Robert Farley has much more on the Pollack/O’Hanlon op-ed, including some discussion of dodgy numbers. Meanwhile, though not intended as a direct riposte to the op-ed, this chart assembled by Nick Beaudrot and the associated discussion is worth checking out:

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting the incentives that O’Hanlon and Pollack face. If they bow to reality and say the US should move rapidly to start cutting our losses in Iraq, then they’re people who advocated in favor of a disastrous policy and this’ll be bad for their careers. If, by contrast, they say the surge is looking good, and then work together with Bush administration officials and The Weekly Standard to construct a stab in the back narrative about Iraq, then they can hope to salvage their professional reputations at the expense of liberals.

(of course, haha, that’s to imply that the policy analysis put forward by Brookings Institution foreign policy program people might be influenced by crass careerism rather than Very Serious Expertise but that’s absurd, right, after all Very Serious People are above such things)

I think it’s a little unfortunate that Will Marshall’s response to my critique of his case for residual forces in Iraq doesn’t really grapple with the arguments I made. Instead, he accuses me of not addressing some other things. And fair enough, I’ll try to address some of Marshall’s concerns. But I would like to see what he has to say about the problems that I think exist with his argument:

And wouldn’t al Qaeda in Iraq be emboldened by a swift U.S. departure? Wouldn’t more foreign jihadists come to celebrate their victory in driving America out of Iraq? Wouldn’t Sunni shieks who have turned on al Qaeda switch back without us there to tip the scales? Yglesias doesn’t say.

Obviously, if US forces aren’t in Iraq on Day X, al-Qaeda will use that fact for propaganda and recruiting purposes. By the same token, however, if US forces are in Iraq on Day X, al-Qaeda will use that fact for propaganda and recruiting purposes. There’s not some course of action we can take such that al-Qaeda’s response will be “fair enough” and then they shuffle off quietly into the sunset.

I really don’t think, however, that “more foreign jihadists” would actually go to Iraq in order to “celebrate their victory.” People interested in fighting infidels occupying Muslim lands are going to go somewhere (Kashmir, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine, I dunno) where that’s plausibly what’s happening. The US military presence is what’s attracting foreign fighters to Iraq, it’s not a prophylactic against foreign fighters coming into the country. Would Sunni Sheikhs flip-flop and side with al-Qaeda? There are no guarantees, but I don’t see why they would. The consistent Sunni Sheikh agenda in western Iraq has been to maximize the power of Sunni Sheikhs in western Iraq vis-a-vis American occupiers, al-Qaeda interlopers, and Shiites in Baghdad. That’ll continue to be their agenda. If we stay, by contrast, we do take the risk that our tactical alliance with the local notables will outlive its usefulness and they’ll turn around and start shooting at our troops again.

On Marshall’s other points — yes, as I said, preventing a wider regional war is desirable. I don’t, however, see how a residual US military presence in Iraq helps accomplish that goal. On genocide, Marshall accuses me of being callous offering the old “Not our problem, apparently.” Here’s my point. Marshall says we need to “get U.S. troops out of the business of mediating Iraq’s sectarian conflicts.” I agree. Marshall also wants us to prevent a hypothetical genocide in Iraq. Given the choice, obviously, I, too, would like to prevent this hypothetical genocide. There isn’t, however, any way to prevent the possibility that Iraq’s sectarian conflicts will result in genocide or ethnic cleansing other than to mediate Iraq’s sectarian conflicts. If we’re going to abandon the goal of mediating Iraq’s sectarian conflicts, then we need to admit to ourselves that that means the sectarian conflicts might get really, really, really nasty and we’re . . . not going to mediate them.

It seems that at least part of the explanation for the Liberal Democratic Party’s curious ability to almost always win in Japan is that the CIA set things up to work that way. The story seems a bit similar to how the old Christian Democratic Party dominated postwar Italy, before falling apart in the Tangentopoli scandal.

Commentary “Harry” challenges me to “address the substance” of the Pollack/O’Hanlon op-ed. Okay, here goes. The critique of US occupation policy since, say, the fall of 2003 has been that US policy in Iraq has focused overwhelmingly on military goals and ignored the fact that the essential problems in Iraq are political. That was true in 2003. It was true in 2004. Interestingly, it was also true in 2005. And, indeed, it was true in 2006. How about 2007? Well, here’s Pollack and O’Hanlon:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. [...] In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front.

In short, according to the people who think the surge is working, the surge has, in fact, done nothing whatsoever to address the crucial problems in Iraq.

I’m shocked, shocked to discover that Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack think the surge is great and should be extended “at least into 2008″ (another Freidman unit!) — who could have guessed? As Greg Sargent notes, the twosome actually tries to present this as a counterintuitive statement by administration critics, though O’Hanlon’s been way out in front as a surge booster since it first started (I’m told he’s good friends, personally, with General Petraeus, from back in grad school or something) and Pollack, obviously, has been synonymous with the war for years.

I’m going to repeat my desire to see an O’Hanlon Primary — Democratic contenders can gain my support by providing assurances that Michael O’Hanlon won’t be serving in your administration.

Photo by Specialist L.B. Edgar, US Army

Unless Bob Novak is just making things up, his congressional sources are telling him that key members have congress have been briefed on a Pentagon plan under which “U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish Army to suppress the Kurds’ guerrilla campaign” against Turkey. The strategic pretzel thus acquires another twist. We’re giving Israel billions of additional dollars to get them to not object to us selling advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia. We’re selling the Saudis the weapons to check Iranian influence.

Meanwhile, we’re complaining that the Saudis are undermining Maliki’s government in Iraq. The Saudis are doing that in order to check what they see as Iranian influence. Maliki wants us to sack our commanding general in Iraq or, at least, to stop arming what he sees as anti-government Sunni rebels. We think we need to arm those rebels to check al-Qaeda influence. And now our special forces are going to attack Kurds — along with Israelis, the one group in the region that seems to genuinely welcome American influence — ostensibly in order to head off a more dramatic Turkish intervention.

Is the intersection of these trends — the logical extension of these colliding agendas — really more frightening than the prospect of just leaving?