Let's see if we cannot sum up Fred Kagan:
We cannot tell anything except that we haven't "failed". We need ... the proverbial "six more months", at least.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ....
Fred's reasons to change strategy:
1. We find something better
2. Find that what we're doing now can never work
3. [Sorry, cannot read my own notes]
1. There is certainly something better. Swap out Bush-Cheney for, say, Baker-Powell. (Even Dem voters might acquiesce to that, so fed up is the nation.)
2. That case is not nearly as difficult to make as Kagan makes it out to be. For one, we need political cooperation and a build-out of professional Iraqi security forces. The first may never be forthcoming in sufficient quantities or timely. The second appears to be glacial (despite a report of a $6 billion American taxpayer effort on the ISF to date).
Last, Kagan - like many - continues to ignore that there is a cost-benefit to do, even now, of continuing. There is an ongoing price, and we can, at any moment, decide that the future costs are too high.
Of course, such calculation is particularly bitter, since we've spent so much already on what looks, in hindsight, to be a half-baked effort, which the GOP didn't scale up with more troops, including a draft, when they had the chance to do so, in favor of ... winning re-election?
Monday, July 9, 2007
118 degrees in Baghdad, Same at AEI today
