Clearly his true métier is the formal speech rather than this sort of committee work. Still, I think Obama’s line of questioning did a good job of underscoring the ultimately hollow nature of the strategy being pursued currently in Iraq. We need to stay because of these various problems, so we need to stay, and what we’re doing is working, and yet somehow there’s no path from Point A to Point B — no way to connect the dots between what’s happening now, and a situation where the problems have actually been solved.

George Voinovich seems really pissed off! I’m not entirely sure exactly what he’s saying we should do in Iraq, but there is something nice about seeing someone — a Republican no less — expressing some frustration with the situation. Now just as I’m typing, he kind of seems to be saying he would favor setting a deadline for withdrawal, but I’m not really sure.

There’s a lot of good people on the Foreign Affairs committee, but Barbara Boxer is kind of a breath of fresh air. She talks like a smart, fairly knowledgeable liberal rather than like a paid-up member of the establishment looking forward to a CFR banquet in her honor. She’s driving home the point that it’s a bit perverse to be worried about the potential for Iranian influence in Iraq at a time when the President of Iran is being feted by the government of Iraq that we’re backing.

You can tell that Ryan Crocker finds her annoying, perhaps even “unserious,” but it’s good to see someone in a position of influence who’s serious enough not to take all this gobbledygook seriously.

Having earlier noted that the United States of America is suffering from a dire shortfall of Kagans, the good news is that we now have more words written by Fred Kagan that ever before, courtesy of National Review. In the course of a 5,000+ word essay he pulls of the neat trick of analogizing his opponents to Neville Chamberlain in the second graf. The general structure of the argument seems to be that, given that Chamberlain was skeptical of the merits of fighting a war over a “far-off country of which we know little” any and all refusal to fight wars in such countries is likely to lead to Adolf Hitler conquering the world.

I mean that characterization pretty seriously.

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General Petraeus says he wants to clear up a misconception, arguing “we don’t arm any of these Sons of Iraq.” This seems to basically be true. But they’re still armed groups that we give money to — money which can be spent to buy weapons. It’s kind of a distinction without a difference. Petraeus argues that it’s money well spent that saves us cash in terms of vehicles and equipment destroyed and (of course) in terms of lives lost. That makes perfect sense to me, but reducing casualty rates isn’t a real success in any kind of strategic terms — leaving Iraq would achieve those goals easily enough.

Meanwhile, unfortunately every time I hear the phrase “sons of Iraq” I think of the “Sons of Batman” from The Dark Knight Returns. I assume, though, that it’s not a deliberate reference.