Punting the Goalposts
By Mitch Berg
The old saying among lawyers goes “if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, argue like hell”.
As Krauthammer notes in his piece on the the Dems’ political dodge, the corollary is “if the media will abet and enable you to, just change the terms of the discussion:
And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: “This is not working. . . . We must reverse it.” A euphemism for “abandon the field,” which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks — mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government — that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.
Remember two years ago, when the left was carping about the US’ lack of understanding of tribal culture? How focusing on a central government was illusory in a tribal society?
And now – as the US finally sees some success after years of ignoring the historical lessons on how counterinsurgency war is waged – it’s the left that wants to pretend that Iraq is really just a dusty Toledo with a nasty political dysfunction?
I can understand Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, saying that the central government needs to seize the window provided by the surge to achieve political reconciliation. We would all love to have the leaders of the various factions — Kurd, Shiite and Sunni — sign nice pieces of paper tying up all the knotty questions of federalism, de-Baathification and oil revenue.
What commander would not want such a silver bullet that would obviate the need for any further ground action? But it is not going to happen for the same reason it has not already happened: The Maliki government is too sectarian and paralyzed to be able to end the war in a stroke of reconciliation.
But does the absence of this deus ex machina invalidate our hard-won gains? Why does this mean that we cannot achieve success by other means?
Never forget (or if your entire knowledge of this subject comes from the media, learn it for the first time); civil wars like this are won in the street first; only when the average Iraqi (like the average Salvadoran or Paraguayan or Dhofari before him) can go out on the street in the morning with reasonable assurance that he’ll come home at night is political change a priority.
Someone tell Nancy Pelosi.
