Conservative
William Lind:
You cannot win at the strategic level simply by accumulating tactical successes, as our Second-Generation, firepower/attrition-oriented military automatically assumes. The strategic level follows its own logic, and strategic victory requires a sound strategy.
Good things are good.
Check. Got it.
But there's more! Here comes the strategy, and it's an old, old friend:
In the case of the war in Iraq, Iran is China, and the first component of a strategy to win in Iraq is to establish a rapprochement with Iran. ... Once it becomes possible for both the U.S. and Iran to win in Iraq, we must move to the second element of our new strategy: allowing any elements that may hold the potential of restoring an Iraqi state to rise within Iraq. Consistent with an indirect approach, this means letting go. ... The third and final element of a strategy for winning in Iraq is to withdraw all American forces as rapidly as possible, which means within 12-18 months.
Translation: Declare victory and get out!
n this strategy, our withdrawal is not that of a defeated army. It is a strategic withdrawal—a necessary part of our strategy. That distinction is a critical for our prestige in the world, for the future health of America’s Armed Forces, and for our domestic politics, which could be roiled beyond what any conservative would desire by a vast military defeat.
"Domestic politics... roiled beyond what any what conservative desires..." Huh?
Strunk and White write, "Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end." (Rule 18), and a stylist like Lund would know Strunk by heart, so what can he mean....
Oh, wait! I have it! What's most important to Lund is that the country doesn't hold conservatives accountable!
Because it's OK to call liberals and Democrats traitors for thirty years -- that's teh OK kind of roiling. But being held accountable for losing a war of your own making? That's teh not-OK kind of roiling. Check. Got it.
NOTE Lund is, of course, very well paid, provided with health insurance, and so forth, because he's on the winger billionaire tit at the Free Congress Foundation.
UPDATE I hope the new definition of Conservative
(hover over the icon) isn't too Shrill?
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I see...
"Victopub" is the new "Defeatocrat."
www.vastleft.com
Also...
... wouldn't an Iranian victory in Iraq be a Saudi and Kurd defeat? No matter, as long as we have peace with Conservative
honor.
The beauty part of
Lund'sLind's scheme is that if Sunnis overwhelm the Shi'ites after we flee, er proudly march home, we can declare it our victory over Iran.www.vastleft.com
From the first sentence--and a map--you can tell
this guy is trying to spin shit into cotton candy:
Now look at the map. Where is Iraq, where is Afghanistan, and where is Iran? We have massive invasion/occupation forces in the countries on either side of them, (well, semi-massive in the Afghani case, but probably more alarming as there we do actually have allies) and we are supposed to go negotiate with the guy in the middle for help?
Um....yeah.
Year: 2017. Sitrep: Chinese forces, propping up a puppet government in Mexico City but balked in efforts to pacify Vancouver, Montreal, the particularly restive provincial capital of Halifax, and utterly unable to tame the ferocious bureaucrats of Ottawa, are going to turn to US President Not-Jenna for help?
yeah. right. Iran has been the target all along as all the PNAC and other neocon fantasy warporn pages have said they were--and they know it.
ps, the new hover on "Conservative
" is just fine. :)
Two Things
First, it's William Lind, not Lund.
Second, Lind is a regular contributor, along with such people as Juan Cole, to antiwar.com(check the sidebar). Here's his latest.
"Wanking" is supposed to mean parroting Republican talking points. I fail to see how any column urging immediate withdrawal fits that definition. Yes, he's conservative; so is Paul Craig Roberts, also on antiwar.com, and he is urging impeachment. Not all conservatives are wankers, you know.
Gone with the Lund
Tresy, I think your concept of wankery isn't suitably dynamic, or generic.
Combining (a) declaring victory and getting out, (b) avoiding all accountability, and, no doubt--though this is unspoken--(c) playing der dolchstosslegende on the Mighty Wurlitzer until the pipes burst is wankery of a very high order.
Even Republican talking points mutate over time--see this post for examples--and Lind gives a leading indicator of possible wankery to come. That would be why Lind is on antiwar.com, eh? Even, or perhaps even especially, the hookers attend church, eh? This is just "conservatism can never fail; it can only be failed" suitably tarted up as a work of strategic insight.
And any post that includes the sentence "strategic victory requires a sound strategy" is, I would argue, wankery by definition.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
"spin shit into cotton candy"
"this guy is trying to spin shit into cotton candy"
Prose like that, xan, has got to be worth another donation to keep those hamsters going! Come on, guys, where are you going to read stuff like that?
Lind may be a conservative,
Lind may be a conservative, small "c", and his social views sometimes make my toes curl, but on war and particularly the Iraq War, he's someone to pay attention to. Lumping him in with the neocons as if he had anything to with this war's making is being ignorant of the facts.
Go through the archives of his "On War" series at D-N-I.net. He laid down the disaster in the making the war was going to be before it started, and he quite firmly opposed it as a result. That his reasoning may have been different than yours doesn't make it less valid. Someone who has made good predictions in the past is someone to listen to, even if you don't like or agree with what he says. Ridiculing what he says out of hand is petty.
He's trying to limit the damage the war causes to the US while still calling for a withdrawal of US forces and acknowledging that the war itself is lost. What about that is it you don't like?
If you identify protecting the conservative brand....
... with limiting the damage the US, then hey, I'm right there with you!
Seriously, what part of "our domestic politics, which could be roiled beyond what any conservative would desire by a vast military defeat" do you not understand?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I asked what you didn’t
I asked what you didn't like, nothing regarding understanding.
What I do understand is that Lind's trying to sell this plan to those conservatives who threw their support behind the Republican party of W. People occasionally will do for the common good; doing for enlightened self-interest is far more common, if you can convince them that it is the case.
And frankly, though I never read such motives into the article the way you did, I actually don't want to see conservatism destroyed. The brand followed by the current administration excepted, of course, but having either side in power without a strong opposition movement to keep them honest tends to be disastrous.
i also understand one other point Lind made: maximalist objectives are rarely possible. If the only way you want the Iraq War to end is in such a way that conservatives of all stripes are blamed for it regardless of their views about it, then you probably will never achieve the victory you desire, and, come to think of it, I can understand if that's what you don't like about Lind.
Still, the question then is whether ending the war or ensuring all conservatives everywhere are blamed for it is of primary importance. For myself, I can live with a weakened conservative movement rather than a completely destroyed one if it means bringing the war to a close earlier. It's not perfect. It never is, but I can live with that too.
Northman,
We are today living with the results of letting the Watergate and Iran-Contra presidents off the hook.
We're dealing with many of the same players, and many of the same plays, taken toward their obvious conclusion -- absolute lawlessness and imperial malfeasance.
This is a horror-film beast, and as long as it's undead instead of dead-dead, it's going to keep ravaging the countryside, in a series of ever-more horrible sequels.
www.vastleft.com
Fair Enough
And I not saying the individuals responsible should be let off the hook. What I do object to is lumping anyone and everyone into that camp because they share some aspect of the perpetrator's political leanings, even if they've strenuously objected to the policies and actions that have led the US to this point.
Bush had an 80% approval rating when he invaded Iraq. How many of those were liberals? Do you condemn them all as hypocrites, as well as any conservatives that opposed the war?
Killing the beast will be much easier if you use all the tools that are willing to fight it; even those you don't agree with on any other issue.
Northman,
Obviously, it's better to have conservatives support withdrawal than not. But those tools shouldn't include glossing over the moranic thinking that got us here, which the "victopub" spin plainly does.
www.vastleft.com
Vastleft
I see what you're saying, but I still think its unfair to Lind given the context of his other writings. He's always been pretty clear that the people who started and prosecuted the war to date have been morons.
Northman,
I also agree it's good to know the context of Lind's previous stuff, which I wasn't familiar with, but I do think Lambert properly busted him in this instance for giving the weasels some undeserved room to weasel out of their responsibility for this mess.
www.vastleft.com