{"id":1270,"date":"2007-09-05T05:26:57","date_gmt":"2007-09-05T10:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:53:24","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:53:24","slug":"overpowered-by-wonk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1270","title":{"rendered":"Overpowered By Wonk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Black, at his new blog, jumps into the battle<\/a> to spin the upcoming Petraeus report:<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reports this morning that a GAO report, due out Tuesday, will find that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks <\/font><\/a>that Congress and the Bush Administration had established to measure military and political progress.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to escape politics, selective perception and confirmation bias when discussing the question of progress in Iraq, especially during the current run-up to the big September presentations by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.<\/p>\n

But if there\u2019s anyone I would trust to call it straight, it would be the GAO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Black went on:<\/p>\n

When I read a few weeks ago that the GAO was doing its own study of the Iraq situation (at the request of Congress) I counted on it to be the unbiased assessment available. When I just read the Post story, I was disappointed to learn that the GAO will only be studying the 18 benchmarks.<\/p>\n

As I previously fulminated<\/font><\/a>, for those focused on the big question of how things are going for the U.S. mission in Iraq, these benchmarks are overrated. The benchmarks focus only on things the Iraqi government is supposed to do to facilitate the much-ballyhooed but not very visible national reconciliation among the various population groups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed – a casual study of counterinsurgency warfare shows that the GAO’s benchmarks, while of importance to those for whom the quality of a national government is the measure of success, are virtually meaningless in measuring success in the mission that will, for the immediate future, be the only one that really matters in Iraq; securiting the citizens; driving Al Quaeda out; cutting down on internecine ethnic\/religious cleansing; killing or co-opting the religious death squads; getting the the point where “The Iraqi Street” doesn’t need to worry about being killed, having his children burned alive before his eyes, being gang-raped, for the crime of walking the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As in all counterinsurgencies, government factions can negotiate until the paint peels from the conference room walls; none of it means anything until the “street” believes it’s safe.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be more impressed when the results are real in ways that affect the safety our troops and of the well being of the Iraqi people. For example, when the number\u00a0of attacks on the troops is down, likewise the number of\u00a0Americans\u00a0and Iraqis\u00a0getting killed, plus the unemployment rate in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Black – knowingly or not –\u00a0invokes an\u00a0irreconcilable paradox.<\/p>\n

Focusing on the “number of attacks on the troops” is what got us into this mess in the first place.\u00a0 Since Beirut and Mogadishu, the US military has focused on “force protection” to a\u00a0degree that Robert Kaplan, quoting Special Forces troops in Afghanistan, called “debilitating”.\u00a0 For the first three years of the counterinsurgency, the US military became so focused on “force protection” that it would seem to have \u00a0gotten neither safety nor <\/em>victory; by going, essentially, on the defensive, we ceded control of much of the “Iraqi street” to the terrorists, death squads and thugs – which made most of Iraq a safe haven from which to…<\/p>\n

…launch more attacks on our troops.<\/p>\n

It’s only <\/em>been by putting our troops in harm’s way, taking the initiative from the enemy<\/em>, that casualties have dropped<\/a> and, more importantly, people in places like Anbar<\/a> are starting to sense the security that will give them, someday, the mental bandwidth to fuss about things like oil revenue and the Rights of Man. It’s also paradoxical that by taking the war to the enemy, one saves lives in the long run.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll be impressed by measurable progress toward the reconstruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, \u00a0an increase in how much oil is being produced and how many hours a day Baghdad has electricity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet trying to get to any <\/em>of that without making the people of Iraq secure is like trying to drive to Chicago before you’ve changed your flat tire.<\/p>\n

It is a lamentable fact that the Administration – the Pentagon, really – allowed this to happen for three years.<\/p>\n

It is to the Administration’s credit that things have finally changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That the Administration’s opponents have never had a better idea in either case shows their unfitness to lead this nation in a time of war.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Black, at his new blog, jumps into the battle to spin the upcoming Petraeus report: The Washington Post reports this morning that a GAO report, due out Tuesday, will find that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks that Congress and the Bush Administration had established to measure military […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49892,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/49892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}