Oh, Now They Tell Us

It looks like the NY Times will soon say that it was for withdrawal before it was against it.  But here's the most delicious irony, which will no doubt be missed by many:

In essence, the current debate turns on whether Iraqi leaders would be susceptible to the sort of blunt American pressure entailed by troop reductions. Arguing that such pressure was necessary, Senator Levin joined forces with another Democrat, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, to offer an amendment in June calling for a phased reduction of American troops, a measure he stressed has been supported by all of the potential Democratic presidential candidates. The proposal is less sweeping than most other Democratic proposals, which have called for the withdrawal of all American forces over a fixed time frame. Senator Levin’s plan has assumed more political importance following the Democratic gains in the midterm elections.

“There is no purely military solution here,” Mr. Levin said in an interview. “They have got to reach a political compromise in Iraq. The leaders have got to make concessions involving power sharing and resource sharing or else this insurgency and the violence continues to spiral.”

Interesting that "Senator Levin’s plan has assumed more political importance following the Democratic gains in the midterm elections."  Could it be that the more extreme cut and run proposals that the Times advocated were never taken seriously by the Democratic leadership?  Could it be that with power comes responsibility?  Perish the thought.

But the greater irony is that Sen. Levin's position is barely a degree or two removed from that of Donald Rumsfeld, who opposed increasing troop levels in large part because he believed that the Iraqi government should feel pressure to take responsibility for its country's security.  But of course Rumsfeld had to go because these "retired generals", as the Times and WaPo gladly reported ad nauseum, were calling for his head.

But now that the Dems have won their majority, the Times can safely report that those generals are saying not so fast:

“The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this,” General Zinni said in an interview, referring to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. “Well, you can’t put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.”

Instead of taking troops out, General Zinni said, it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to “regain momentum” as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq that would create more jobs, foster political reconciliation and develop more effective Iraqi security forces.

If the NY Times has a shred of intellectual integrity left (doubtful), it will urge the Democratic leadership to consider raising troop levels rather than reducing them, at least in the short term.  Of course, this will put the Times in quite the conundrum.  Will the dovish Times suddenly become more hawkish?  Enquiring minds want to know.^TM  But after having done all it could to drag the Dems across the finish line in the recent mid-term elections, the Times will now have to contend with the greater responsibility that having its party in power entails.

More: The ironies just pile up:

Some military experts said that while the American military is stretched thin, the number of American troops in Iraq could be increased temporarily — by perhaps 10,000 or more, in addition to the 150,000 or so already there — by prolonging combat tours.

I seem to recall that, for the last three years, the Times had reported on extended combat tours as a bad thing.  But the last bastion of a journalist is reliance on an "expert".  You have to wonder where all of these "military experts" were before the election.  Were they hiding?

UPDATE:  On a related note:

What really matters is what our forces are ordered - and permitted - to do. With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order.

That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them.

If you're not willing to lay down a rule that any Iraqi or foreign terrorist masquerading as a security official or military member will be shot, you can't win. And that's just one example of the type of sternness this sort of fight requires.

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating daily, sending more troops would simply offer our enemies more targets - unless we decided to use our soldiers and Marines for the primary purpose for which they exist: To fight.

To paraphrase Napoleon:  If you're going to wage war, wage war.  If our soldiers and Marines are not going to be allowed to fight, I would prefer withdrawal.

Comments

[Jonathan]

The NYT is so intellectually corrupt that it's almost not worth paying attention to. (Did you see Holman Jenkins's column about it today, at opinionjournal.com?) Almost every NYT article on any topic related to politics, the economy or national defense (or any topic at all if there's an election coming within a few months) must be parsed and scrutinized carefully for bias and dumb errors.

[SWLiP]

It's gotten comically absurd. No, I haven't seen the Jenkins column. I'll look it up.