still lecturing us from a cave, instead of the head of a triumphal parade in Baghdad.

... an Iraqi Parliament, intact, secure and free enough to act like our own Congress.

... the family of the brothers at Iraq the Model, being able to safely travel to Syria and back, for a vacation.

... Iraqis, at what passes for "grass" roots in a desert, coming together to solve the problems they face, bridging sectarian fault lines to do so.

... the words of Chomsky being taken to heart only by bin Laden and his ilk, while more and more Iraqis ignore his rantings as they view us as the trustworthy "tribe al-Ameriki".

But no ... some insist that the war must follow the forecast and PERT chart, or we have failed.

If Gene Kranz had that attitude, the bodies of Lovell, Haise, and Sweigert would still be floating in space.

Problem is, if some keep it up, our Iraqi customers may look "elsewhere" for their security ... and a lot more than three dead bodies will be involved.

[MICHAEL in MI]

"Bottom line: the surge did not produce the results the president insisted it would produce. It is not a success."

Security improved. The locals have turned on al Qaeda and now are working with the Coalition and Iraqi Forces. Former insurgents who used to be fighting alongside al Qaeda are now fighting alongside the Coalition and Iraqi forces. Local politics is progressing. Small, yet very slow, political progress is being seen nationally.

Oh yeah, and a bunch of al Qaeda leaders as well as hundreds of terrorists killed.

All within 9 months.

I call that success and progress.

Is it 100% success? No.

But that is pretty foolish to give up on an effort just because 100% success was not achieved, but maybe 60-80% success was achieved and progress was made to get to the 100% level.

And therein lies the important factor. Are we on our way to achieving our goals, based on the success, progress and momentum of the past 3 months of the "surge"-offensive and the past 4+ years of the war effort overall.

Allan, you seem to just want to give up just because things have not been accomplished according to your timeline.

[Allan]

Michael,

The president did not say 80% was good enough. He said we would achieve 100% successful. And that was the argument for supporting the surge.

For better or worse, I don't think that Congress would have supported the surge if they had known what the result would be on August 31.

Thus, the goal was 100% success. Failure to meet such a high standard could result in Congress deciding to force the administration to change the course. Seven months ago, that would have been good. But now, it might not be, as the war has seem to hit its stride.

This may be a case of too little too late. And, for that, blame Bush, Rumsfeld, and company.

[MICHAEL in MI]

"This may be a case of too little too late."

Allan - I really don't understand this timetable you seem to want to stick to. From what I understand about war, you either win them or you lose them and you do whatever it takes for however long it takes to achieve victory.

To put it simply, it is never "too late".

I personally have never had a timetable for success. I have only wanted success. And I have read about progress and heard about progress from the soldiers and from their leaders on the ground.

Everything else I hear is simply political rhetoric and I disregard it when it comes to this war effort.

We are engaged in a military war effort and an ideological war effort. In my opinion, we are winning the military war effort and it will continue to progress to 100% success if given the time. However, we are losing the ideological war effort more and more each day. It started the day the President foolishly said Islam means peace and continued on with calling this a "war on terror" when it is actually a war against Political Islam. Which must be destroyed. Just as Naziism is not allowed to flourish nor is Shintoism allowed to flourish. We still have a VERY LONG way to go with getting rid of Political Islam and Islamic States.

But, in the meantime, the best way to slowly bring about that process is to improve the situation in the Middle East with baby steps. Some of those steps are bringing relative security to Afghanistan and Iraq, training the Iraqis and Afghanis to be strong enough to provide their own security without us AND, most important, change the hearts and minds of average Afghanis and Iraqis, especially the children, to break down the walls of ignorance and propaganda they have been taught about non-Muslims, especially Americans and Israelis.

This is going to take a LONG time. But, it is worth it if we want to see progress in the Middle East and help bring these people into the current civilization.

[David]

I am a little late to this thread but i have to say, i have also been sick of hot air's "reporting" on the war.

I am also sick of "exit question" and "nuance".

but most annoying of all is not being able to comment because i did not register in the first 30 days of their existence.