Victory Is Always Six Months Away
Joshua Foust on Apr 16 2008 at 10:19 pm | Filed under: Notes on the war
Back in December of 2006, the blogger Fabius Maximus compiled a rather handy anthology of our great foreign policy lights in the darkness, boldly predicting we’d know for sure whether or not the Iraq project would succeed in 2003. And 2004. And 2005. And 2006. And 2007. It was a depressing confirmation of the permanence of the Friedman Unit, perhaps the only positive contribution Duncan Black has ever made to political discourse.
Of course, the Friedman Unit is obsolete. In his new anthology of how our leaders are always promising withdrawal—always contingent on that good news six months to two years in the future. It was a hallmark of the early days of the war, and it’s been a hallmark of the Surge under Petraeus.
There is no grander point I am intentionally making, though doubtless some here will accuse me of it. I would beg those who would not to fall for the trap that bad news means we must stay, but good news means we must stay—it is important to remember the very long record of wrong assessments, unkeepable assurances, and unworkable plans of action those who lead us have on their hands.
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Seems to me the prognostications of politicians as to the duration of war are always to be mistrusted.
One the one hand, we can’t always know if a plan of action is unworkable, until it is put into action. On the other, sometimes it is obvious that a plan isn’t working and ought to be changed quickly. Something many administrations, but especially this administration, is ill equipped to do.
After the initial invasion, it wasn’t going to be easy job, even if we didn’t have the insurgency to deal with. You wont find any argument from me that we’ve blown it at times, even as we’ve shined at other times.
I do believe Petraeus has never said, we would achieve victory in 6 months, but that we need to re-evaluate where we are, and adjust accordingly.
You’re right about Petraeus, though I’d argue the implication is there. But the title was a shorthand for a look at the phenomenon of the Friedman Unit, not a specific critique of Petraeus.
Some may be guilty of it, but mostly I think that has been due to a tendentious reading by people such as Atrios of what people are saying.
Usually it has been along the lines of six months to see if it is worth continuing, not withdrawal. I pretty much felt that way in the summer of 2006, and by December I pretty much felt we had a strategy which made it worth staying. Six months later it seemed obvious that we were making progress, though many denied that was true. Then six months later we could see they were not just hopeful signs, but a true change in the situation. Six month time frames are actually pretty good for such a process. Long enough to see of changes are important, short enough not to monitor the situation.
I think that thought process animates most of those I read.
Bush wouldn’t even be talking about withdrawal if it hadn’t been for the elections in 2006. Is it his fault the American people want to leave because they have believed enemy and Democrat propaganda operations?
I do not believe Lance is correct about the ”wait and see for six months” story. I provide quotes, some quite long, which appear to provide sufficient documentation.
Also suggesting this is a farce… bad news means we cannot yet leave, good news means we can stay. This is another way of playing the neocolonial game. Our intent appears in concrete form in our bases, many tens of billion dollars, obviously intended for long-term occupation. It is the elephant in the room. The counterarguement to this is to ignore the subject, which the US media does very well.
Actually, the quotes you provide largely illustrate my point. They are not saying victory is six months away or anything close to that for the most part. That doesn’t mean there are not legitimate criticisms to be made about what they were talking about, but it wasn’t that.
So I reject the notion that it is a farce to suggest the truth, though the truth may be farce. You may be right about our intent, though I do not agree, but our intent cannot be used to infuse the comments you list, much less the far broader set of arguments I was describing, with a meaning they don’t contain.