Informed Speculation

Mickey Kaus on how Hillary Clinton has managed to get Iraq exactly wrong:

Mohammed at Iraq the Model–writing after the recent Baghdad car bombings– reports that:

Although attacks happen here and there, the general feeling is still closer to hope and appreciation of the plan than pessimism. More families are returning to the homes they were once forced to leave, and we’re talking about some of the most dangerous districts such as Ghazaliya and Haifa Street.

I’m not saying things won’t change, I’m not saying long term prospects look positive. I’m saying they are positive enough to warrant giving the plan a chance to do some good instead of blocking it or strangling it Murtha style. Or Hillary style–now that she’s called for starting a pullout in 90 days. How do you surge and “redeploy” at the same time?…

P.S.: It’s not too early to say that Hillary’s performance in the opening weeks has been impressively unimpressive. It’s pretty clear in retrospect, that the war with Iraq, however it comes out, was a bad gamble. A mistake, in other words. But now that we’ve made the mistaken gamble, it also seems clear–to Mohammed at least–that the surge might do some good. The correct position, by these lights, was War No, Surge Yes. It would be selfishly callous, in a stereotypically American way, for us to invade Iraq, make a mess, and then not be willing to pay any extra price to help fix the mess we’ve made. (Murtha’s demand that the troops be given “a year at home”–and the heck with what happens to Iraqis like Mohammed–only emphasizes this self-interested perspective.) Yet through a conscientiously applied mixture of high-minded comity, Machiavellian calculation, stubbornness and bad expert advice, Hillary has managed to arrive at a position that’s precisely wrong on both counts: War Yes, Surge No.

I’ve nothing to add…

UPDATE 3:02 p.m.: Well, okay, one thing to add: obviously, my position is War Yes, Surge Yes.  However, I can see how an honorable person might so War No, Surge Yes, or even War No, Surge No.  But Hillary’s position (and it’s that of most elected Democrats, by the way) is untenable…