On Monday, the conservative American Enterprise Institute held yet another in a series of discussions about the war in Iraq. AEI's Fred Kagan was one of the principle architects of The Surge, and despite the fact that he only very recently became an expert on the Middle East, he is treated by our news media as a respected elder on all things Iraq. He created The Surge, so why not?
Watch in amazement as Fred displays his expertise. From Monday:
The first thing I want to say is that: The Civil War in Iraq is over. And until the American domestic political debate catches up with that fact, we are going to have a very hard time discussing Iraq on the basis of reality.
Less than 24 hours later, the latest wave of violence and political unrest swept Iraq.
To repeat: This is the man who brought us the initial plan for The Surge.
More from the same event:
The Surge succeeded in doing that [nipping civil war in the bud]. On a recent trip to Iraq, in all of our studies, what has become very clear is that the Iraqi populace is not mobilized for civil war. On the contrary, increasingly the Iraq populace is mobilized to stop violence.
There are experts out there who know what they are talking about, but sadly, as Glenn Greenwald chronicles, they rarely if ever get the attention they deserve.
I realize that past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future success, but shouldn't past failures mean something?
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