The one-year-old had diarrhea today. Cleaning up after him, however, was a nice break from thinking about this less coherent Rich Lowry shit.
Lowry is discussing the NYT article about the new situation in Ramadi that made Cap'n Ed say stupid things yesterday, as we discussed. Remarkably, Lowry also says many stupid things. What a coincidence!
Lowry has an irritating penchant for restating the obvious as if it were insight, coming across as the type of person who is often stunned by the profundities that dwell within fortune cookies.
It was a political change that made the difference, with the sheiks shifting their allegiance. That made the military picture entirely different.
Yes, when the people who are fighting you decide to no longer fight you, that does tend to have an effect upon certain military realities. Well spotted. Observe, however, the leap Lowry makes from this platform, as it is comical:
If the political piece of the puzzle was crucial, so was the military. The tribes wanted "financial and military" support. We wouldn't have military support to give unless we were on the ground in Iraq.
Emphasis his.
One notes sourly that the entire fucked up situation, Al Qaeda dominating Iraqi Sunni tribal areas, wouldn't have existed in the first place if we hadn't invaded Iraq. Yes, it's good that the Sunni tribes are now all up in Bin Laden's face. So, uh, hooray, after a few years the locals have decided they like us marginally better than they like Al Qaeda. (Dejectedly blows inexpensive New Years Eve noisemaker.) Truly the arguments of the warbloggers stand vindicated.
Lowry continues, and we grimly pursue.
Anyone who says the tribes could do this without us is living in a fantasy world.
Anyone who misses the point that this is pretty much the definition of a "quagmire" probably writes for NRO.
But we have not yet hit bottom. That's this bit:
In a microcosm, you can see here the kind of political development that the war promised in theory—not the rise of liberal democracy, but of self-governing Arabs who hate al Qaeda and will fight it.
As a rationale for the entire war, this is an absolute load of shit. Nobody was ever batshit insane enough to tell the American people that the whole point of attacking an Arab country was to make Arabs hate radical Islam slightly more than they hate America. Or at least I fucking hope not, because that is even weirder than the idea that invading an Arab nation would lead to a liberal democracy. Which, in fact, WAS mentioned as a rationale for the war, and a pretty fucking significant one. (That's Bush's 2003 AEI speech. Maybe Lowry can point to the "no liberal democracy -- hate Al Qaeda" part.)
And finally, this gem:
Brutality usually, but not always, back-fires in insurgencies. When the counter-insurgents use it, it creates more insurgents, and when the insurgents use it, it creates a popular backlash. That's exactly what al Qaeda did in Anbar, and it's the downside risk in its current bombing campaign in Baghdad and elsewhere.
Lowry misses a key point, that the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar are themselves insurgents. They have objectives that for now coincide with ours -- whatever the hell those are at the moment. Relatedly, we are not counter-insurgents. We are, uncomfortably but inevitably, occupiers. Whether or not we see ourselves in that role is entirely irrelevant. It is how we're seen in Iraq. The presence of the American military there perhaps lends color to this interpretation.
The problem we have in Iraq is not that Al Qaeda, or more accurately its local franchise, operates there. Realistically, AQ may be prevented from running entire cities, but in a nation as awash in explosives as Iraq, even a dramatically reduced AQ will be able to cause significant devastation for decades, if they so wish. Look at what a small group of nuts did to us in 2001. AQ will have no shortage of Iraqi suicide martyrs perpetrating spectacular mass killings from Iraq for generations. That's just a given.
No. The more intractable issue is that all General Petraeus's horses and all of Joe Lieberman's men can't put the country back together again. None of the three main groups in the country have any compelling reason to support the central government, none of them (nor us) will be able to (or perhaps want to) stop the appalling terrorism currently gripping the nation's capital, and everyone wants us gone after they achieve whatever short-term benefit we can confer upon them.
How we are going to be more secure by indefinitely administering a remote equivalent of the Palestinian Territories where we will never really be liked, nor able to ever really provide security, completely escapes me. Of course, I'm told that such a result would be "victory." Right.
Oh well. Does Rich Lowry take drugs? If not, can he start?