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Looks like this may be all I'm blogging about today...

Two great pieces to highlight, one from Spencer Ackerman, the other from Publius. Let's look at what Ackerman has to say first:

The plan, as released in preliminary form yesterday by AEI, is a tease. It's arranged as a 52-page bullet-pointed PDF -- easily translatable into the Pentagon's indigenous language of PowerPoint -- and as such, it makes assertions instead of arguments. Uncharitable as it may be to argue with bullet points, it's a necessary task when faced with such overwhelming and consequential shallowness of thought[...]

First, Kagan's basic idea can be summed up in two words: "Security First." By this, he means that no possible acceptable outcome to the Iraq war can occur without an imposition of security. Furthermore, since the Iraqi Army is hardly up to the challenge, the only force imaginable that can impose security is the U.S. military. In the final analysis, Kagan proposes that once the U.S. military can impose security, some political settlement is possible. This, of course, runs up against one very potent obstacle: the sheer exhaustion of the Army and Marine Corps, many of whose forces are on their third combat tour in Iraq and operate equipment in dire need of replacement or repair. Also past the wheezing point is Americans' political desire to continue fighting a near-half-trillion dollar stalemate, as demonstrated by November's Republican meltdown at the polls.

Kagan's response is the blithest one possible. He writes (again, in bullet point form) that America has "1.4 million troops under arms [versus] 140,000 in Iraq." Well, then! Arguing for a troop infusion this week in the Standard, editor Bill Kristol and contributor Robert Kagan (Fred's brother) insisted that "yes, the troops exist," and that Fred Kagan has identified "where they would come from." In fact, what Kagan has offered is no more than a bewildered assurance that there simply must be more troops to send. What he neglects is that nearly all of the available combat force among the Army and Marines are either in Iraq now, recently returned from deployment (in most cases, not their first), or are preparing to return[...]

Yet Baghdad has received a substantial infusion of American forcse since mid-2006, for an offensive known as Operation Forward Together. And Baghdad became more dangerous, not less. After all, Iraq is in the throes of multi-tiered sectarian conflict, which Kagan recognizes -- threats to both the Iraqi government, the Iraqi people, and U.S. troops arise from al-Qaeda, Sunni insurgents, Sunni death squads, Shiite death squads, Shiite militias, and the Iraqi security forces themselves. And here's where Kagan's agnosticism on Iraqi politics will doom his plan. To send an additional 20,000 or so troops to simultaneously take on Sunni and Shiite forces in the capitol with no evident strategy is more likely to plunge Baghdad deeper into chaos while absolutely severing the factions in the Iraqi government from the population it allegedly represents.

Now, Publius:

Second, there’s the whole “clear and hold” strategy which I thought we had been doing for some time. Anyway, I’ve always had problems with this strategy at a very fundamental level. First, in places like Baghdad (and Shiite Lebanon for that matter), you can’t really “clear” anything. That’s because the people who are fighting both you and each other are part of the local community. You storm in, they melt away. This is also why you can’t “clear” gangs from south-central LA, or why the Union couldn’t “clear” Confederates and Klansmen in the Reconstruction South (the latter being a very early example of fourth-generation warfare). The idea of “clearing” makes more sense in the context of, say, the al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan that included a lot of non-local forces who had come from outside the local communities. It makes no sense in the Shiite/Sunni enclaves of Baghdad.[...]

Third, there is the assumption that the Iraqi troops doing the “holding” would put nation above ethnicity. That assumption is, shall we say, questionable — much like the recommendation to make our troops sitting ducks on the streets of Baghdad. And contrary to what Barnes said, Bush isn’t gambling his presidency, he’s gambling with human lives — which is a key point to remember.

But the bigger point here is that, while order is of course necessary to a political solution, it isn’t sufficient. And unless there’s some light at the end of the tunnel (some actually attainable end that will be achieved by these means), sending more troops is just sending more people to die so that Fred Kagan can convince himself that he has hair on his chest.

The problems in Iraq have only political solutions, not military ones. They cannot be solved with force of arms. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can end this madness. Of course, recognizing that will mean admitting this project was doomed from day one. And that's just not something these people are willing to do.