Costs of War

How very sad. This is just "wildly off the mark" and eventually this war "will pay for itself."

Still, Gates seems to be part of the "mainstream" elite consensus which holds that Iraq is almost certainly doomed, but that we should sort of keep on prosecuting the war for years and years just because it would be embarrassing to give up and, hell, who knows maybe a pony will come along. That sort of thing works, I think, if and only if you regard the war as a total abstraction, rather than actual events happening to actual people.

Looks like Silvestre Reyes is part of that mainstream consensus:

In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias.”

Damned mainstream elite. I hate being a part of it.

Still, Gates seems to be part of the "mainstream" elite consensus which holds that Iraq is almost certainly doomed, but that we should sort of keep on prosecuting the war for years and years just because it would be embarrassing to give up and, hell, who knows maybe a pony will come along. That sort of thing works, I think, if and only if you regard the war as a total abstraction, rather than actual events happening to actual people.

This whole thing seems to be playing out politically as a weird farcical repetition of fall 2002. So I am keenly aware of the risk of imagining that this is going to be Ken Pollack's, or George Packer's, or Thomas Friedman's, or whoever's, way forward when in fact it's going to be George W. Bush's. But the actual question, it seems to me, is whether cutting and running would be worse for the Iraqis (with the tradeoff that it would obviously be better for American forces) than if we stay and try to manage the catastrophe. In this regard, I am not encouraged by the way Democrats are embracing the Rumsfeld memo's perspective - draw down with focus on training and beefing up the ISF as a patently Shiite-Kurdish force - seemingly unconscious of what the Salvador option/80% solution actually means for the 5.2. million Sunni Arabs. It likely means mass slaughter. And the Bush administration will just try to make sure it cannot be called genocide. So would the slaughter that would likely follow cutting and running be less bad because we would not have trained up the Shiites in the ways of death?

"That sort of thing works, I think, if and only if you regard the war as a total abstraction, rather than actual events happening to actual people."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matt, our soldiers aren't actual people. That's why we can feed them into a meat grinder for years on end with no compunction. Jenna and Barbara Bush are real people. Private Smith and Corporal Sanchez are abstractions. Clear?

Sigh. What gives them the right to fuck with our lives?

"hell, who knows maybe a pony will come along"

You realize, of course, that that is what the finance people refer to as "optionality." Since optionality can magically transform a deal from a no go into a go, why can't it transform Iraq strategy from a go into a no go?

JK, partly.

The two most irresponsible groups regarding the Iraq War are the ones who wanted to rush in and the ones who want to rush out. The ISG report seems like a plausible plan to get us out over time. The key (to Matt's point in another post) is to define the factors that would cause us to deviate from the plan (put into metrics).

Of course, you can't be in the cool crowd in the blogosphere if you support a bipartisan plan. And supporting any plan means that you might be wrong (unless you support worst case everything - that way you're only wrong in a good way).

Marty, maybe you can help me understand how the ISG plan will help - because right now it looks like, "Oh we have too many people in Iraq who want us to fail, so let's invite in even more people who want us to fail and maybe that will make things better." Is this the pony Matt promised us?

We need a strategy to get out of the combat role over time (15 months is what I heard at the press conference). And we have to prevent the extreme worst case options to the maximum extent possible (regional war, millions killed, al Qaeda takes over territory as a new base, etc).

Blame us. We were not supportive enough.

-

We need a strategy to get out of the combat role over time (15 months is what I heard at the press conference).

And is Bush going to follow the Magic Pony Plan? No, he ain't.

I know Atrios can be rude at times, but he's on the mark about how Bush has made his position absolutely clear: while he's in the White House, leaving is losing. That takes you to January 2009.

If we pull out this year necklaces made out of chopped off purple fingers will glut Ebay. The Sunni's will eat the Goverment up.
I think it's time to send in the Bush twins and Jonah Goldberg

The "extreme worst case options" are not only un-preventable, they were cast in solid stone the minute the US troops started the invasion. This is an illegal and immoral war, and oh-so-breathtakingly-stupid.

Staying there only prolongs the violence and the killing and the death. Bush's plan is to bring freedom of the grave and the democracy of death to the Iraqi people.... and a few Americans.

Actually, just going along the same way won't work--our military will break, probably within the next six months. The alternatives are to ramp it way up, institute a draft, deploy 600,000 soldiers, be prepared to more than spend $400 billion a year for years and years and radically increase taxes, especially on the rich, to pay for it. The American death tole would probably be about the same or maybe higher and the economy would go in a ditch, but at least there would be a semblance of order in Iraq. The alternative is to get the fuck out.

What's more, the thousands of dead soldiers are the least of the human toll . . .

I think this is an unfortunate choice of words. I suppose it's true if it only means that numerically the dead are smaller than other categories of the 'human toll', but to my (metaphorical) ears it has a belittling sound.

In tragic support of your statement about abstract vs actual events, the death count stands at 29 in the first six days of December.

...but we should keep this up, because... why?

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/

29 US troops, that is. Of course, I'm sure the ISG would want to consider the 330 Iraqis as of December 5, too.

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

It seems to me that elite consensus is where it is out of inertia, not malevolence.

After all, "every serious Democrat" in the Senate voted for the war, said Atlanta Journal Constitution editor Cynthia Tucker on Chris Matthews the other day. (Self-link on this.)

Being right about the war is still considered a pretty gauche thing to have done.

So Matt's characterization might be off-base because it assumes that elite consensus comes about in part out of people "regard[ing] the war as a total abstraction."

In fact, that consensus is rooted in domestic social realities, not on any assessment at all, abstract or otherwise, about the actual war.

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