This piece by Michael Schwartz is the essence of good intelligence. Thematic without being dogmatic, multi-focal in order to represent complexity, and supported by concrete examples. In particular, he points out the completely obscured role of Muqtada al Sadr and how the American establishment has adopted the secret goal of marginalizing him and his substantial popular base… a goal cloaked in the simplistic drivel we just heard from sycophant David Petraeus.
Full disclosure, Michael and I had this conversation early last year when I visited SUNY-SB where he teaches. I am a fan of Dr. Schwartz.
-SG
The Benchmarks That Matter
The American Military’s Lose-Lose Dilemma in Iraq
By Michael Schwartz
President Bush has called upon Congress, the American public, the Iraqi people, and the world to suspend judgment — until at least September — on the success of his escalation of the war, euphemistically designated a “surge.” But the fact is: It has already failed and it’s obvious enough why.
Much attention has been paid to the recent White House report that recorded “satisfactory performance” on eight Congressional benchmarks and “unsatisfactory performance” on six others (with an additional four receiving mixed evaluations). Fred Kaplan of Slate and Patrick Cockburn of the Independent, among others, have demonstrated the fraudulence of this assessment. Cockburn summarized his savaging of the document thusly: “In reality, the six failures are on issues critical to the survival of Iraq while the eight successes are on largely trivial matters.”
As it happens, though, these benchmarks are almost completely beside the point. They don’t represent the key goals of the surge at all, which were laid out clearly by the President in his January speech annou…
Posted by stan in Analysis