Bill Kristol did an important service yesterday by presenting, in a single op-ed, virtually every major conservative lie currently being propagated about Iraq and Democrats. In a remarkable collection of poor reasoning, misdirection, and smug obliviousness, he outlines the apparent conservative course for muddying the waters on Iraq to confuse people just enough so they consider voting Republican in 2008. The only redeeming element of the piece, really, is the op-ed standard word limit. The gist of the piece is that the “surge” in Iraq has worked and Democrats are craven for not saying so. Kristol, as usual demonstrating his kiddie-pool depth of understanding of Iraq, neglects to mention that the (Baghdad-centric) surge is largely independent of the security gains in the west. The beginnings of those improvements predate our troop increase, and came from a strategy which Kristol would ridicule (or worse) if it wasn’t being effected by leaders of his own political party: negotiating with bad people. A less charitable observer might even call it paying off the enemy: with acquiescent Sunnis being paid $300 per month for their participation in armed “concerned citizens” groups, creating a yearly salary that blows away the per capita income in the war-torn nation by more than a 2 to 1 margin, based on most current economic estimates. For years, insurgents were “terrorists,” not to be approached for compromise . . . until they said they would fight al Qaeda and we suddenly and completely reversed course, showering these former “terrorists” with money and arms. Regarding troop levels, of course more US troops impede the insurgency's ability to wreak havoc, but that has never been the question; rather, the issue is whether any progress in Iraq is (1) sustainable and (2) politically oriented. The surge’s results, encouraging as they are when considering the correlative drop in violence and deaths, do not indicate cause for optimism in those areas.
