you know, I gave you one of the better set-up posts ever yesterday, and you didn't even respond. search pizza and porno and you'll focus right in.

What September Won't Settle

By George Will

Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable.


After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power.


The Weimar Republic was fragile; America's domestic tranquility is not. Still, remember the bitterness stirred by the accusatory question "Who lost China?" and corrosive suspicions that the fruits of victory in Europe had been squandered by Americans of bad character or bad motives at Yalta.


So, consider this: When Gen. David Petraeus delivers his report on the war, his Washington audience will include two militant factions. Perhaps nothing he can responsibly say will sway either, so September will reinforce animosities.


One faction — essentially, congressional Democrats — is heavily invested in the belief, fervently held by the party's base of donors and activists, that prolonging U.S. involvement can have no benefit commensurate with the costs. The war, this faction says, is lost because even its repeatedly and radically revised objective — a stable society under a tolerable regime — is beyond America's military capacity and nation-building competence, and it is politically impossible given the limits of American patience.


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The other faction, equal in anger and certitude, argues, not for the first time (remember the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq, Iraqi voters' purple fingers, the Iraqi constitution, the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, the capture of Hussein, the killing of Zarqawi, etc.), that the tide has turned. How febrile is this faction? Recently it became euphoric because of a New York Times column by two Brookings Institution scholars, who reported:


"We are finally getting somewhere" ("at least in military terms"), the troops' "morale is high," "civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began" and there is "the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory' but a sustainable stability."

But the scholars also said:

"The situation in Iraq remains grave," fatalities "remain very high," "the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark," "the Iraqi National Police . . . remain mostly a disaster," "Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position," it is unclear how much longer we can "wear down our forces in this mission" or how much longer Americans should "keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part," and "once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines."

The rapturous reception of that column by one faction was evidence of the one thing both factions share: a powerful will to believe, or disbelieve, as their serenity requires. Consider the following from the war-is-irretrievable faction:

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, House majority whip, recently said that it would be "a real big problem for us" — Democrats — if Petraeus reports substantial progress. Rep. Nancy Boyda, a Kansas Democrat, recently found reports of progress unendurable. She left a hearing of the Armed Services Committee because retired Gen. Jack Keane was saying things Boyda thinks might "further divide this country," such as that Iraq's "schools are open. The markets are teeming with people." Boyda explained: "There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while . . . after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to."

In the other faction, there still are those so impervious to experience that they continue to refer to Syria as "lower-hanging fruit." Such metaphors bewitch minds. Low-hanging fruit is plucked, then eaten. What does one nation do when it plucks another? In Iraq, America is in its fifth year of learning the answer.

Petraeus's metrics of success might ignite more arguments than they settle. In America, police drug sweeps often produce metrics of success but dealers soon relocate their operations. If Iraqi security forces have become substantially more competent, some Americans will say U.S. forces can depart; if those security forces have not yet substantially improved, the same people will say U.S. forces must depart. Furthermore, will the security forces' competence ultimately serve the Iraqi state — or a sect?

Petraeus's report will be received in the context of his minimalist definition of the U.S. mission: "Buying time for Iraqis to reconcile." The reconciling, such as it is, will recommence when Iraq's parliament returns from its month-long vacation, come September.

The debate on us leaving Iraq is a sham. We are not, lead by Democrats or Republicans, "leaving" that country en masse or anything even close to it. Whoever is in power will be forced to remain because to leave would only plunge the place into chaos and force our imminent return under worse circumstances.

This entire debate is a political theatre. The Democrats are culpable on this because they are playing it for votes knowing it is a promise they can never keep.

This is not Vietnam. It is in no way analogous.

Bush has broken the vase and we have to pay to for it now. Leaving the store has never and will never be an option, except for the shit-for-brains crowd that believes what it sees on C-Span or hears in stump speechs.

There will be 15,000 dead Americans before Iraq is close to some sort of peaceful stasis, and it will be three states tied together in the thinnest of republican organizations.

Don't stand so close to me.
 

Kudos to John Dickerson who, in an article on Romney and his reaction to the Craig story, had the best one-liner:

• "After hearing about Larry Craig's arrest, Mitt Romney ran from his former Idaho campaign chairman as if he'd been in the next stall."

And a good political anecdote I'd never heard before:

• Nick Gillespie, the editor of Reason, seized on the Craig affair to make a version of this [libertarian] argument in the Los Angeles Times, where he said that the GOP should get back to its fundamental principles as articulated by Barry Goldwater. Republicans should stop trying to tell people what to do in their bedrooms and bathrooms, either by stinging a Singing Senator or passing an amendment banning gay marriage. This drew criticism from the National Review's John Hood, who argued that Gillespie had misappropriated the memory of Barry Goldwater. "I'm going to go out on a not-very-long limb here and suggest that if Sen. Goldwater was still around," wrote Hood, "he'd be urging Craig to take personal responsibility for the disrepute he has brought upon himself and the Senate."
  
  We don't have to guess about what Goldwater would do. During the 1964 presidential campaign, he faced almost precisely the same issue. In October, the Goldwater campaign learned that Walter Jenkins, LBJ's closest aide, had been arrested on a "morals charge" in the YMCA bathroom. According to J. William Middendorf's account of that campaign, A Glorious Disaster, Goldwater's aides wanted to use the scandal against Johnson, who was well ahead in the polls. Jenkins was not only a security risk—open to blackmail— but long before he was arrested, there were allegations he'd used his influence with then-Vice President Johnson to get an Air Force general who had been busted on a morals charge reinstated. The Goldwater aides even tried out slogans: "Either way with LBJ." Goldwater insisted that they make no use of it. The story never came up during the campaign.
  
  This may say more about Goldwater's personal decency than it does about his governing philosophy. Jenkins had served in Goldwater's Air Force Reserve Unit, and as Goldwater later wrote, "It was a sad time for Jenkins' wife and children, and I was not about to add to their private sorrow. Winning isn't everything. Some things, like loyalty to friends or lasting principle, are more important." Mitt, you're no Barry Goldwater.

Gattigap

A short history of WWII
 

This is just wrong. There are a bunch of Democrats who would get us out. (Yes, bad things will happen when we leave. But our presence is not making things better.) These people are not playing for votes. They are saying what they mean, but they don't have the votes to force this result now.

There are other Democrats -- e.g., Hillary -- who want to keep a large force there, and who are trying to leave primary voters with the impression that they would change things more than they would. This is not "playing it for votes." These people are on a different page than the average voter, and trying to hide that fact.

What is preventing any change in policy is the President. There aren't enough votes in Congress to override his veto.

What is preventing a change in policy is the fact that us leaving would be a full on disaster. We're stuck, and though our presence fans flames in certain sectors, on the overall, it is one of the only forces keeping any infrstructure in the region.

There are a few Dems who truly would pull us out, but that doesn't mean the majority of them have any intention of actually pulling us out and aren't merely playing the issue for votes. Do you really believe they'd yank us out once in office? The fallout would be horrible, and having to reverse that decision and send troops back later so politically destructive they'd never do it.

The only change in policy to be effected is pulling back and maintaining a UN types of police force instead of battling the insurgents. That is going to require a massive commitment of bodies. Describing it as a withdrawal would be somewhere between generous and incorrect.

This is kind of like the day-labor center in Herndon, VA -- a shelter was built, and a bunch of people got into office by saying they'd stop letting illegal immigrants use it. Then when they got into office, they couldn't find anyone to run it who could screen for illegal aliens, and they realized that if they shut it down, day laborers would congregate in parking lots and be much more of a nuisance.

Um, except totally different, but still.


ETA and Ironweed's post is so far the highlight of my day (other than the fact that we are closing early and I will be SOOOO out of here in 3.3 hours).

Our presence not only "fans the flames," it keeps the rival factions from having to reconcile. Conservatives who complained about welfare should be able understand this, but they seem to have a hard time getting it.

I think the opposite is true. Most Democrats want to be more aggressive in using Congress to force a change in policy, but they are being held back by the leadership and the moderates, who (1) fear the consequences of moving too far to the left (notwithstanding that the public is already there), and (2) recognize that they need Republicans to get a veto-proof majority, and that they won't get the Republicans if they make the issue partisan.

The result is that many Democrats are frustrated with their party for not doing more, and for not making more of an issue out of it. And if all they wanted to do was take Senate seats in Minnesota, Maine and Oregon in '08, the Democrats could politicize and polarize things on this issue by hanging the whole fiasco around the necks of the Republican party, and Senators like Norm Coleman, Susan Collins and Gordon Brown. That they aren't doing this shows that they are behaving fairly responsibly, moreso than Republicans would in similar circumstances.

Actually, your analogy is dead-on. I think it's just that straightforward a problem. Ignorance of the true nuts and bolts of the situation coupled with the need to sell oneself with loads of promises.

The war's awful. A terrible, silly blunder. Leaving en masse is the only thing possibly worse.

Well, never having gone in the first place (war situation) versus actual need for something (day-labor center) are different. Uh, those are my opinions. I agree that total* immediate* withdrawal from Iraq does not seem like a good idea, given the situation we've caused.**



*even speaking relatively on these two

**in a way. not saying that saddam was good, but things were relatively stable, and they really really aren't now.

I don't think your first analogy is very solid. I also think if left to reconcile, they will be at each other's throats even more.

The public is not "to the left." The public is disgusted and wants a quick easy solution. But remove all the troops, watch Iran and Russia drive oil prices through the ceiling and the country will turn "to the right" very quickly. You see a moral issue. The American voter is selfish, economically fixated and impatient. Right now the war looks like an expensive loss. If we had taken over the oil spigots and gas prices dropped, people would not complain. The country isn't Left or Right, unless you believe the news or the internet.

The poles of any issue are where the idiots reside. That is concrete fact we can agree on. The response to one idiot from the right is not replacing his flawed ideology with that of an idiot from the left. It doesn't work like a pendulum. That sort of correction does not bring things back to the middle. What brings things back to the middle is moderate, sensible recognition that we are stcuk there, and that our aim should be to minimize casualties while maintaining order. That is our charge. The notion the Iraqis will stand up and fight off the extremists is a pipe dream. It simply isn;t going to happen.

Actually, I think Saddam was very good for the Mddle East. He was stable and secular and wasn't treading toward extremism, though there were some hints he was embracing Islam for political purposes. He was buyable. It's too bad we married ourselves to the Saudis so long ago. Looking back, the better move, given Iraq's oil reserves, would have been to let him have Kuwait and prop him into something approaching a real country. He could have been brought under control, and made to obey human rights to a certain degree with enough cash.

We're working with all his old Sunni henchmen now to fight Shiite zealots. WTF? Why are we there again? Who were we deposing? Did we go there to get the oil we already had? Saddam's crude was cheap. The Saudis gouge us.

news flash
 

infirm PB has been taken over by some seriously stupid people. I just picked a gilligan over there.

issue spotter: how many inaccuracies can you list from these sentences?