Bloodless Coup

If you ever finished reading the Duelfer report, then you know that Saddam ordered his generals to stop fighting after a week. Why would he do that? The most plausible explanation in light of history appears to be that he meant to have his generals fight a guerilla war against coalition forces, to drive them out as in Algeria. So if we hadn't disbanded the Iraqi army, all those native explosives Moon talks about as used in IEDs wouldn't have had to be looted, they could have just been kept in view, fully accessible. All those weapons Moon laments getting into insurgent hands wouldn't have to be taken or bought with Saddam's riches, they would have still had them.

Arguably the greatest trouble we've had in rebuilding Iraq has come from the fact that Baath party sympathizers got back into the army and police and provided intelligence enabling insurgents to make spectacular, tragic attacks against police forces, jails, etc. As time goes by we've rooted out these guys, as is evidenced by the fact that these attacks are less common, much less common unless suddenly CNN and/or Reuters have stopped reporting on them.

One of the lessons from Algiers was that it takes time to build a supporting population, and we see more of that now with more tips, etc., no matter what comes out of the hole of that corrupt SOB Schumer and his failure to comprehend the scientific method (we make a change, and the sudden new circumstance effect ISN'T attributable to that increase in forces, but because of something else that he doesn't want to explain and for which he won't provide evidence?).

Can you imagine how much worse it would have been, how much more accessiblity to arms, explosives, and intelligence the insurgents would have had if we hadn't disbanded the Baathist army?

If what you are talking about relating to Senator Schumer (why an "SOB"?) is that the surge didn't lead to the Sunnis in the West working with us - he's hardly the only person saying such a thing. Lots of our national security professionals have said the exact same thing. That started before the surge.

And you are the first person I've heard of in ages defend disbanding the army. Lots of people I assume you'd consider good conservatives and serious about national security think it was an unmitigated disaster. That's not merely a Democratic talking point. Loads of people in the military, the CPA, Washington, etc. think it was an absurdly dangerous decision. Though if Baltar feels like jumping in, he's the one who should engage you on this point. He knows more about it than I do.

why an "SOB"?

How about constant hypocrisy, like going full throttle over Gonzalez but not caring when Hillary Clinton lied to the special prosecutor about the Clinton White House travel office; and not caring when then AG Janet Reno appointed an investigator into Clinton's Asian fundraising and AG Janet Reno refused that investigator's suggestion to appoint a special prosecutor; and voting for strict gun control while employing an armed bodyguard; and that whole thing about taking $120,000 in illegal contributions; and when his aide broke the law by accessing Michael Steele's credit report, and had to do a whopping 150 hours of community service and a year of probation before her record's wiped clean. Take your pick.

"the surge didn't lead to the Sunnis in the West working with us - he's hardly the only person saying such a thing. Lots of our national security professionals have said the exact same thing. That started before the surge."

According to Frederick Kagan:

"Anbari tribal leaders did begin to turn against AQI in their areas last year before the surge began, but not before Colonel Sean MacFarland began to apply in Ramadi the tactics and techniques that are the basis of the current strategy in Baghdad. His soldiers and Marines fought tenaciously to establish a foothold in Anbar’s capital, which was then a terrorist stronghold, and thereby demonstrated to the local leaders that they could count on American support as they began to fight their erstwhile allies. Even so, the movement proceeded slowly and fitfully for most of 2006 and, indeed, into 2007. But when Colonel John Charlton’s brigade relieved MacFarland’s in Ramadi and was joined by two additional Marine battalions (part of the surge) elsewhere in Anbar, the 'awakening' began to accelerate very rapidly. At the start of 2007 there were only a handful of Anbaris in the local security forces. By the summer there were over 14,000....The fact is that neither the surge nor the turn of the tribal leaders would in itself have been enough to turn Anbar around — both were necessary, and will remain so for some time."

Hypocrisy? Ummm, okay - so are you going to make a habit of writing Mitt Romney SOB, Rudy Giuliani SOB etc etc etc etc - b/c if that's what you are talking about you're going to be using the phrase a lot.

I don't think it's really appropriate to use Fred Kagan, an author of the surge, as the gauge by which to judge the success of the surge (especially when his analysis has repeatedly been found to be ... questionable). Beyond that I still think it's hard to say that X caused Y if Y was happening before X happened.

And of course in all of this, as a general rule when evaluating "success" and what's brought it about, keep in mind that correlation isn't causation.

I will gladly call out any Republican for being a hypocrite, and no I don't care for Romney or Giuliani. So do you dispute the facts presented by Kagan or just him as a person? If as it appears the current strategy was being used at the beginning of the Anbar awakening, and if as the surge has grown in number the Anbar awakening has grown in number, we do have correlation. Your dear fellow Democrat whose hypocrisy you don't even dispute would have us believe there's another mechanism at work, yet he will not explain what that mechanism is.

If it wasn't the surge, was it simply American resiliency? Even this would contradict the Democratic approach since 2003 which has been that we need to get our troops out of Iraq (before that for your favorite lefty candidates). If American troops were as in the way of the political process as Democrats assert, as Obama said that they won't do anything while we're there to do it for them, then as the surge increased the Sunni awakening would decrease, but what we see is that as the surge increases, so do the number of Sunnis working with us against Al Queda in Iraq.

First off, look at Kagan's opening phrase. He says this started before the surge. That's my point, and he's admitting it. He later amends it with modifiers like "fitfully" which are too vague to dispute.

There is a great deal of analysis on Anbar which suggests we had very little to do with it. Iraqis didn't like AQI and acted against them. We can come in on our white horses - but that doesn't mean we were key to their change in behavior. And it doesn't mean that they are likely to be firm and fast friends in the future. AQI came in and messed up the place, and not surprisingly the natives chose to respond to that.

The Democratic approach since '03 has been that we have to leave Iraq? Uh no. We weren't there until '03 to start with, and the party's never united around such a theme. Quite the contrary in fact. And neither of the 2 serious Democratic candidates for the presidency has proposed leaving Iraq.

These are the last 2 paragraphs of a post at Think Progress that was put up at 4:10 today:

Even Gen. Petraeus has acknowledged that Anbar “was the result, not of military actions, certainly, alone. It was the result of, really, a political shift where the population led by the sheiks of major tribes decided to reject al Qaeda and its Taliban-like ideology, and the extremist behavior that they have come to associate with it.” Similarly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently admitted that the successes in Anbar were initiated by Iraqis, not U.S. troops.

Last week, CNN correspondent Michael Ware also noted that the Sunni insurgency in Anbar offered to work with U.S. troops — but not the Iraqi government — to fight al Qaeda in 2003, but the United States rejected the offer. Only “after four years of bloodshed” was the United States “finally ready to accept those terms.”