I woke this morning to NPR and the deep, deep voice of Beltway Conventional Wisdom, in the person of Ted Koppel, proclaiming the official Beltway Consensus that we'll be in Iraq "for years to come," and that now both parties "owned the war." (Koppel's reasoning was that the Iraqi Army could not maintain the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state, and therefore our permanent presence was needed.)

Remarkably, or not, the consensus Koppel describes, or announces, emerged even before "General Petraeus deliver[ed] his report," leaving at least this DFH awed, though alas not shocked, at the multiple layers of kabuki involved: The report, which, as the commentariat never fails to fail to mention, will be in fact be written by White House operatives, no doubt black-clad in the best tradition of kabuki stagehands; the kabuki of the process by which we "waited" for the report, so that all necessary decisions could be made by fait accompli; and the kabuki of the "surge" itself, which everyone can see, though many are well paid to deny, has made no meaningful difference whatever in Iraq, but which has made all the difference in the world inside the Beltway, thus elegantly fulfilling the real strategic purpose for which it was designed.

And so what about the dead, the wounded, the amputees, the tortured, the looted billions, and the death of the Republic. Let's not be childish.

Harry, Nancy: Nice work. You were the schwerpunkt for the surge--and "punkt" is indeed the word that I want.  Read more…