Marc Lynch deploys his preferred analytic trick of listening to what Arabs are actually saying about things rather than indulging in convenient fantasies. In this edition, Sunni Arab insurgents:

General Petraeus worked creatively and effectively to encourage this trend, and soldiers and diplomats on the ground seem to be aware of the complexities of the new “cooperative” mission. The same can’t be said for surge cheerleaders in the United States. Much of the conventional wisdom about the Sunni areas now seems to come from the impressions formed by politicians and journalists on stage-managed visits to Iraq, or by carefully crafted press interviews with “former insurgents” hand-picked by American military handlers. But we don’t need such a mediated view. Leaders of the major Iraqi Sunni groups actually speak quite often and quite candidly to their own people, though: in open letters, in official statements posted on internet forums, in the Arab and Iraqi press, and in statements released on al-Jazeera and other satellite television stations. What they say in such statements, in Arabic, when addressing their own constituencies, might be considered a more reliable guide to their strategy and thinking. So what are the major Iraqi Sunni leaders saying?

In their literature and public rhetoric, the Sunni insurgency has already defeated the American occupation — which is why the Americans stopped fighting them and came to them for help in fighting al-Qaeda. One discovers virtually nothing in this literature of the American conceit that our forces wore them out or forced them to come to the table. During his meeting with President Bush in Anbar last week, Abu Risha, reportedly joked that his people had achieved in four months what the American military could not achieve in four years. It was one of the few claims made by Abu Risha with which most Iraqi Sunnis would agree, and one which should probably have infuriated more Americans than it seems to have. [...]

Partition, soft or hard, has far fewer fans in Anbar than in Washington. Most Sunnis continue to support a unified Iraqi state, and have exaggerated expectations about the role they should play in such a state. A recent letter from the “Amir” of the Islamic Army of Iraq claimed that Sunnis made up 60 percent of the population of Iraq, and few Sunnis seem ready to accept the status of “tolerated minority” within a Shia-dominated state. [...]

Rather, 72 percent of Sunnis say that the US forces should leave immediately, 95 percent say that the presence of U.S. troops makes security worse, and 93 percent still see attacks on coalition forces as acceptable. Such results should make obvious the vacuity of claims that the turn against al-Qaeda was a victory for American diplomacy.

No reconciliation here.

John Boehner’s view that dozens of dead Americans and billions of dollars per month is a “small price” to be paying in the Iraq War is an interesting perspective on the conflict but, I assume, a reasonable inference from the oft-stated conservative view that what’s needed to shore up public support for the war is more rhetorical emphasis on the alleged stakes. To me, it seems like a pretty big price, especially because even the war’s more serious proponents tend to take a surprisingly dim view of the prospects for success.

I find myself dispirited by The Washington Post‘s account of what Michael Cohen rightly derides as the Democrats’ “Rodney King strategy” on Iraq legislation. Simply put, acknowledging that they don’t have the votes to overcome a GOP filibuster, Democrats are looking to get pragmatic and forge compromise language that might pass the Senate.

Getting pragmatic and trying to forge compromise language that might pass the Senate is, in general, something I’m inclined to support.

But in this instance, the sticking point is that Republicans won’t support anything that makes Bush do anything to end the war. They want bills that somehow suggest troop withdrawals without making anything happen. But there’s nothing “pragmatic” about compromising on those terms. Ideally, Democrats could secure Republican support for a bill to tie the president’s hands, and thus start ending the war. But if Democrats can’t do that, what they need to do is make their Republican opponents pay a price in 2008. The worst thing imaginable would be for Democrats and vulnerable Republicans alike to join hands in passing a meaningless bill that does nothing but give political cover to members of congress who, when the rubber was hitting the road, did nothing but insist on a blank check for the president.

Garance Franke-Ruta notes the existence of the glass ceiling within the Chinese Communist Party.

I was hoping to come up with some fascinating commentary to make on Robert Kaplan’s take on the “surge” report that’s now up on the Atlantic website, but I don’t really have an incredibly novel rejoinder to assertions like “It may be no accident that the progress we have seen is at the bottom, since that might be the only place where such progress can even begin to take hold.”

To reiterate, though, I believe that the essentially problem in Iraq is disagreement about the basic nature of the Iraqi state. In particular, disagreement between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs about who should control Iraq, and disagreement between Kurds and Arabs about how much control Iraq should have over Kurdistan and how big Kurdistan should be. “Political reconciliation” is the name for the hypothetical process by which critical masses of all three groups might come together to reach an agreement about these key issues. Various figures, including Ryan Crocker, David Petraeus, David Brooks, and now Robert Kaplan are pushing the idea that the “Anbar Awakening” represents a form of “bottom-up reconciliation” that serves as an alternative to reconciliation understood as a agreement between major factional leaders.

The problem here is that the Awakening isn’t just bottom-up rather than top-down, but actually on a different subject. Sunni Arabs agreeing to stop fighting American soldiers as a precursor to overthrowing the Shiite-led government and, instead, to accept money and possibly weapons from American soldiers as a precursor to overthrowing the Shiite-led government isn’t a close substitute for Sunnis and Shiites reaching an agreement about the nature of the government. Nor is it a tentative first step toward such an agreement. Nor is it progress toward such an agreement.

I think this is the sound of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell lying to congress. Meanwhile, here’s General David Petraeus responding to the news that Abdul Sattar Abu Risha has been killed:

“This is a tragic loss,” Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said of Abu Risha’s death. “It’s a terrible loss for Anbar province and all of Iraq. It shows how significant his importance was and it shows al-Qaeda in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy.”

The only problem is that Petraeus doesn’t have any evidence that Abu Risha was killed by al-Qaeda in Iraq. After all, lots of people had reason to want to kill him. Here’s Time from June 1:

Sheikh Sattar, whose tribe is notorious for highway banditry, is also building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to him. Other tribes — even those who want no truck with terrorists — complain they are being forced to kowtow to him. Those who refuse risk being branded as friends of al-Qaeda and tossed in jail, or worse. In Baghdad, government delight at the Anbar Front’s impact on al-Qaeda is tempered by concern that the Marines have unwittingly turned Sheikh Sattar into a warlord who will turn the province into his personal fiefdom.

He could have been killed by one of Anbar’s other Sunni groups. He could have been killed by people working for Maliki’s government. People die all the time in Iraq, and there are only a tiny number of AQI personnel. This is a classic example of the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq in action — it’s convenient to blame this on AQI so that’s what’s happening even though there’s no evidence.

Since there is no Israel lobby, and if there is one it’s not influential at all, then obviously these attacks on Zbigniew Brzezinski couldn’t possibly be politically damaging, and therefore Barack Obama must be distancing himself from Brzezinski’s views on the matter for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the political clout of this non-existent lobby. Obviously, anyone who says otherwise is an anti-semite.

AMERICABlog makes some videos:

I like the third one best. The second one is gross and I kinda wish I hadn’t watched it.

American policy in the Horn of Africa turns out to be total debacle.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, head honcho of the Anbar Salvation Council, was killed earlier today by insurgents. Meanwhile, Jim Henley wonders:

I read a lot about how Sunni tribal leaders and insurgents have “turned against AQI,” and how we’re paying them to – er, supporting them with financing and logistics in their fight against AQI. But actual reporting on what they’re doing to fight AQI is scarce. Aside from pocketing our money and manning some checkpoints, what are they doing?

A good question. And given the dodgy state of American intelligence in that area, how do we even know what they’re doing?

Brian Beutler ponders the spectacle of General David Petraeus admitting he doesn’t know if the war in Iraq makes Americans safer:

I almost sympathize with him. But in the end this only brings to light the giant expanse between how George Bush casts Petraeus and what Petraeus can accomplish (or even claim his role to be) without showing his hand. Bush says “winning” in Iraq is critical to American safety. He also says he’s handed over responsibility for success there to General Petraeus, who we all must trust because he’s just so honorable. Tall order. But that setup leaves Petraeus in an uncomfortable position, especially when faced with members of the Senate: He can’t claim to be everything the president says he is, but neither can he suggest that his mission is anything but completely essential for American security. He must either sacrifice his mission-minded reputation as a soldier and toe the Bush line, or call into question the value of the mission itself. On Tuesday, I think we saw a man desperately trying to have it both ways and failing badly.

It’s worth saying that Petraeus’ answer was, in many ways, the only appropriate one to give. A soldier’s job is to execute a policy. If you call him on the floor, you can expect him to defend his execution of the policy. Bush, however, wants Petraeus to defend the policy. This, however, isn’t Petraeus’ job. He’s the top general in Iraq. He’s not, however, in command of our civilian presence there. Nor is he in charge of diplomacy with Iraq’s neighbors or with major allies (Israel, Egypt, etc.) elsewhere in the region. He’s not in overall command of American military forces in the Middle East. He’s in the Pentagon taking a big picture look at the American military. Nor is he fighting al-Qaeda around the world.

None of those things are his job. But they are all incredibly important pieces to put together when you want to ask whether or not our policy in Iraq is, all things considered, serving the national interest. That question, however, is a question for George W. Bush; a political question for politicians to debate without hiding behind generals or claiming their opponents are slandering the troops.

It feels a little absurd to me to need to be parsing speeches this closely to figure out where candidates actually stand on the most pressing issue of the day, but I think Obama’s Iraq speech yesterday contained a small-but-significant shift in his stance on residual forces:

We will need to retain some forces in Iraq and the region. We’ll continue to strike at al Qaeda in Iraq. We’ll protect our forces as they leave, and we will continue to protect U.S. diplomats and facilities. If–but only if–Iraq makes political progress and their security forces are not sectarian, we should continue to train and equip those forces. But we will set our own direction and our own pace, and our direction must be out of Iraq. The future of our military, our foreign policy, and our national purpose cannot be hostage to the inaction of the Iraqi government.

The key shift here being that the training mission should continue “if — but only if — Iraq makes political progress and their security forces are not sectarian.” In other words, in the real world, the training and equipping mission will not continue but if a miraculous pony happens to emerge then that’s a different story. This is correct and General Petraeus’ testimony and the renewed evidence on the centrality of political progress is as good a time as any for Democrats to follow the Center for American Progress’ lead and reject unconditional training of Iraqi forces. This is different from my best understanding of what Hillary Clinton’s proposing.

Meanwhile, this idea about the need to keep American forces in Iraq to fight AQI seems misguided to me, but I don’t think it’s nearly as significant as the training issue since it’s the difference between a limited involvement in a specific mission in Iraq and a deep entanglement with all of that country’s political problems.

This has been anticipated, but it looks like former Governor Mark Warner is officially unoffocially in the race (official announcement later today) to succeed John Warner as Senator from Virginia. For reasons that are slightly mysterious to me, governor Warner is ridiculously popular in Virginia for someone who was governor for four years a couple of years ago (even my cousin in second grade remembers him fondly), so this has just gone and become a very likely Democratic pickup which, in turn, makes it overwhelmingly likely that Democrats maintain their Senate majority.

UPDATE: Commenters are warning that semi-moderate Rep. Tom Davis would be a formidable opponent, but Rasmussen’s polls say otherwise:

In a match-up of former Virginia Governors, a Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds Warner leading Jim Gilmore by twenty percentage points, 54% to 34%. Warner also starts the season with a comfortable lead over Virginia Congressman Tom Davis. The Rasmussen Reports poll shows Warner attracting 57% of the vote while Davis earns 30%.

I should note that, like Matt Stoller, I’m not really a Mark Warner fan. I am, however, strongly inclined to take what I can get in terms of Democratic pickups in southern states.

Negotiations for a law to specify how oil revenue will be shared in Iraq are once again breaking down, once again casting the failure of the surge into stark relief. Bush meanwhile, has decided that his plan to end the surge when it’s logistically impossible to continue it is a moderate “way to bring America together.”

At the same time, Barack Obama’s latest, most detailed scheme for withdrawing troops from Iraq isn’t perfect in my view, but does meet all of the whining objections from the dwindling liberal hawk caucus that anti-war people are ignoring the humanitarian aspects to the situation. Obama’s plan won’t magically eliminate the now-inevitable continuation of the massive suffering that’s been taking place for years now in Iraq, but it is the most thoughtful program out there for how to mitigate it.

Of course, since the political purpose of raising these humanitarian issues is just to try to build political support for an open-ended military deployment whose relationship to humanitarian goals is very hazy, the existence of an actual plan of humanitarian action isn’t going to actually shelter Obama from these criticisms.