by hilzoy
ThinkProgress (via TPM) has posted video of Lindsey Graham speaking at the American Enterprise Institute. Graham promises a big breakthrough in political reconciliation, coming “within the next weeks, not months.” I’ll believe that when I see it, and I will not regard it as noteworthy unless it includes not just promises to work together, but actual legislation that has passed the Iraqi parliament and been signed into law. Graham’s remarks also include this gem:
“My last visit convinced me more than anything else that the biggest benefit of the surge is to take the men and women on the front lines and change their attitude about their mission. They’ve gone from riding around waiting to be shot, to feeling like they’re kicking their ass.”
Steve Benen at TPM focusses on the absurdity of saying that we’re kicking anyone’s ass in Iraq. The government is paralyzed, there are a number of different civil wars going on in different places, people are still dying, being maimed, and going into exile: as I said before, if this is kicking ass, I would hate to think what a serious setback would look like.
But what struck me even more than that was Graham’s claim that “the biggest benefit of the surge” has to do not with ending the civil war, promoting political reconciliation in Iraq, improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis, or anything like that, but with the attitudes of our soldiers. I’m not sure I buy Graham’s claims about those attitudes, especially the idea that our soldiers used to be just “riding around waiting to be shot”. But let’s pretend that he’s right, for the sake of argument: that the surge has transformed the attitudes of the soldiers and marines in Iraq. If that is the biggest benefit of the surge, then that seems to me like a very good reason for leaving.
Think about it. If we really wanted to improve the attitudes of the men and women on the front lines, we could have found other ways to do it. Maybe we could have given each and every one of them enough money to pay off their homes (or to buy a home, if they don’t already have one); college tuition money for all their kids; a marvelous vacation in the resort of their choice for themselves, their families, and ten or twenty of their closest friends; and a lifetime supply of Haagen Dasz.
I imagine this might have improved the attitudes of our men and women in uniform even more than the surge. Plus, it has additional benefits. It would probably have been a lot cheaper. It would have given a boost to an ailing housing market in its hour of need. Unlike the surge, it would not have accelerated the process of breaking the army and wearing out its equipment.
Most important of all: it would have done all these things with no dead bodies.
Since my attitude adjustment proposal seems plainly superior to the surge as a means of improving our soldiers’ attitudes, why haven’t we adopted it? The obvious answer is: because we are not fighting the war as a way of making our soldiers feel good. And if improvements in their attitudes are (a) not among our war aims, and (b) the biggest benefit of the surge, it would seem to follow that the surge has not, in fact, secured any of the things we are actually fighting for.
If I thought for a moment that Lindsey Graham actually thought that improvements in our soldiers’ attitudes were enough to justify the surge, I might try to imagine him explaining to the families of the seven soldiers killed on Thursday that their loved ones died to make their fellow soldiers feel good, or giving an inspirational speech to our soldiers in Iraq about the tremendous importance of what they are fighting for: namely, having better attitudes. Or I might stop being snarky and point out the complete amorality of thinking that it is justifiable to fight a war so that our soldiers can feel good about themselves.
But I don’t think Lindsey Graham actually means what he says. He’s just grasping at straws. And since he cannot say with a straight face that we are actually achieving any significant and sustainable results, he is left with the claim that our soldiers feel as though they are.
If the best thing Lindsey Graham can find to say about the surge is that it has improved the attitudes of our soldiers, that’s just one more indication that it’s time to leave.
I suspect Lindsey Graham and his Republican He-Men would need to believe that One Big Tough Hard Thrusting Will could cure all sorts of desires.
because we are not fighting the war as a way of making our soldiers feel good
sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re not doing it so the 101st Keyboarders will feel good. nothing soothes the soul of the impotent suburban warrior like “[picking] up some small crappy little country and throw[ing] it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”.
I don’t think this is a very charitable reading of Graham’s remark. It seems to me more likely that he is claiming that the surge is helping us to achieve our war aims by improving the morale of our soldiers–not that our war aim is itself to improve the morale of our soldiers. And it seems uncontroversial to claim that soldiers with better morale will perform more effectively.
Sabina’s hat: I didn’t say he thought it was one of the war aims; just that if it’s the biggest thing the surge has accomplished, it follows that it hasn’t achieved our war aims.
Besides the feel-good woollyheadedness of Graham’s remark, I’m reminded of something Andrew said around here a few months ago: that how the soldiers feel about the war isn’t particularly important in terms of making decisions about how (and whether) it ought to be prosecuted (except that, as Sabina’s Hat points out, good morale generally means better performance); rather, soldiers may affect the decisions of government in the same way the rest of us do as citizens, either voting or by pressing their representatives.
Only lefturd moonbats deny the reality that General Petraeus has made measurable progress on the security front in Iraq. He has also cleverly leveraged local tribal politics to bring about the beginnings of a political surge on the local level. On the national level political progress has been actively sabotaged by Iran and their Iraqi Sadrist proxies. It is time to give the Iranian mullahs a foretaste of our military power by bombing Revolutionary Guard training camps for Shiite insurgents. If they don’t get the message, we should launch an all-out aerial, naval and special forces assault (if necessary using tactical nukes) on the underpinnings of the Iranian mullahcracy and liberate the Iranian people from their oppressors.
I’d been wondering, but now it seems certain: “nabalzbbfr” is to be congratulated for presenting such a satirical portrait of a right-wing troll.
I’m reminded of the moment when Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee got into it during the latest Republican debate, over whether or not to withdraw/redeploy from Iraq. Paul got a very loud round of applause when he observed that he thought the real motivation for staying was not “victory,” but “saving face” (he was non-specific as to whose face would be saved). It seems Senator Graham’s pride is a fragile thing.
For those keeping score at home, there are exactly 500 days left until the next President takes office. All debate about Iraq needs to point to that day, because until then, there will be no change in course.
And I don’t think “nabalzbbfr” is a right wing troll–just a Sunni.
Since our strategy did not change during the “stay the course” first four years period of the war, Graham’s assertion that our soldiers were just riding around waiting to get shot until the more recent surge tactics says more than he meant to about how bankrupt the Iraq strategy has been until now. Not that I believe it is really getting better now either.
Since our strategy did not change during the “stay the course” first four years period of the war, Graham’s assertion that our soldiers were just riding around waiting to get shot until the more recent surge tactics says more than he meant to about how bankrupt the Iraq strategy has been until now. Not that I believe it is really getting better now either.
Since our strategy did not change during the “stay the course” first four years period of the war, Graham’s assertion that our soldiers were just riding around waiting to get shot until the more recent surge tactics says more than he meant to about how bankrupt the Iraq strategy has been until now. Not that I believe it is really getting better now either.
Since our strategy did not change during the “stay the course” first four years period of the war, Graham’s assertion that our soldiers were just riding around waiting to get shot until the more recent surge tactics says more than he meant to about how bankrupt the Iraq strategy has been until now. Not that I believe it is really getting better now either.
And it seems uncontroversial to claim that soldiers with better morale will perform more effectively.
That claim is uncontroversial because it is simply wrong. Consider soldiers with poor morale performing a task and failing. Then we do something to lift their morale. Will they succeed? If the task involves “walking on water” or “curing cancer” or “traveling faster than the speed of light” then obviously not.
Morale is only relevant when soldiers are pursuing feasible goals. Soldiers in Iraq are pursuing goals that are anything but feasible.
Why are MoveOn such idiots? I mean, I suppose it’s fun to keep all the wingnuts busy foaming at the mouth about their ad, but wouldn’t it have been better to choose a headline that would have attracted attention without having all the discussion be about the outrageousness of the headline while completely ignoring the content of the ad?
Why are MoveOn such idiots?
Sometimes I think that MoveOn is funded by Rush Limbaugh. They really have a tin ear for what works and what doesn’t. If they would truly move on, Republican cranks would have one less target.
I can’t really think of any previous MoveOn examples like this, Jeff. They’re not Cindy Sheehan. Maybe ineffective ads, but not counterproductive. The Hitler thing that the right harps on was of course nothing approved or produced by MoveOn.
Maha on the dreadful ad.
The question I have is why “kicking ass” in Iraq is a good thing.
Isn’t our goal there, at this point, to be constructive rather than destructive? Isn’t our purpose to foster a viable national government, one that integrates the different ethnic, religious, and political factions?
How does “kicking ass” further those goals? Whose “ass” are we “kicking”?
If our purpose in Iraq is, per (for example) Tom Friedman, to show that we can go house to house and inflict terror and violence at will, I think our mission is accomplished. Let’s declare victory and go home.
If our purpose is to actually make life there better for anyone, I’m not sure “kicking ass” is going to be very useful.
I think the folks whose morale is improved by kicking Iraqi ass are not the folks who are actually there.
Thanks –