Missing the point

John McCain will be on teevee for, like, the 13th time since being soundly defeated in the presidential election. He will, of course, call for "more troops" in Afghanistan, and will say that we should do what "McChrystal wants." Sadly, though, I doubt he's read McChrystal's report, which has been entirely misrepresented by politicians and reporters alike. Von has a very useful summary of what the Afghanistan commander really believes.

In light of the increasingly frenetic calls to reject Gen. McChrystal's report and to bring the troops back home from Afghanistan, it's worth looking at what Gen. McChrystal actually said. The unclassified version of McChrystal's report is here. The striking part of McChrystal's report is how different the report is from its caricature in the press. George Packer is correct when he writes:

McChrystal’s report is written in plain English, it’s self-critical, and it shows more understanding of the nature of the fight in Afghanistan than most journalism and academic work. The U.S. military now believes that the Afghan government is just as much a threat to success as the Taliban. That’s a bold conclusion, one that our civilians have not been willing to reach, publicly at least. And the description of the different Taliban networks is as clarifying as it is disturbing.

Admittedly, this humble blog also reacted to the report without, ya know, reading it; though in my defense, I was reacting more to Republeiberman reactions to it, but nevertheless.

Failure -- an option

Today, David Brooks looks at the past few years of our engagement and sees a waste of time. Tough luck for the Iraqis who had to suffer while we foolishly developed "benchmarks" and sought "political reconciliation" and "security." Our bad.

But, like so many apologists for our misadventure in the Middle East, Brooks looks at "failure" and calls it "success." Because now we're beginning to recognize that a dismembered country run by warlords and "thugs" would be stupendous.

Christ, he's a tool. I especially love this:

The original idea behind the surge was that U.S. troops would create enough calm to allow the national politicians to make compromises. The surge was intended to bolster the “modern” — meaning nonsectarian and nontribal — institutions in the country.

But the surge is failing, at least politically, because there are practically no nonsectarian institutions, and there are few nonsectarian leaders to create them. Security gains have not led to political gains.

At the same time, something unexpected happened. As Iraqi national politics stagnated, the tribes began to take the initiative. The process started in Anbar Province, when the local tribes revolted against Al Qaeda. It has continued in Diyala Province and even in Baghdad neighborhoods like Ameriya. In the South, moderate Shiite parties have begun to resist the Sadrists, while in many places local groups that look like mafia families struggle to impose order on their turf.

In other words, organic local actors — some thuggish, some not — have begun to impose a security structure on parts of the country. Some are independent, some require assistance from the U.S. troops supplied by the surge.

Oh, shit. All of us naysayers are going to be proven soooo wrong. See. Moderate Shiites are beginning to "resist the Sadrists." Does he mean the Badr organization?

In the south, the problem isn't Sunni Islamic extremists but at least three dueling Shiite militias. British forces sustained heavy attacks by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia for more than a year, and his followers Monday touted their withdrawal as a victory against the "occupation."

"If our presence on the streets is inflammatory, it's better (that) we're out," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad, who said she was confident that the Iraqi security forces, although they've been heavily infiltrated by Sadr's men and by members of the rival Badr Corps, could handle the second-largest city in Iraq. The diplomat spoke on the condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak on the record.

"We wouldn't be handing over Basra until the Iraqi security forces and the government in Iraq are ready," she said.

On Monday, however, the supplemental security forces sent to the port city, valuable for its oil wealth and access to the Persian Gulf, were from Iraq's National Police, which are heavily infiltrated by Shiite militias. They'll supplement 28,000 local police and Iraqi soldiers already in the city, said Basra police spokesman Karim al-Zaidi.

Over the past two weeks, the city quieted as British patrols disappeared from the streets and the city prepared for the handover. The sounds of rockets, mortars and roadside bombs, once heavy night and day, had nearly stopped.

The Mahdi Army, which had been bombarding the British in Basra with daily mortar attacks, and has the largest on the ground Shiite militia, declared the withdrawal a victory.

"It gives us great pleasure and pride, and this came about because of the hits of the honorable resistance represented by the Mahdi Army that resisted so the occupier would leave," a leading member of the Mahdi Army said. "We are so happy that our efforts and sacrifices were crowned by success."

Local leaders heralded the withdrawal as a "dream." A high-ranking police official, however, said he fears that with the British exit, the Americans may try to enter the city, which he said would provoke a much higher level of violence. He said the British troops had "no role in providing security" and "let things continue between gunmen."

So, there you have it. Finally, some peace and security takes hold in the south (where we really were expecting to be greeted with sweets), with our good friends the Badrists all set to take on the Sadrists while the Mahdi's take on the Iraqi "security forces."

BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 — A power struggle between rival Shiite groups erupted Tuesday during a religious festival in Karbala, as men with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades fought street battles amid crowds of pilgrims, killing 50 people and wounding 200, Iraqi officials said.

Witnesses said members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, traded fire with security forces loyal to the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

During hours of fighting, several vehicles and a hotel for pilgrims were set ablaze, and terrified pilgrims who had been praying at two shrines were trapped inside as clashes erupted nearby. Witnesses said buses that had been used to bring pilgrims to Karbala were bullet-shattered and bloodstained.

The government forces in Karbala and other towns in southern Iraq are dominated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed wing, the Badr Organization. Many Badr fighters are veterans trained by Iran when they lived there as exiles under Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Tensions between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization have simmered for months. Both are vying for control of the overwhelmingly Shiite regions of central and southern Iraq. Two provincial governors belonging to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council were assassinated in southern Iraq this month, although the Sadrists deny involvement.

The showdown will prove embarrassing for Mr. Maliki if his security forces cannot control the Mahdi Army and restore order in a holy city in his own Shiite heartland.

Splendid. We couldn't have hoped for better chaos.

"I will resign repeat resign and I mean it repeat mean it."

Dexter Filkins writes about the effect that David Halberstam, along with Malcom Browne and Neil Sheehan, had on the coverage of the war in Vietnam. Their skepticism and reporting on the reality on the ground versus the government's happy talk helped end the war and, ultimately, the Nixon administration. And inspired reporters covering Iraq these past four years.

Mr. Halberstam, then working for The New York Times, went on to demonstrate through a series of forceful dispatches that the chaotic reality unfolding on the ground in Vietnam bore little resemblance to the upbeat accounts offered by American presidents and generals who were prosecuting the war. Journalism and, more broadly, the relationship between the American people and their elected servants in Washington, was never the same again. Mr. Halberstam, who died Monday in a car accident, set a standard for skepticism of official war-time pronouncements that carries on to this day.

During four years of war in Iraq, American reporters on the ground in Baghdad have often found themselves coming under criticism remarkably similar to that which Mr. Halberstam endured: those journalists in Baghdad, so said the Bush administration and its supporters, only reported the bad news. They were dupes of the insurgents. They were cowardly and unpatriotic. Indeed, reporters who filed dispatches pointing out the pitfalls experienced by American troops sometimes found it difficult to secure an embed with an American military unit. Other reporters — including this one — were sometimes excluded from official briefings inside the Green Zone.

“Frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors,” Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, said in 2004.

Mr. Halberstam and his colleagues in Vietnam, like Neil Sheehan of United Press International and Malcolm W. Browne of The Associated Press, both later of The Times, had it a lot tougher than reporters in Iraq do today, if only because they were the first. Few journalists with major American newspapers or television networks had dared to publicly question the veracity of America’s military leaders — or an American president — in wartime, least of all a 29-year-old reporter not that long out of college.

By his own account, Mr. Halberstam had gone to Vietnam a believer in the American project, but found himself increasingly disillusioned by events he was witnessing up close. The public representations made by American leaders — of numbers of Vietcong killed, of South Vietnamese soldiers trained — seemed so at odds with what Mr. Halberstam and the other reporters were seeing that they came to regard the official briefings as little more than acts of comedy.

That skepticism, in the American press, was new. “The press at the time, and by that I mean the editors, were living in the shadow of World War II,” Mr. Sheehan said in an interview. “The senior military and the senior diplomats had enormous credibility with the news media. If General Patton gave you a briefing on what he was going to do to the Germans — and he always brought the press with him, because he thought it was important — you could expect a pretty straightforward account.”

Mr. Halberstam, an intense, sometimes intimidating man, came into direct conflict with President Kennedy — who pressed to have him pulled from Saigon — and with his own editors at The Times, who sometimes questioned the divergence between his and the official accounts.

In one incident, recounted in Mr. Sheehan’s book, “A Bright Shining Lie,” Mr. Halberstam exploded at his editors in New York, who had asked him about an article filed by a competitor that more closely tracked the official version. “If you mention that woman’s name to me one more time I will resign repeat resign and I mean it repeat mean it,” Mr. Halberstam wrote in a cable.

In another incident in 1963, Mr. Halberstam filed an article about a series of arrests staged by the Saigon government that was flatly contradicted by the State Department in Washington. After much debate, editors at The Times decided to run two articles on its front page — one from Washington, based on the State Department’s version, and the other from Mr. Halberstam. “Three days later,” Mr. Sheehan wrote, “other events forced the State Department to admit that the official version had been wrong.”

Similar clashes between the Bush administration and the press have unfolded during the war in Iraq, particularly in its early phases. In late 2003 and early 2004, as security around Iraq was deteriorating, reporters in Iraq were sometimes mystified by the rosy briefings they were given inside the Green Zone. In the streets where they lived and worked, they witnessed car bombings and assassinations, while the spokesmen for the Bush administration talked mostly about smiling Iraqis and freshly painted schools.

“There were two realities — one inside the Green Zone, and the reality every day, talking to people in the street,” said Anthony Shadid, a Washington Post correspondent whose Iraq dispatches won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004. “They never did intersect.”