I guess another way of making the point below is that it remains unclear to me what purpose the current deployment in Iraq is supposed to serve. One purpose it seems to be serving is the general sense that if our soldiers just stay in Iraq, risking their lives carrying out arduous day-to-day tactical missions unrelated to any broader strategic objectives that conditions in Iraq might improve anyway, thus allowing the continued presence of a large American deployment to provide a patina of “victory” to the results. At any rate, via Ilan Goldenberg I see that the GAO is confused (PDF) to:

U.S. efforts lack strategies with clear purpose, scope, roles, and performance measures. The U.S. strategy for victory in Iraq partially identifies the agencies responsible for implementing key aspects of the strategy and does not fully address how the United States would integrate its goals with those of the Iraqis and the international community. U.S. efforts to develop Iraqi ministry capability lack an overall strategy, no lead agency provides overall direction, and U.S. priorities have been subject to numerous changes. The weaknesses in U.S. strategic planning are compounded by the Iraqi government’s lack of integrated strategic planning in its critical energy sector.

It’s hardly unheard of to see soldiers used, in essence, as props. It happens at sporting events frequently, and George W. Bush has developed a bad habit of using soldiers as backdrops for partisan political speeches. But to actually send over 100,000 into a combat zone while lacking “strategies with clear purpose, scope, roles, and performance measures” seems utterly unconscionable to me.

Ross charges:

And I detect some goalpost-shifting here among the partisans of immediate withdrawal. Back in September, when Petraeus was testifying and the fur was flying, Matt was making roughly the same point that he and Julian and Brian Doherty are making now, except that he was saying things like “maybe Bush can change his line to the idea that if we just keep staying the course for 4 or 5 more years, casualties will drop massively because everyone will already be dead or displaced.” Now it’s less than two months later, the violence has continued to diminish, and Matt’s response is: “After all, internecine violence in Iraq won’t continue forever and since most ethnically mixed neighborhoods have already been cleansed, it’s at least plausible that the worst is behind us.” And he’s right – it is at least plausible. But given that only six weeks ago he was throwing out “4 or 5 more years” as a timeline for when Iraq might start to settle down, I think it’s also “at least plausible” that when we look back on the last year of American military operations in Iraq, we’ll judge them to have played a major role in putting the worst behind us earlier than most people anticipated.

Well, okay, maybe I’m shifting the goal posts. Or maybe there’s no inconsistency between the idea that “the worst” violence and ethnic cleansing are now behind us, but that it’ll take “4 or 5 more years” are continued violence and ethnic cleansing for Iraq to really settle down. After all, my recollection is that most people regarded the level of violence prevailing in Iraq in late 2003 to be unacceptable and had high hopes that Saddam Hussein’s capture would reduce it. Instead, things were worse in 2004 than they were in 2003. Then in 2005, things were worse than they were in 2004. And then in 2006 things were even worse than they’d been in 2005. Now 2007 looks set to be not-quite-as-bad on average as 2006 was. Maybe the downward trend will continue.

On the other hand, maybe things will get worse. Maybe Turkey will invade Kurdistan. Maybe you’ll see an uptick in ethnic cleansing elsewhere. Either way, though, for the purposes of this debate the relevant goalposts aren’t the timing of declines in violence but the causal mechanism by which they occur. If violence is declining because local areas have already been ethnically cleansed, then the reduction, while preferable to their being more violence, hardly shows that the US military deployment is accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Oh, look, it’s Joe Lieberman:

Lieberman an unseen force in Democrats’ clash
Connecticut maverick backs Clinton, criticizes Edwards on Iran policy

Ah, mavericks. Lieberman’s too much of a stopped clock (like Bill Kristol, he’s all-war, all-the-time) to say that you should always do the reverse of what he recommends, but suffice it to say that if you’re the person in a controversy with the Lieberman-approved Iran policy, you’re not the person with the best Iran policy. Indeed, it’s worth recalling that Lieberman and resolution cosponsor Jon Kyl have been trying to gin up conflict with Iran for a long time. Here’s some February 2006 reporting from yours truly:

At the front of the room was an American flag, a podium, a projection screen, and R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence who went more-than-a-little around the bend sometime after leaving the Clinton administration. He was one of the very first prominent commentators to finger Saddam Hussein as the likely culprit for the 9-11 attacks, doing so just after the strikes when no empirical evidence could possibly support the contention, and maintaining his view steadfastly even as evidence continued to be non-existent.

Needless to say, such loyalty to his own imagination has done nothing to diminish his standing in the neoconservative world or his access to mass audiences on cable television. On that January day at the Capitol, he was speaking on behalf of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a think tank he founded in the summer of 2004 with various neocon B-listers under the nominal auspices of Senators Jon Kyl and Joe Lieberman. The occasion was the release of a six-page policy paper on Iran, which to no one’s surprise reached the conclusion that “the United States’ policy objective must be regime change in Iran.”

Which isn’t to say that Hillary Clinton is part of a plot to start a war with Iran. It does, however, seem worth noting that opposing a “rush to war” (which is what she said) isn’t at all the same as opposing going to war.

Chuck Hagel calls for direct talks with Iran.

I think Brian Beutler makes a good point: Mukasey can’t say that waterboarding is torture because the job of Attorney-General in the Bush administration essentially requires one to sign off on torture. Conceding during nomination hearings that to do so would be a crime would doom any future criminal defense that Mukasey may need to mount.

Via Julian Sanchez, a great Brian Doherty column making the point that historical memory can play tricks on people and Iraq may someday come to be viewed as a success. After all, internecine violence in Iraq won’t continue forever and since most ethnically mixed neighborhoods have already been cleansed, it’s at least plausible that the worst is behind us. If we keep over 130,000 troops there for another eighteen months, and then tens of thousands of troops for years after that, the situation could well become peaceful and the whole sorry enterprise could be branded a success.

Doherty writes that “especially if the Democrats go, as seems likely, with their most widely hated candidate, Hillary Clinton, they shouldn’t count on disgust with Bush’s Iraq policy to shoo them in.” I don’t think that’s the right Hillary-related thing to say. Rather, if the Democrats nominate an unapologetic war-supporter, and then she wins, and the war in some sense winds down during her term, then this makes it very likely that the Official Story of Iraq will be that the war, despite some problems, was ultimately successful. Conversely, if the Democrats nominate a candidate who disavows the war, and that candidate wins, the Official Story will deem the war a failure. History is written by the victors even a democracy — a Clinton presidency will boost the “liberal hawk” narrative about the war, an Obama or Edwards presidency will boost the dove narrative, and a Republican presidency will boost the Bushist narrative.

I’d been dimly curious as to what explained the paranoid attitude that seems to prevail in Israeli circles with regard to Iran, and yesterday’s New America event crystallized one possible explanation. Basically, from Mustafa Barghouti‘s perspective, the Israeli side side has basically lost interest in achieving a final-status agreement. They basically see themselves as having nothing to lose from the status quo continuing more-or-less indefinitely, though obviously if some kind of Palestinian quisling leadership emerges that’s willing to accept less than what was offered at Camp David were to emerge, they would listen to those guys. But basically the Israeli’s feel no urgency about this.

Rita Hauser essentially agreed, as did Daniel Levy and MJ Rosenberg. Not really being knowledgeable about Israeli politics, this seemed remarkable to me, because the logic of the situation seems to me to be that Israel should regard the demographic tipping point issue as a question of great urgency. Ariel Sharon himself seemed to recognize this just a few years ago, and though the “unilateral disengagement” strategy he devised to deal with it was fatally flawed, it at least constituted recognition of the issue, namely that we’re close to the point when Palestinians are going to start acknowledging Israeli sovereignty over all the land from the Jordan Sea and demanding rights — equal access to roads, equal access to education, equal share of water rations, voting rights, etc. — rather than a separate state and that’s going to be the end of the idea of a sovereign Jewish democracy.

Meanwhile, there is on the table right now the very promising “Arab Initiative” for full recognition of Israel in exchange for full withdrawal to the armistice lines. Israel isn’t merely rejecting this offer, but the Israeli government is refusing to deal with it until they can get an unrealistic guarantee of 100 percent assurance of perfect security from rejectionist attacks. Obviously, security from attacks is a reasonable thing to want, but since refusing to negotiate doesn’t provide perfect security and does risk throwing the entire Zionist project away by letting the window of Palestinian interest in a two-state solution close, this seems like an odd attitude to have.

One way to understand the somewhat hysterical view of the Iranian situation that seems to prevail in Israeli government circles is as a mirror image of the weird complacency about the Palestinian situation — perhaps it’s a kind of displacement of anxiety about the Palestinians onto an Iranian problem that appears more amenable to emotionally satisfying Gordian airstrikes.

Kaj Larsen gets waterboarded on video by former SERE instructors for the edification of the American public. Via Garance Franke-Ruta.

Mark Goldberg catches Fred Thompson in two separate, yet nearly simultaneous, instances of revealing himself to be a moron in ways that don’t count as “gaffes” because they were done by a Republican and because they concern important points of diplomacy and international law. First, Fred Thompson said “the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that international human rights law requires all nations to adopt strict gun control laws” but it, um, doesn’t say any such thing. Then he went on to say that the UN doesn’t recognize the existence of a right to self-defense which, again, it does.

Thompson’s ignorance on these subjects is, of course, disturbing. Equally disturbing is that he’s clearly going out of his way to work this business into his campaign appearances. It’s odd campaign rhetoric that lets you know what interests contenders really think they need to pander to, and apparently Thompson and his staff feel that the black helicopter constituency is a powerful force inside the GOP. And, of course, insofar as they seem like they stand some chance of prevailing upon the Senate to block the Law of the Sea Treaty, that just further confirms it.

Joseph Galloway notes the severe shortage of Captains and Majors facing the Army. As Eric Martin says, we’re seeing a noteworthy gap between the number of people interesting in advocating a neoimperial military posture and the number of people interested in carrying out such a policy. Maybe the right-wing bloggers want to start a recruiting drive?

I’ve had this nagging disquiet with the Democrats’ diplomacy-talk on Iran, and now Josh Marshall formulates it well:

But another point — diplomacy is a tactic, not a strategy. Our whole strategy is wrong in the region. Leaving more time for the diplomatic phase of the policy just delays getting to where the policy is taking us: full-scale war with Iran.

Right. The question isn’t “do we use diplomacy?” the question is what are we trying to do — are we talking about a good faith effort to deal with the Iranian nuclear program in the context of a larger effort to put our polices in the region on the right track, or is the diplomacy part of a larger effort to portray events in the Middle East as a zero sum conflict between the US and Iran.