Iraqi Civilian Deaths as Surge Progress Indicator?

In a report yesterday, Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times wrote that war-related civilian fatalities in Iraq increased for a second month in a row, and the increasing numbers demonstrated the Bush administration's surge strategy had proved ineffective in stemming terrorist violence.

Needless to say, Susman's slanted journalism got signifcant play in the top-dog, hard-left blogosphere. War opponents - increasingly desperate to paint the war as hopelessly lost - seized on passages like this:

Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday.

In July, the civilian death toll was 1,753, and in June it was 1,227. The numbers are based on morgue, hospital and police records and come from officials in the ministries of Health, Defense and the Interior. The statistics appear to indicate that the increase in troops ordered by President Bush this year has done little to curb civilian bloodshed, despite U.S. military statements to the contrary.

But if one continues reading Susman's article, the piece indicates that there's little consensus among the U.S. military and outside monitoring groups on the efficacy of civilian death totals as an indicator of the progress on the troop surge:

Military officials have said the security plan is showing progress because the number of attacks on civilians has decreased and sectarian killings have dropped. The security plan, which began in February, has put an additional 28,500 U.S. troops in Baghdad and other trouble spots.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, is expected to cite such indicators when he presents an assessment of the security plan to Congress this month.

The U.S. military says the numbers it gathers are lower than those provided by Iraqi ministries, but it does not release them. But it has said that the monthly civilian death toll from sectarian killings, which do not include all bombings, has dropped to about 1,000 per month from 1,200 per month early this year.

Read the whole article. As is the case with earlier Susman articles, she spins her reports with misleading titles and leads.

The following passage is in fact one of the most significant of the article, and it should have formed the basis for a more objective overview of the difficulties of measuring gains in security on the ground:

Various factors can skew the numbers. Baghdad, usually the most violent part of the country, experienced a four-day curfew in June after the bombing of a key Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of the capital. Other cities also were under curfews, which helped keep violence at bay.

Please recall that we're talking about gross statistics on the tragic loss of human life. Thus it's somewhat unfortunate that troubling data like this is being spun by war opponents whose ultimate concern is destroying the Republican war machine in Washington, not the human rights of the Iraqi people.

The stakes are extremely how now, of course, with the highly-anticipated release of the Petraeus Report next week. Thus, any bit of news construed as favorable to the increasingly fanatical antiwar left (see here, here, here) needs to be dissected and placed in the overall context of the slow but difficult job of consolidating Iraqi security and bolstering Iraq's rough steps toward democratization.

President Bush Fights Backs on Iraq

On the eve of the Petraeus Report's release, President Bush has taken off the gloves to parry the relentless left-wing jabs, upper-cuts, and below-the-belt blows being thrown by the administration's crazed antiwar foes.

The New York Times has the story:

President Bush, appearing confident about sustaining support for his Iraq strategy, met at the Pentagon on Friday with the uniformed leaders of the nation’s armed services and then pointedly accused the war’s opponents of politicizing the debate over what to do next.

“The stakes in Iraq are too high and the consequences too grave for our security here at home to allow politics to harm the mission of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. Bush said in a statement after his meeting with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in a briefing room known as the Tank.

The meeting, which lasted an hour and a half, was among the president’s last Iraq strategy sessions before he leaves for Australia to meet with leaders of Asian and Pacific nations. It came on the eve of a string of reports and hearings that, starting next week, could determine the course of the remaining 16 months of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Beginning on Tuesday, when Congress returns from its August recess, lawmakers are prepared to debate what to do in Iraq in daily hearings that will culminate on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11 with appearances by the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the military commander there, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Congress has mandated a progress report from the White House before Sept. 15, and Mr. Bush chided lawmakers for calling for a change in policy before hearing the views of the two men who are, as administration officials repeatedly point out, “on the ground in Iraq.”
“Congress asked for this assessment,” Mr. Bush said in the statement, “and members of Congress should withhold judgment until they have heard it.”

That has not stopped Mr. Bush from making an impassioned defense of the increase in American troops that he ordered in January, making the judgment that the new strategy was working and deserved a chance to continue doing so. In recent speeches, Mr. Bush has highlighted what he and others have called an improvement in security in Iraq and signs of political compromise that have so far been absent among Iraq’s political leaders.

Read the rest. Democrats, like Senator Richard Durbin, spout the most pessimistic reports on the war's progress to make their case for a precipitious withdrawal:

“What we’re hearing is a pretty consistent message of failure on the political front in Iraq,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, who visited Iraq in August.

The Times story continues with additional points about expected troop reductions. There's no discussion of the significantly upbeat assessments coming from various sources over the last couple of months.

My post citing Jeff Jacoby's analysis of antiwar denialism is appropriate here. The country's antiwar forces have become increasingly desperate in their efforts to tar the war as a disaster. Many mistakes were made in the deployment, especially early on, with the lack of post-invasion security, and the terrible toll of casualities over the years has worn down public opinion.

But under General Petraeus the U.S. is making real progress. In response, the left has shifted its approach, focusing less on military strategy to hammer home the difficulties of Iraqi political progress. That's not to mention all the denials of Iranian influence in the county and the dismissal of likely instability in the entire Middle East after a U.S. defeat.

So, thankfully, Bush is putting up a good fight in combatting the nihilist, antiwar crowd.

(By the way, be sure to check PrivatePigg's post at Liberty Pundit, which skewers Glenn Greenwald's rabid anti-Bush fantasies.)

The Coming "Bush/Cheney" War Against Iran?

A news report today indicates that the international community has become increasingly frustrated in its efforts to reduce Tehran's support for terrorist violence in Iraq; and that the International Atomic Energy Agency plans to announce the end of its four-year program of inspections in Iran, which has been marked by the government's growing rejection of intrusive review of the country's nuclear development facilities.

At the same time, French President Nicholas Sarkozy yesterday blasted Tehran for its nuclear ambitions, and warned that preventive strikes may be warranted in the face of continued Iranian recalcitrance.

As well, President Bush has warned against the specter of a "nuclear holocaust" should Tehran's authoritarian state develop devastating nuclear capabilities.

This concerted international drumbeat of counter-Iranian diplomacy might be considered a substantial measure of the West's stiffening resolve against Tehran's aggressive designs.

Of course, not everyone would agree with such an interpretation, particularly those on the hard left, who continue to demonize the Bush administration for its alleged fear-mongering and bellicosity.

For example, check out this entry from FireDogLake, which denounces the "Bush/Cheney" regime's rush to war:

Now Bush has described the Iranian regime as posing the threat of a “nuclear holocaust.” Not just a “mushroom cloud.” This time, it’s a nuclear holocaust — terms reserved for the most heinous of crimes and the most despicable of enemies. No sane government engages in such inflammatory rhetoric. But where is the dissent? Where is the outcry?

Throughout this inexorable march to war, the Democratic Congress has done worse than nothing. They’ve voted for resolutions condemning Iran without having the factual basis for knowing what Iran is doing or intends, relying only on neocon and Administration propaganda. They’d listened to dishonest and crazed warmongers like Joe Lieberman, for heaven’s sake. They’ve voted for resolutions that would support regime change, but they’ve refused to pass resolutions or amendments that would require the Administration to seek new authorization to start a war with Iran. Most of our Democratic Presidential candidates — Kucinich and Gravel excepted — have pretended to be “serious” people by refusing to rule out military strikes against Iran, even nuclear strikes. These are not serious positions; they are seriously irresponsible.

But of course, this Administration does not need authorization. It it now operating completely outside the law, outside the Constitution, outside any checks by Congress or influence from those who might counsel against war. By Presidential fiat, it has declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist group, effectively making them an enemy of the US without any Congressional declaration of war. We have a lawless, reckless and belligerent Administration, and it is about to start another unlawful war, even as it tries to convince the American people that it is a good thing that the regime has 160,000 US troops bogged down in another quagmire, vulnerable to an enlarged regional war. Who will tell this crazed regime to stop? To whom would it even listen?

The Administration has repeatedly told us Iran is responsible for many of the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq. They trot out their propagandists in Iraq to shows us the weapons and their markings, suggesting that their use in Iraq is a delberate policy of the Iranian government. Their neocon supporters are already spreading the theme that Iran has effectively declared war on the US by arming and training those who are killing our soldiers in Iraq.

The only thing the Bush/Cheney regime needs is the money to wage its aggressive war against Iran, but how they’ll get it is patently obvious. That money is embedded in the authorizations for supporting US troops and their activities in Iraq. Congress no longer asks what the money is for: it’s assumed to be for “supporting the troops.” Now the regime is asking for another supplemental authorization — another $50 billion — and while Democrats are promising a fight, some are already announcing they will “support the troops” by giving the Administration all the money it requests.

Wake up Democrats: you are being asked to fund an aggressive war against Iran. This war will be on your heads. Stop.

I see an ever-deepening sense of irrational desperation among the hard-line forces of the left. It's almost as if the radical cadres have indicted as imperialists and war criminals all the nations of the Western international order.

And notice the conspiratorial tone of the post: The "unlawful" Bush/Cheney "regime" now operates completely "outside the law." War rumblings are foisted by the "neocons" and the administration's "propagandists." Undue influence is detected among "dishonest and crazed warmongers" such as centrist Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

But of course those over at FireDog have the gumption to attack the Democrats for budgeting funds for this "aggressive war against Iran," while at the same time begging the party to "wake up" to the administration's imperialistic project.

It's really too much!

I've noted before that some mainstream policy analysts have suggested that the military option cannot be ruled out, and indeed some have said preventive strikes might be the last, best alternative for decapitating the Iranian nuclear development program.

But hey, a little hard-headed policy analysis is not going to get in the way of a good leftist smear campaign against the Bush/Cheney warmongers in Washington.

The Rationality of Fear

As regular readers of this page know, I've had a few run-ins with a number of bloggers on the hard-left.

One exchange of note was with the ultra-liberal Ms. Libby over at The Impolitic. I had criticized Ms. Libby for her attacks on Peggy Noonan.

Noonan had made the case in one of her Wall Street Journal essays that we might consider legislation establishing English as the national language - in light of our super high rates of immigration and language diversity - and I defended her position against Ms. Libby's dismissive multicultural rants against Noonan's refusal to "condescend" to the immigrants.

In response, Ms. Libby attacked me for my "irrational fears":

I think you're afraid of just about everything and your answer to every fear seems to be commit wanton acts of violence against those who make you tremble.

I don't think I'm calling on the emotion of fear when defending American culture, but here's my response to Ms. Libby:

It's not fear but a respect for tradition and reason that animates me...[yet]....

Fear is a basic human impulse, a necessary instinct. I'd be scared if planes were plowing into the New York office towers where I worked. I'd be scared if I was getting off the Madrid underground as it was exploding into a fiery ruin of death and destruction. But hey, it's easier to brush off legimate argumentation as "fear mongering" than actually engage it persuasively.

I was reminded of this exchange this week after reading Dr. Sanity's post on the psychology of fear. Dr. Sanity notes that fear is a reasonable response to dangerous environmental change, and as an emotion it is moderated by human reason.

Dr. Sanity compares the mature analysis of the current terrorist threat by Vice Admiral John Reed to the left-wing "fear-mongering" argument of the radical left. Where Vice Admiral Reed - who chairs the National Counterterrorism Center - suggests that it's perfectly reasonable for the U.S. to worry about and prepare for a terrorist attack, hard-line leftists condemn those who would mount vigorous policies of defense.

Dr. Sanity quotes Glenn Greenwald's prototypical example of a fear-mongering diatribe against the Bush administration:

Bush opponents must finally overcome the one weapon which has protected George Bush again and again: fear. Fear of terrorism is what the Administration has successfully inflamed and exploited for four years in order to justify its most extreme and even illegal actions undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism.

Dr. Sanity responds with a devasting critique of this line of logic from radical Bush-haters:

This blogger is essentially arguing that-- instead of using a healthy and appropriate psychological defense called anticipation against terrorism and the Islamofascists (who most certainly want to kill us and destroy our society)--we should instead switch to a psychotic one, denial; and maintain that the only thing we have to fear is...President Bush. The latter is a defense mechanism called displacement that I have already discussed in an earlier post.

In fact, there is a strong element of paranoia here too. And a noticeable touch of both projection (ask yourself who is really desperate about getting and keeping power) and hysteria--though he thinks he can use it to describe normal people justifiably afraid of irrational fanatics not amenable to reason. The implication is that the only purpose such "fears" (deemed "inappropriate" by Greenwald's) are being manipulated must be to "justify illegal actions."

The basic tenor of his fear is easy to deduce: while we are fighting this illusory enemy, Bushitler has been amassing power and will soon set himself up as a dictator and destroy our freedom. I will let you decide who we have to fear more--the President of the United States or the religious fanatics of Islam who want to obtain nuclear weapons and have issued a religious fatwa justifying using them? Who do we have to fear more: those who are trying to prevent another 9/11 or those who would like nothing better than to do something even worse in our country?

Anticipation is the realistic anticipation of or planning for future discomfort. This defense mechanism includes goal-directed and even overly careful planning or worrying--depending on the situation. Anticipating realistic events such as death or illness or separation and loss; and then consciously utilizing personal insight and self awareness to mitigate the worse effects, if possible is the height of maturity and healthy psychological functioning.

Read Dr. Sanity's whole post. I enjoy reading her blog immenseley. I like her powerful ability to pick apart left-wing irrationalism with cool reason and science. I particularly like this entry because it affirmed that I was essentially correct in my layman's analysis of the importance of fear in our responses to threat.

Of course, deep psychological analysis such as this is anathema to those on the hard-left, like Ms. Libby at The Impolitic. Bush-haters are masterful at weaving all kinds of attacks on the administration's terror policy, denunciations that are generally supreme cases of the most utter denial of the fundamental challenges facing American national security today.

Democrats Flustered by Progress in Iraq

Some commentators have suggested that hard-line leftists in the Democratic Party are rooting for U.S. failure in Iraq, an outcome that might improve the party's political prospects (see here and here, for example).

As the good news continues to come in from the front lines, Democratic Party antiwar talking points have become increasingly creative in spinning arguments to paint the war as an unmitigated disaster. Noting the wide variety of upbeat reports from analysts and news outlets, Jeff Jacoby explains how military improvments on the ground have created a dilemma for the Democrats:

For most Americans, positive developments in Iraq are very welcome. But good news is bad news for the Democratic left, where opposition to the war has become an emotional investment in defeat. House majority whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina was asked by the Washington Post what Democrats would think if Petraeus reports next month that the war is going well. "That would be a real big problem for us," Clyburn candidly replied.

The intensity of the left's determination to abandon Iraq was reflected in the reaction to a single line in Hillary Clinton's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week. "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq," she said, referring to the surge, "and in some areas, particularly al-Anbar province, it's working."

That mild comment instantly drew fire from Clinton's Democratic rivals. John Edwards's campaign manager, David Bonior, warned her against "undermining the effort in the Congress to end this war." New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, another presidential hopeful, piled on: "The surge is not working. I do not give President Bush the same credit on Iraq that Hillary does." When Barack Obama addressed the VFW one day later, he stuck to the defeatists' script. "Obama Sees a 'Complete Failure' in Iraq," The New York Times headlined its report on Aug. 22.

Within 48 hours, Clinton was scurrying to toe the all-is-lost line once again: "The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution. It has failed. . . . We need to . . . start getting out now."

Since 2002, Clinton has been all over the lot on Iraq. She defended George W. Bush's claims on WMDs. She opposed setting a timetable for withdrawal. She voted yes on authorizing the war. She voted no on funding the troops. We likely haven't seen the last of her shape-shifting.

Clinton is hardly the only presidential candidate prepared to say whatever it takes to get elected or to retreat under pressure from her party's hard-liners. But it is worth pointing out: There is a principled alternative.

Consider Brain Baird, a liberal Democratic congressman from Washington state. He has opposed the Iraq war from the outset, and still believes, as he wrote in a Seattle Times

column on Friday, that it "may be one of the worst foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation."

But having recently come to believe that the new military strategy is working and premature US withdrawal would be disastrous, he is speaking out in support of staying the course. Naturally he is being denounced on the left; one influential blogger calls him a “Bush dog” and "Dick Cheney’s trained monkey" and a crowd of angry antiwar constituents berated him during a townhall meeting Monday night. (“We don’t care what your convictions are,” said one. “You are here to represent us.”) The heat is unpleasant. But Baird is standing his ground.

That is what John F. Kennedy called a profile in courage, and it is troubling that there are no such profiles among the Democrats running for president this year. JFK was elected at a time when Americans could trust his party to confront international threats with resolve. That changed after Vietnam, where the Democratic left insisted on defeat and got its way, only to lose voters' trust on national security for a long time thereafter.

Today the left insists on defeat in Iraq. It beats up any Democrat who strays off-message. It treats good news from the front as "a real big problem." Is that any way to win an election? In the short term, maybe. But we're in the midst of a long-term war -- one that Americans don't want to lose.

Jacoby's right: The hard-line left forces will practically kill for a U.S. defeat in Iraq.

Frankly, I'm utterly fascinated at the left's despicable treatement of those of reason who can appreciate the gains U.S. forces are making in Iraq. Jane Hamsher, of FireDogLake, attacked Representative Baird in a recent post, calling him a "snake-oil salesman" and the new "Michael O'Hanlon of the House."

Maybe the "O'Hanlon" jab was supposed to be derogatory, but a few more O'Hanlon's in the Democratic Party caucus might not be a bad thing.

A Modest Proposal? Call for Coup d'Etat at HuffPo is Only "Satire"

I first read about Martin Lewis' call for a military revolt against the Bush administration over at Michael Van Der Galien's page. Lewis wrote a letter to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace requesting that President Bush be relieved of his civilian command of the military, placed under arrest, and tried for conduct unbecoming.

It's a pretty outlandish scenario, but not too crazy to be cooked up by the rabid Bush-bashers on the left side of the dial.

It turns out Lewis' proposed coup d'etat provoked an intense backlash in the right-wing blogosphere, and Lewis has responded with an entry over at Huffington Post this morning. He argues that his letter to the general was simply an exercise in Swiftian satire (after Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal").

I'm not expert on Swift, but Lewis does seem to be elevating himself up to an august level of satirical accomplishment. I'll let scholars of English literature hash out the comparisons between the Lewis and Swift essays.

I'd point out here, though, that if Lewis was not serious in his initial letter to the Joint Chiefs Chairman, he's certainly gotten into the ring this morning with his rebuttal to the right-wing. Here's a major flurry of blows against the conservatives' reaction, which Lewis sees as insufficiently deferential to his satirical turn:

The wing-nut world is up in arms (in some cases literally) with calls for me to be tried for sedition and treason. Some want me deported. Others are advocating hanging or shooting against a wall. Worst of all -- someone wants the FBI to open a file on me. (And I thought that the FBI was busy with important matters...)

But how do you explain satire to people who are uncontaminated by either wit or wisdom?

And of course -- as befits those who worship at the shrine of Atwater and Rove -- my satire has been twisted into headlines such as "HuffPo Calls For Military Coup In USA" Yup -- these guys are the Chubby Checkers of politics. They sure know how to twist... Again and again.

If there is even a single person left in the progressive/liberal/Democratic world who doubts how vicious and malevolent these people will be in their desperate attempt to retain the White House and regain Congress next year -- be aware now. These people will literally stop at nothing. 2000, 2004 and 2006 will seem like church picnics compared to how dirty they will fight the 2008 elections.

I'm just a minor satirist on a small soapbox -- and they came after me with all the ferocity of the Bush administration chasing Bin Laden... (Note to right-wing-nuts: That was what we elite, effete snobs -- who CAN hold a candle -- call:'litotes')

After all that they have done to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Max Cleland and many more -- I got off very lightly. I was only threatened with murder a couple of times. But what gutter smears will these people come up with to demonize Democratic candidates next year?

And will the mainstream media fulfill its obligation to the American people to stand up and denounce and debunk these Un-American Activities?

Read the whole thing. Lewis declaims any conspiratorial intent. He hides in the alleged respectability of a career in humor writing. But I have to agree with those on the right who take issue with this line of comedy: The challenge today for the United States in Iraq is of the highest stakes, and humor of this sort is of the worst taste imaginable.

Satire has its place in media and literature, but a blog post at the vehemently partisan Huffington Post ought to be taken for what it is: A brazen ideological attack on the presidential administration hardline leftists oppose.

Lewis can deny malicious intent all he wants, but if he's as clever a satirist as his Swiftian moment suggests, he knows damn well that his roundabout call for a military coup against the administration will send his hard left revolutionary cadres to the barricades. September is expected to be a month of widespread protest against the Bush "regime." What better way to whip up the passions of the mob than with calls to decapitate the "illegitimate" regime occupying the White House.

Elections are never enough for the uncleansed hordes of the left. It's politics by other means - anything to destabilize the Republican hold on power. Lousy attempts at satire just reflect the desperation of such efforts.

O'Hanlon's Methodology

Michael O'Hanlon has responded to the criticism of his upbeat New York Times article on Iraq in today's Washington Post.

I wrote recently that progess in Iraq was causing fits on the left. I was particularly bothered by TRex over at FireDogLake, who, citing Glenn Greenwald, called O'Hanlon a liar.

Thus I'm pleased to see O'Hanlon calling some of these guys out with his clarification on methods and sources:

How can one gather and assess information about Iraq -- collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views.

Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized on this page [" Green Zone Blinders," Aug. 18] a New York Times essay that Ken Pollack and I wrote, as well as the comments of several senators, for claiming too much insight based on short trips to Iraq. Finer suggested that we did not leave the Green Zone, although we frequently did, on this and other trips, and he ignored how critical Pollack and I have been of administration policy in the past.

Worse, Finer and critics such as Rep. Jack Murtha and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald have suggested that our analyses are based on a few days of military "dog-and-pony shows." Our assessments are based on our observations as well as on years of study. That experience creates networks of colleagues such as military officers whose off-the-record insights can inform ours and who in the past have often told us when they did not think their strategies were working or could work. While hardly making us infallible, this also led each of us to oppose predictions of a "cakewalk" before the invasion and to join Gen. Eric Shinseki in criticizing invasion plans that had too few troops and too little thought given to the post-invasion mission.

Read the whole thing. O'Hanlon restates the case that things are measurably better in Iraq.

I particularly like O'Hanlon's point about how critics will attack politically incorrect views. "Attack" is putting it midly. There's so much investment in failure among left-wing critics that war backers are demonized (which must be necessary to keep the antiwar momentum going).

I noted earlier that O'Hanlon's been very skeptical of America's prospects in the war (which I think gives his recent assessment additional credibility). But because he was an initial war booster, his analysis is suspect by people who despise the Bush administration.

On a related note, some readers might find interesting the debate between international relations professor Dan Drezner and Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald has criticized the "Foreign Policy Community" of experts for their dismissal of the left-wing netroots and their criticism of the Iraq war. Apparently, this has been a pretty lengthy exchange, and Drezner's got some additional posts here, here, here, and here.

I'm just getting into this debate myself, but I am intrigued by the question of the relative importance of experts versus the netroots in the determination of American foreign policy (sounds a little like the "red versus experts" conflict during China's Cultural Revolution.)

Trojan Horse Pragmatism: Markos Moulitsas as Vanguard of the Revolution

Peter Beinart has a very interesting analysis of Markos Moulitsas and the netroots up at the New Republic.

Beinart notes that in dismissing the most left-wing candidates in recent presidential elections, Moulitsas is illustrating the netroots movement's political pragmatism, its willingness to coopt the Democratic Party as a mainstream institutional vehicle to advance its progressive cause.

What explains this? Mostly it's the historical marginalization of the radical protest fringe in mainstream electoral politics. Beinart provides an excellent historical review of the failure of new left and militant forces to bring about radical change. With the possibility of utopian revolution more distant, hard left forces today see opportunity in capturing the Democratic Party for their own left-wing fundamentalism.

Beinart summarizes this shift, arguing that the Daily Kos netroots represent the most viable radical movement in decades:

It's the first broad-based liberal movement to emerge since communism's demise. In the Progressive era, it was conventional wisdom on the American left--asserted by everyone from Eugene Debs to John Dewey--that socialism was historically inevitable. Then, during the Depression--until Stalin's alliance with Hitler and the news of his terrible crimes brought most leftists to their senses--the Soviet Union became a real-life model of what revolution, as opposed to mere reform, could achieve. Even in the '60s, the shift towards outright resistance coincided with an enthusiasm for revolutions abroad. In Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh, the New Left saw blueprints for the revolution it desired at home. Tom Hayden and Staughton Lynd visited Hanoi, and Stokely Carmichael moved to West Africa, where he took the name Kwame Toure in honor of the leaders who had brought independence to Ghana and Guinea. "For generations," writes Todd Gitlin in his excellent book The Sixties, "the American left has externalized good: we needed to tie our fates to someone, somewhere in the world, who was seizing the chances for a humane society."

Now that's impossible. Sean Penn can embrace Hugo Chávez and Michael Moore may swoon over Cuban health care, but such radical camaraderie pales in comparison even to that of the Reagan years, when every major campus boasted a branch of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, which championed El Salvador's Marxist fmln. The Soviet Union is gone, and, virtually without exception, leftist revolutions in the third world have ended in tears. (Nelson Mandela, perhaps the only recent foreign leader to enjoy demigod status on the American left, underscores the point. Post-apartheid South Africa may be anti-American, but it is more capitalist than it was under white rule.) Even the social democracies of Western Europe don't shine as brightly as they did a few decades ago. With the cold war's end, there is simply no compelling ideological alternative beyond America's shores.

On the right, this has produced a utopian spasm: a belief that communism's demise proves capitalism's perfection, vindicating its purest, most deregulated form. But, on the left, it has made revolutionary rhetoric sound absurd. The netroots feel the American system has gone fundamentally wrong; that, in some profound ways, it has become less just, less decent, less free. And yet, the American system is all they have. It can be reformed, turned into a better version of itself. But it can't be overthrown because there is nothing with which to replace it. Markos Moulitsas is an idealist in a post-utopian age.

Beinart's analysis can be taken a step further, however. Perhaps we might see Kos in the light of Marxism-Leninism. Kos's netroots movement is analogous to Lenin's vanguard of the proletariat.

Moulitsas himself - not unlike Lenin - demonstrates a tremendous level of confidence in his political skills, and the rightness of his cause. This outlook allows him to dismiss centrists, such as Joe Leiberman, as outside the true constituency of the Democratic Party. In his recent writings and appearances, Moulitsas has evinced what I consider elements of megalomania. He's got an essentially irrational faith in the power of his movement, and his trumpeting of fake successes nicely illustrates delusions of grandeur.

Yet, in the event of Democratic Party successes next year, Moulitsas will claim the party's victories resulted from the efforts of the netroots and the appeal of its ideology. Kos will claim he and his acolytes alone possess the true progressive insights and credentials to achieve a long-lasting hard left agenda in the American political system. Rather than staying with the party's mainstream, electable functionaries, Kos will use his netroots hordes to purge party centrists, and they'll threaten to bludgeon the Democratic Party hierchy if it deviates from the netroots' Leninist line. A reign of democratic centralism will follow.

Kos' pragmatic political project is an ideological Trojan Horse. His pragmatism seeks to commandeer the official Democratic Party establishment to bring his movement to power and usher in a socialist revolution from below. As improbable as that might sound, Kos - in his drunken stupor of perceived power - certainly sees promise in the netroots's ideological role of as vanguard of the revolution.

Iraq Progress Causing Fits on the Left

I haven't finished reading the Der Speigel article on the dramatic progress of U.S. forces in securing large sectors of Iraq. It's worth noting some points about it now, however.

The piece opens with a discussion of the consolidation of peace in the city of Ramadi just weeks after a series of deadly U.S. firefights with insurgents. Just prior to the engagement locals said the area was a virtually uninhabitable security nightmare. Here's a key synopsis of the argument, especially as it relates to the enduring meme on the left that the war is "lost" :

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq -- it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq -- not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers -- are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Der Speigel's article joins a growing number of reports indicating that the surge is working. This USA Today article notes that the incidence of large-scale, al-Qaeda style truck bombings have declined by about half since early this year. Michael Yon, as well, continues to provide his online dispatches, which paint not only military progress, but political movement as well.

With the increasing frequency of positive reporting on the Iraq project, I'm sometimes blown away at leftist efforts to discredit the good news. A troubling case in point is this post by TRex over at FireDogLake.

TRex attacks Michael O'Hanlon in regards to his recent New York Times article making the center-left case for progress on the surge. Apparently, in an interview with Glenn Greenwald of Slate, O'Hanlon was peppered to the point of exhaustion regarding his on-the-ground research methods in Iraq. Most of O'Hanlon's sources for the update apparently were American, so TRex attacks him as a liar in his post:

I’ve been waiting for what seems like ages for Glenn Greenwald to publish the column detailing the results of his interview with feted “war critic” turned Iraq War cheerleader Michael O’Hanlon, and boy howdy, it doesn’t disappoint. You can read Greenwald’s column here with a full transcript of the conversation available here.

One by one, my man G2 demolishes the pillars supporting the conventional wisdom about O’Hanlon and Pollack’s wildly mendacious Op-Ed, “A War We Just Might Win” until finally, poor O’Hanlon must have desperately wanted to curl up and hide, whimpering, underneath the table. This is why over at Sadly, No! they call Greenwald, “Glennzilla”.

The lies are so thick on the ground around this issue that it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with one of the more glaring falsehoods, that O’Hanlon and Pollack (both from the pro-Iraq-War “liberal” think tank, the Brookings Institute) were “fierce critics” of the president’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq.

Read the rest. TRex is mad because O'Hanlon since 2003 - in his periodic New York Times updates - has been a sober skeptic on the possibility of U.S. success in the war, and now he's changed his stripes. Maybe O'Hanlon's in fact a fire-breathing Cheneyite under cover at the liberal-leaning Brookings institution. It's all so subterranean!

The problem is that TRex has only succeeded in demonstrating how well he can work to impugn someone's reputation. He compares O'Hanlon's reporting with Judith Miller's New York Times articles making the case for Iraqi WMD in the run-up to the war. That ought to get the radical hordes fired up!

Unfortunately, the evidence is coming in too strongly for TRex to even have a shred of credibility. His post looks like a desperate rear-guard attempt to spin success into failure. Liberals are quaking that the U.S. might win in Iraq.

One might expect if the left "supported the troops" they'd be applauding at the news of American and Iraqi progress. Given FireDogLake's project (and I'm sure many others in the left blogosphere), that'd be a bad bet.

Hat tip to Jules Crittenden.