Beinart – ‘Surge worked’ he said snottily

Beinart is at least honest enough to admit that not all the decrease in casualties in Iraq in 2008 was due to the Bush/Petraeus surge, but he still gives it a fair amount of fluffing.

Then, as per the headline, he says liberal activists under the age of 30 are as bad as Bushies, which is just bullshit.

First, let’s analyze the other factors Beinart charitably lists along with the surge:
• Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army stands down. True for now, but, will that remain the case when those surge troops go to Afghanistan? Not too likely.
• The Anbar Awakening started before the surge.

And, Beinart admits we don’t know that the lower level of violence will last. Given that Petraeus, if not Nim Chimpsky at 1600 Pennsylvania, knew the surge was not a permanent answer, it’s premature for Beinart to claim it “worked.”

Especially when Michael O’Hanlon is your main empirical source.

Kevin Drum punks himself

By swallowing whole hog the spinmeistering by Peter Mansoor, Gen. David Petraeus’ former executive officer that, while other things beyond “the surge” may narrowly have contributed to “more success” in Iraq in 2007-08, it really was the surge.

Here’s Kevin, all sweetness and light:

Pro-war conservatives (have) … always had a much better argument to make (about the surge), one that Mansoor comes close to making here. …

The security situation in Iraq was on the cusp of something potentially dramatic, and it was possible that a small nudge might make an outsized difference. The surge was that nudge. …

It sure seems like both the most plausible and the most persuasive argument in favor of the surge — one that I'm not at all sure I'd reject out of hand.

The surge was a “nudge”? First, the various surge backers would n never describe as just a nudge.

Second, Mansoor himself rejects Drum’s idea while also pulling the McCain trick of redefining the surge:

To realize how misleading these assertions are, one must understand that the “surge” was more than an infusion of reinforcements into Iraq.

Finally, Mansoor's column ignores the ephemeral nature of any surge “success.”

And THAT’s what the neocons and just plain cons don't want to discuss.

In the middle of August doldrums, we have a clear winner for Kevin Drum’s worst post of the week, already on a Monday!

There goes the ‘surge’ neighborhood

Some 80,000 Iraqi Sunnis under arms and affiliated with the Anbar Awakening could soon be out of work. A joint U.S.-Iraq plan would disband the Sons of Iraq.

Ahh, what brilliance.

So, folks who are armed, have some U.S. military training now, and unemployed are just going to sit on their hands?