The Surge is Working – Max Boot, Los Angeles Times

As recently as a month ago, it appeared that Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker would be running into a withering fusillade of rhetorical fire when they appeared on Capitol Hill to report on the progress of the "surge" in Iraq. Now that their testimony is upon us, the political environment has become, in military argot, considerably more "permissive."

A sign of how much things have changed: In July, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was pressing for a "date certain" for troop withdrawal; he derided those who wanted to pass a nonbinding drawdown resolution "that has no teeth in it" just so "you can circle and sing 'Kumbaya.' " Today, he's trying to reach accommodation with Republicans on just such a "Kumbaya" bill.

It's obvious what accounts for the more cooperative mood. Notwithstanding all the political hype and hyperbole, events on the ground do matter, and there is no denying that events in Iraq have been moving in the right direction since the surge started. Not even the Democrats deny it. Sens. Jack Reed, Hillary Clinton and Dick Durbin, among others, have acknowledged that, as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it, "The military aspects of President Bush's new strategy in Iraq . . . appear to have produced some credible and positive results." …

How to View the Report on the Surge - Brian Katulis, Washington Post

Next week, a new White House Iraq report and Congressional testimony from U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus will intensify the country's Iraq debate. These latest reports will arrive after a string of pessimistic accounts from past weeks -- including last month's grim National Intelligence Estimate and a Government Accountability Office report, as well as a negative assessment of Iraq's security forces from retired General James Jones.

The more focused debate in the United States is in part due to efforts by members of the 110th Congress to call for a course change and push for independent assessments of Iraq policy. Since 2005, Congressional leaders from Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) have supported beginning a phased redeployment from Iraq. It took Congressional action to get an independent assessment and recommendations in 2006 from the Iraq Study Group. Last May's amendment to the supplemental funding bill requiring reports on 18 key measurements was another positive development. By focusing attention on outcomes, Congress is fulfilling its oversight responsibilities.

To a large extent, we know what the forthcoming administration report will say -- President Bush and other top officials have tipped their hand. The report will try to shift the terms for evaluating the surge -- featuring increased stability in certain neighborhoods of Iraq, while downplaying high levels of overall violence and political deadlock among Iraq's leaders. We also have a good idea of what ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus will say: Give the surge more time. Congress should use this month's full schedule of hearings to ask three tough questions directly relevant to U.S. interests in Iraq.

1. Is any increased stability in Iraq the result of population displacements and sectarian cleansing? …

2. What is the "bottom-up" reconciliation plan for southern and northern Iraq? …

3. What is the plan for integrating irregular Sunni forces into Iraq's national government? …

Hearing General Petraeus – Jeb Hensarling, National Review

As General David Petraeus prepares to deliver a progress report on the troop increases in Iraq to Congress at a hearing on Monday, the Washington spin machine has gone into overdrive trying to frame the latest “reality” coming out of Iraq.

Despite tens of millions of dollars having been spent on advertising and targeted campaigns by liberal groups like Moveon.org, the incessant cries to precipitously retreat and withdraw from Iraq are now being overshadowed by reports showing some positive results and undeniable progress. It began with Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack’s trip to Iraq in July. The one-time war critics wrote in the New York Times that military progress is creating greater stability on the ground in Iraq. The anticipation of General Patraeus’ upcoming report on the developments in Iraq has sparked a new flame of optimism that the Democrats are having fits trying to ignore and spin, culminating just this week with Katie Couric reporting from Iraq about the “substantial progress” being made there.

While there is no doubt that mistakes have been made in Iraq, the reasons to be cautiously optimistic today are evident — at least for those that are willing to see them and understand that a different strategy has yielded different results…

About Face - Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, National Review

To many critics, President Bush’s new way forward in Iraq had failed before it even began. The new strategy, which shifted toward an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign coupled with a surge in troop levels, was officially announced on January 10, 2007. Even before this announcement, congressional Democrats declared the new strategy a useless and futile gesture…

But now that the surge is in full swing, attitudes are rapidly changing. The first shifts came early, as those who were in Iraq noticed the surge’s successes. In May, I was embedded with the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery in Baghdad. The soldiers with whom I was embedded patrolled the west-central Baghdad districts of Yarmouk and Hateen, and in late May I reported that the surge had made a visible difference…

Amid Civil War, Reports Mean Little - Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh, Los Angeles Times

The intense focus on Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker obscures the essential irrelevance of the report they will make to Congress on Monday and, in a larger sense, the irrelevance of U.S. troops to Iraqi politics. The pacification of a few pockets of resistance can scarcely reconcile Iraq's warring factions or salvage the American enterprise. The future of Iraq hinges on the outcome of its raging civil war, not on any recalibration of U.S. military strategy.

Both the White House report and a study by the Government Accountability Office released this week reveal the chasm that separates U.S. and Iraqi conceptions of reconciliation. For Americans, reconciliation is a product of bargaining, through which members of Iraq's Sunni minority participate in the governance of the state and get their fair share of the resources. Proponents of the troop "surge" had hoped that an augmented American presence would give responsible elements of Iraq's religious and ethnic factions the political space to forge a national compact.

Yet the U.S. definition of reconciliation is just one more cultural artifact that Washington has tried to force down Iraq's throat. As it turns out, Iraqis across the sectarian divide view reconciliation differently. The Shiites tend to emphasize the notion of justice and demand that their suffering under previous regimes -- not only under Saddam Hussein's -- be compensated. For this, they need not only to assume power but to subordinate Iraq's Sunni population. For the Shiite-run government, justice must precede reconciliation…

Cultural Cluelessness – Stanley Kurtz, National Review

… Take Andrew Tilghman’s “The Myth of AQI,” the latest big-buzz article in our national debate over the war in Iraq. Tilghman argues that self-interested politicians in America and Iraq — everyone from President Bush, to the Maliki government, to the Sunni resistance, to Moqtada al-Sadr — have all systematically exaggerated the actual size of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The truth, says Tilghman, is that Iraq’s internal battles are largely its own. Carefully scrutinize the statistical data on insurgent loyalty, Tilghman claims, and the international al Qaeda connection (and thus the link to the larger war on terror) barely exists.

At least that’s what Tilghman claims. The problem is that Tilghman is operating on the naive assumption that it’s got to be one or the other. Either you’re a card-carrying member of AQI, or you’re a “local” Sunni tribal insurgent. Sorry, but that’s not the way things work — especially not in Muslim tribal societies.

That’s what our army has finally discovered — for example, through the work of David Kilcullen…

Cross Examine Petraeus – Los Angeles Times editorial

It is an anxious and impatient nation that waits for Monday's testimony from the top U.S. officials in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They are brilliant and dedicated men who have accepted unenviable jobs, and their views deserve our careful consideration. If, however, the White House has scripted their testimony to try to sell Congress and the nation on "staying the course" through a fifth year of disastrous occupation of Iraq, President Bush must be made to reconsider.

At this historic juncture, it would be insufficient for Petraeus and Crocker merely to report on the military accomplishments of the "surge," which will in a matter of weeks boost the number of U.S. forces in Iraq to 172,000, up from about 130,000 early this year. And it would be ludicrous to debate whether to bring home a token brigade of 4,000 troops in time for Christmas. No, the key questions on which we are most eager to hear the views of Petraeus and Crocker are these: What is the least dreadful strategy for winding up U.S. military involvement in Iraq? What can be done to minimize the inevitable American and Iraqi casualties as the U.S. withdraws its troops? Which political, military and diplomatic actions are most likely to reduce the length and ferocity of the ongoing Iraqi civil war and the risk of intervention by Iraq's neighbors, during and after the U.S. disengagement? And how best can the United States mitigate the massive crisis of Iraqi refugees?

Instead, it seems likely that the scope of the debate in Congress will be limited to Petraeus and Crocker reporting that the security situation in Iraq has materially improved as a result of the troop buildup, and to antiwar Democrats citing reports from the Government Accountability Office and Gen. James L. Jones' commission to argue that those gains are minimal or ephemeral. But the most essential facts about Iraq today are beyond dispute…

A Surge of Public Works – Deroy Murdock, National Review

As the world awaits General David Petraeus’s progress report on President Bush’s troop surge, even war critics concede that deploying 30,000 additional GIs has improved Iraq’s security. Largely overlooked, however, is how increased safety has helped U.S. soldiers and contractors rebuild its physical and institutional infrastructure. The Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) has performed much of the Pentagon’s $11.4 billion in reconstruction. So far, they have concluded 3,014 of 3,387 planned projects. ACE’s website highlights most of the details and comments cited here…

Why We Should Exit Iraq Now – Bill Richardson, Washington Post

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have suggested that there is little difference among us on Iraq. This is not true: I am the only leading Democratic candidate committed to getting all our troops out and doing so quickly.

In the most recent debate, I asked the other candidates how many troops they would leave in Iraq and for what purposes. I got no answers. The American people need answers. If we elect a president who thinks that troops should stay in Iraq for years, they will stay for years -- a tragic mistake.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards reflect the inside-the-Beltway thinking that a complete withdrawal of all American forces somehow would be "irresponsible." On the contrary, the facts suggest that a rapid, complete withdrawal -- not a drawn-out, Vietnam-like process -- would be the most responsible and effective course of action…

The Other Victims in Iraq - Mokhtar Lamani and He Hany Besada, Boston Globe

Armenians, Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, Faili Kurds, Shabaks, Palestinians, Baha'is, Mandeans, Yazidis, Turkomans, and Jews, together with their Sunni and Sh'iite neighbors, form an intricate fabric that gave rise to today's modern Iraqi state. Ironically, they find themselves on the fringes of the Iraqi society. Tragically, last month's massacre of more than 400 Yazidis - one of Iraq's numerous religious minorities - and the international coverage it received, has placed the spotlight on a forgotten tale in that country's ongoing de facto civil war: the continuous and often-underreported violence, which ethnic minority leaders in the country portray as genocide of devastating consequences, against minority populations. Both Iraqi and US officials have blamed the attack on Al Qaeda-linked Islamic militants.

The brutal attacks against the Yazidis, who are predominantly ethnic Kurds whose religion blends elements of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism, dating back more than 4,000 years, underscored the fear and the harsh reality that reflect the growing insecurity and anxiety gripping Iraq's minorities. Minorities are especially vulnerable given the lack of militias to protect their communities, a practice often used by the Shi'ite and Sunni populations. Notwithstanding press coverage of the daily atrocities, which have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shi'ites and, to a lesser extent, Kurds, the plight of the country's disappearing minorities, who are caught in the cross fire of the ongoing conflict, does not feature high in the international debate on Iraq…

Why Don’t the Terrorists Attack Us More? – Matthew Parris, London Times

… In an age in which the modern mass media are believed to probe every nook and cranny of human thought, holding nothing back, there persist vast and inexplicable divides between what people actually think and feel, and what broadcasters and journalists depict as our habits of mind and sentiment. There are huge questions, huge “I wonders” that rarely find their way into publication. One of these has nagged at me since the IRA terrorist scares of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, and throughout the so-called War on Terror; and I should be surprised if it did not nag millions of my countrymen too. This is not the question of why terrorists do the things they do. It is the question of why they don’t do more.

Doing more would be so easy. In an open society like ours the national throat is open and exposed for the cutting in a hundred places. A small amount of explosive beneath pylons in a million unguarded locations will bring down a high-tension power supply. A drop of poison at a thousand access points to our water supplies could kill hundreds. A brick dropped from a motorway bridge on to a coach’s windscreen combines a good chance of murder with minimal risk of capture. Our railways are essentially unguarded…

National Security Bubble – Washington Post editorial

The goal of the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, was simple and clear: Protect the country from another devastating attack. But in its quest to counter unprecedented threats, the White House deliberately avoided seeking the advice of Congress -- and even that of some of its own top officials -- for fear of encountering opposition to novel or aggressive tactics. This go-it-alone approach led to the proliferation of dubious legal theories that authorized activities such as the warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and the torture of suspected terrorists. Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of the strategy was that it was largely unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive.

The existence of the so-called torture memo and the warrantless surveillance program have been known for some time. But a forthcoming book, "The Terror Presidency," by former Justice Department official Jack L. Goldsmith provides an insider's account of the pressures and priorities that led to such programs. It also illuminates the dangers of making decisions in a bubble, even when -- perhaps especially when -- the goals are so clearly valid…

An Antiterrorism Lesson – Boston Globe editorial

The arrest Tuesday of three suspects in a plot to carry out bombings in Germany offers crucial lessons about preventing terrorism. Some of those lessons have to do with the tactics of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. But the most beneficial insight Americans could gain from the German example is that war is the wrong metaphor for a nation's defense against terrorism.

The terrorists may need to tell each other they are killing civilians in the cause of a holy war. But societies that have to protect themselves against Al Qaeda and its offshoots are not at war. And they don't need to act as if they are going to war.

The investigation leading to this week's arrests and the seizure of bomb-making material suggests that the terrorist threat is best countered not by armies, but by meticulous police work, intelligence cooperation, and laws that strike a reasonable balance between civil liberties and the state's obligation to protect the lives of citizens…

In Defense of Spying – Washington Times editorial

The second-oldest profession still surprises some people. So it was this week when Britain's National Archives released decades-old security-service files on George Orwell, greeted in some circles as high irony, that Big Brother would be found spying on the author of "1984." It would have been more surprising if British intelligence were to have failed to watch a prolific socialist who, in the course of travels in international leftism, counted a resignation in protest from the Indian Police Service and a joining-up with the Worker's Party of Marxist Unification to fight the Spanish Civil War among his life moments. Such is spying. It is meant to head off graver acts of state than the keeping of files.

Granted, reading these documents is to imbibe half a dose of Inspector Closeau and the other half routine due diligence. References to Orwell's supposedly "advanced Communist views" — a penciled question mark adorns this one — and dark suggestions of his "bohemian fashion" are met by cooler observations that Orwell would be "an unorthodox Communist," or probably, judging by his writings, no malefactor at all. "The Betrayal of the Left," writes one file-keeper, demonstrates that Orwell "does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him." The spies could read…

‘MoveOn’ Osama – New York Post editorial

If Osama bin Laden ever gets tired of waging global jihad, perhaps he should interview for a job with MoveOn.org.

He'd get one, judging from his latest videotape to the American people: The first in three years, it contains vast sections of rambling rhetoric indistinguishable from the latest "netroots" rant.

"Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world," he asks, "occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw in Iraq?"

As it turns out, it's all because of those evil oil companies: "The capitalist system," he continues, "seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of 'globalization' in order to protect democracy."

Sound familiar? …

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