I think the hypotheticals and speculation in the second half of the article get a bit out of control, but Douglas MacGregor’s basic concerns about where we’re really heading with our “sheikhs for sale” approach to relations with Iraq’s Sunni Arab community are sensible, and it’s interesting to hear from some officers with experience in Iraq who share concerns I’ve heard from a lot of outside analysts. The basic issue is that it seems likely that sooner or later our new friends will decide that it’s time to once again step up activities — maybe against the Shiite government, maybe against US forces, maybe against the Kurds in Kirkuk or Mosul — that will create problems for us.

MacGregor spins out a scenario where things get totally out of hand and the American position becomes unsustainable. And that could happen. But I think it should be acknowledged that the military’s been pretty savvy about always managing to pivot pragmatically to avoid that outcome, even though it’s seemed to be approaching several times (most famously, during the dual Falluja and Najaf insurgencies). That pattern could break down in the future, but it could also hold up. The trouble is that the war’s rationale has become circular — “success” means success at putting the military engagement on a sustainable basis. We’re fighting for the ability to keep on fighting. But sustaining that posture keeps making the United States and our position in the world as a whole weaker and weaker.

Still, MacGregor’s specific concerns is one of the ways in which that’s the case. We’re strengthening groups that don’t share any particular loyalty to the United States and with whom we don’t have any particular deep bonds of culture, values, or interests. That strength could just as easily be directed against us or our friends tomorrow.

Alex Massie has some very interesting thoughts on the light Northern Ireland’s recent history sheds on the situation in Iraq. The bottom line, to me, is that if achieving a decent outcome in Iraq is possible, the path to that outcome involves what I would consider unacceptable costs for an unacceptably large amount of time. I’d say there’s a reason the Iraq War is always sold as something that’ll end in just another Friedman Unit or two — if people had a sense of the duration being contemplated to execute our policies there, they’d have a fit. And rightly so.

In earlier Iraq/Ireland analogy blogging, I’d recommend this (it’s at the end) and especially this from Kieran Healy.

I completely agree with Tom Friedman that merely because Iran doesn’t have an active nuclear weapons program doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned with their enrichment activities. Friedman focuses this on the issues surrounding enrichment itself, but I’d say a better way of putting it is that there’s a big difference between a nuclear weapons program that’s on ice (what we think Iran has) and a nuclear weapons program that’s verifiably shut down (what would give Gulf Arabs and Israelis peace of mind) and that it’s well worth continuing to work toward getting ourselves where we want to be. That said, Friedman’s notion that it makes sense to condemn the Intelligence Community for releasing accurate information is ridiculous.

Friedman offers two concerns. One is that people may misunderstand the significance of these findings. That’s true — misunderstanding happens. That’s why I try on my blog to clarify the meaning of things for readers. If I had a New York Times column, I’d do the same. Still, for the Intelligence Community to not use the proper analytic categories would be perverse — we in the press just need to explain what they mean. His second concern is that he quotes Gary Samore as saying that the NIE “has given the Russians and Chinese a good excuse to make sanctions even weaker.”

The implicit model of international relations here is pretty odd. Russia’s not a seven year-old. China’s not a wayward dog. These are countries. Countries that have people who understand the technical meaning of American intelligence assessments and countries that have intelligence assessments of their own. Their Iran policy is going to be guided by their assessments of the objective situation and what it is they want to do about it. Sure, they might come up with an excuse or two to do something, but the availability of excuses isn’t the core consideration. By contrast, their assessment of what American policy is all about might effect their decision-making. If we look like a country whose concerns about Iranian nuclear activities are grounded in honest assessments of the facts — a country governed by rational people in touch with the world around them — then that makes cooperation more likely. Inevitable? No. But more likely.

If, by contrast, we seem (as we did seem to many just a few months ago) like a country whose leadership was invested in offering a distorted view of the situation in pursuit of an unsound agenda, then cooperation becomes less likely. The idea that we could somehow trick Russia into adopting policies it doesn’t want to adopt by refusing to release accurate information or by insisting on the use of improper analytic categories is silly.

Wow. Abortion and gay marriage join nuclear proliferation on the Pope’s list of threats to peace.

Not only is the news of 27 dead and around a hundred wounded in a triple car bomb attack in Iraq that ranks as the deadliest in months a tragic turn in its own terms, but the apparent cause and location of the attacks highlights the extreme complexity of the situation: “At least 27 people died and about 100 were wounded Wednesday when three car bombs ripped through a southern Iraqi city where rival Shiite groups have been battling for control of oil and power.”

George Packer reported the other day about a conversation with two of the soldiers who penned this brave August 2007 op-ed. According to Packer, “They hope to write, with other soldiers, a book about counterinsurgency that would examine the Army’s new field manual against their experience fighting the complex array of warring factions in Iraq—not to refute it but to improve it.”

One point that keeps striking me in this regard is that the counterinsurgency manual mostly contemplates a much simpler dynamic than the one in Iraq: a government challenged by an insurgency, with a population stuck in the middle. The task is to judiciously apply military, political, and economic levers to ensure that the government wins the loyalty of the public, and then squeeze the remaining isolated insurgents. Iraq appears to be like that in some places and on a local scale, but it doesn’t correctly describe the overall dynamic — the sundry local conflicts don’t “add up” to one insurgency challenging one legitimately constituted authority. I know the folks running MNF-Iraq realize this, and think they’ve come up with an answer to it, but it seems to me that the differences between this kind of situation and the kind of textbook insurgency that the field manual deals with are extremely large and quite significant, whereas the official plan to cope with these challenges involves a large degree of hand-waving and wishing-for-the-best.

The latest Washington Post poll does give some support to those who think the significance of the Iraq issue is in decline. Still, it’s pretty scant support. This poll still has Iraq essentially tied with “economy/jobs” as the most important issue in the public’s mind. I think what we see here is that if the economy keeps getting worse, that really might push Iraq off the front burner.

Still, according to the Post Iraq has way more salience as an issue than does immigration, even though the press have been pestering candidates with non-stop immigration questions and downplaying the war.

Meanwhile, re-reading Beinart and Brooks I think I have a clearer sense of what they’re trying to do. Both peg the declining fortunes of Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton (though in her case, I’m not really convinced her fortunes actually are declining) to this alleged decline in public concern about Iraq. One might more parsimoniously attribute the declining fortunes of each party’s most hawkish candidate to either coincidence or else to the declining public appeal of hawkish policies, but that wouldn’t do. Instead, the hawks suffer because people don’t care as much about national security. Because caring about national security is identical to being hawkish. Very Serious Stuff.