AEI’s Thomas Donnelly writes for the Weekly Standard blog:
More moderate Democrats are increasingly adjusting to the reality that the Iraq surge has been a military success, and that it is starting to create conditions for workable political compromise in Baghdad as well as Iraq’s provinces–see, for example, the air of desperation that has seized the hard-core anti-war crowd. Yet today’s Washington Post carries an op-ed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta clearly intended to intimidate Democratic candidates into sticking to their withdrawal pledges no matter what happens in Iraq. The article’s headline, “A War We Must End,” is a hint of the pay-no-attention-to-the-facts nature of the argument.
Donnelly’s readers might be interested in this shocking nugget buried in a smart op-ed by Andrew Bacevich a few weeks back:
In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won’t be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, “part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative,” thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war — and leaving it to the next president — was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might “snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.” Not to worry: The “victory” gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.
Something to keep in mind when Donnelly and his fellow-travelers comment on the surge’s impact on the Washington narrative.
My boss Chris Preble was beating this drum weeks ago in the American Prospect.
