Today in a Washington Post op-ed, surge advocates retired general Jack Keane, AEI scholar Frederick Kagan, and the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon trumpet Iraq’s new de-Baathification legislation as a first step in the surge’s “remarkable” success:

The full surge has been in place and operating for just over six months, and already violence has fallen dramatically across the country. The achievement in such a short time of significant legislation that requires all sides to accept risk and compromise with people they had been fighting only a few months ago is remarkable. It would have been unattainable without the change in strategy and addition of American forces that helped bring the violence down.

The authors pass off the bill’s problems by noting that the “legislation is imperfect, of course.” But many Sunni and Shiite officials have stated that the bill “could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries.” In fact, as Middle East expert Juan Cole has noted, the legislation was actually spearheaded by the most anti-Baathist groups and opposed by former Baathists.

Keane, Kagan, and O’Hanlon don’t let these concerns interfere with their sunny assessment, however, briefly writing that this “possible problem” will need to be “cleared up.” Last week, Kagan compared the bill to “the beginning of their [Iraqi] civil rights legislation.”

What does all this “good news” mean? According to the three armchair generals, it means that U.S. troops should stay in Iraq as long as possible, despite the recommendations of U.S. commanders:

Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno know the strains the surge has placed on the military and believe that we can reduce our forces to pre-surge levels by this summer without compromising our gains. Considering the big steps taken by Iraqi security forces over the past year, as well as the tremendous damage our forces and Iraqi forces, together with the Iraqi people, have done to al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni Baathist insurgency, Iranian-backed special groups and the fighting elements of the Jaish al-Mahdi, this belief is probably justified. But we cannot be sure.

Absent from the online version — but present in the print edition — is the authors’ call to “plan to stay heavily engaged in Iraq for several more years.”

While Keane, Kagan, and O’Hanlon herald the Bush administration’s “ongoing engagement,” it’s important to remember that President Bush’s former appointee Paul Bremer was responsible for de-Baathification in the first place. In 2003, Bremer issued a sweeping order that outlawed Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and dismissed all senior members from government posts. (This point is acknowledged in the online version of the op-ed, but is notably absent from the print version.)

UPDATE: Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich also writes an op-ed entitled “Surge to Nowhere” today in the Post: “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.”

UPDATE II: The Group News Blog has more on how the surge is supposedly “working.”

Patrick Ruffini makes a lot of sense on the state of the Republican race, and Matt Stoller observes Barack Obama bleeding support among self-identified liberals. I doubt one can really attribute Obama’s problems in this regard specifically to his remarks about Ronald Reagan, but the overall tendency has been for Obama to find himself positioned to HRC’s right which isn’t where you want to be in a primary.

Last week, CTV revealed that the Canadian government had put the United States on a “torture watch list.” Under heavy pressure from the United States, the Canadian Foreign Minister now has ordered the manual to be rewritten because it “wrongly includes some of our closest allies.” Amnesty International Canada criticized the move, stating, “When it comes to an issue like torture, the government’s main concern should not be embarrassing allies.”

There’s lots of reporting out there on Hillary Clinton’s strong win — 64-26 — over Barack Obama among Latino voters in Nevada. One thing I would add to this is that Clinton did pretty well with whites, too — beating Obama 52-34. What’s more, we’ve seen over and over again that Obama does better with more affluent voters and with better-educated voters. And, of course, the pool of non-hispanic whites is more affluent and better-educated than is the pool of Latinos.

Long story short, I’d be interested in seeing how different hispanics and non-hispanic whites really look once you control for non-ethnic demographic factors. Or, in other words, does Obama really have a specific problem with Latino voters, or is this more of a class phenomenon?

Part of the dynamics of the primary campaign has been a certain tendency of foreign policy issues to go into eclipse as the leading contenders from each side compete with one another for the affections of base voters who tend to be motivated by each coalition’s core economic and cultural interests. But Tom Edsall wisely points out that even if the economic situation worsens, a general election campaign is bound to have a hefty focus on terrorism and security if for no other reason than that the GOP doesn’t really have any other good options. Brian Katulis says some smart things about this deeper into the piece:

The most nuanced analysis of the politics of terror was provided by Brian Katulis, a less well known figure in the Democratic foreign policy establishment who is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress where he is a Senior Advisor to the Center’s Middle East Progress project.

“I wouldn’t say that Democrats have avoided national security as much as they have not yet developed a coherent narrative that simply goes beyond ‘Bush screwed things up.’….Conservatives have an overarching story when it comes to talking about national security – it’s not dissimilar to Bush’s narrative: there are bad people out there, we need to go out there and try to kill them ourselves before they get us. Simplistic, and applied to many different threats, but it’s kind of an easy story line….

“It’s those political consulting classes on the Democratic side who are particularly wounded and still operating on the defensive when it comes to national security – which is truly a stunning thing when you think about it, given all of the strategic errors conservatism is responsible for on the national security front the last seven years.

“So I think there’s a sweet spot for Democrats to actually say something that connects the dots on the national security and terrorism front – one that actually responds to a need from the American people to hear a viable alternative – but we’re just not hearing it yet at that political communications level. We’re seeing and hearing tick lists that make the broader public’s eyes glaze over. On the conservative side, we hear a story line – a batshit crazy one for the most part that got us in the predicament that we’re in now, but hey, it’s a story. Most people would rather go to a movie that has a plot.”

I would add that one thing I still don’t see from Democrats on these issues is the correct atmospherics of confidence. When the candidates talk about most things, they talk about them with an apparent air that they believe everything they’re saying. But when they talk about terrorism or Iraq they have a tendency, in my view, to often sound like they’re stuck in 2002 — nervous, defensive, cautious. They don’t sound like a political party that believes that the evident failures of Bush’s policies throughout 2005 and 2006 played a major role in boosting their party’s political fortunes. And they don’t sound to me as if they’re eager to engage with these issues. But while confidence alone is no guarantee of success, going into a fight believing your going to lose is a recipe for trouble.