Daily Kos and the "False Narrative" of Surge Success

As best as I can tell, this new post at Daily Kos, "Countering the Pro-McCain Media Myth of the Surge," represents just the latest example of hard left-wing denial on Iraq:

The Republican narrative about the current situation in Iraq is that "the Surge has worked." The Surge, we are told, provided the security conditions which have resulted in decreased violence, a move toward relative normalcy for Iraqis, and -- ironically -- a chance for Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi parliament to reject US demands for a sustained occupational force in Iraq.

We are told that the very fact that Maliki is able to demand a timetable, and to reject US demands for among other things, contractor immunity and free military reign in Iraq, is an indication of just how successful General Petraeus and President Bush's "surge" strategy has worked. The very strategy Senator McCain had urged all along. This shows that McCain is wiser than Obama, even if it does have the ironic effect of benefiting Obama in the election.

Nothing about the above narrative is correct...

Notice that last, sweeping dismissal of any American military efficacy in explaining the transformation of the war: "Nothing about this is correct..."

Say what?

I noted sometime back a half-dozen or so revisions among leftists as to why Iraq's supposedly been a failure:

It's clear now that things are going so well in Iraq, that the antiwar left has gotten increasingly creative in its arguments for retreat, in furtherance of the movement's endless project of souring public opinion on the deployment.

Amazingly, the "Bush-lied, people died" slur is still going strong among the surrender hawks, never mind that we're long past that leg of the debate, notwithstanding the New York Times' editorial efforts.

We've also had for the past 18-months the left's self-embarassment in attacking the surge as a failure. More recently, the "crushing" costs of the war became a big draw among surrender mavens, although that meme had hardly any shelf life at all (being easily dispatched, for example, here).

Then, of course, the antiwar meme of relentless sectarian violence, which is hypothesized to forever doom progress toward political reconciliation, has been a handy antiwar slur on the left.

I'm sure we could come up with even more of the war-bashing arguments, for example, the angry recriminations against the Freidman Units, the "genocide," "100 years in Iraq," and who know what else the nihilists have been able to come up with. We've had more attacks on the war than Bush's hated "mutiliple justifications" for the deployment!

Well, now it turns out that the left's big antiwar smear is the permanent-bases, "neo-imperial" project slur, which is debunked by Abe Greenwald at Commentary...

We're still seeing variations of most of these, since the meme that the war's been a "disaster" is so entrenched that war opponents can pull out just about any old slur against the administration, and still get a hearing among those who have no clue as to what's really been happening.

Read the entire Kos post, if you wish, but the gist there is that whatever sectarian cooperation we've seen has emerged completely indigenously, among various Muslim factions in Iraq, facilitated by the good office of the Iranian regime, no less!

Further, the Americans are alleged to have had absolutely nothing to do with Prime Minister Maliki's victory over the renegade Mahdi Army earlier this year.

To the extent that the author acknowledges success on the ground - or any political liabilities for Barack Obama - it's to suggest the futility of attempting to rebut the purported "major media narrative" on the course of the war over the last 18-months (spun, naturally, by the Republican corporate media-masters, and their BushCo allies).

Yes, I guess that explains why Barack Obama has refused to meet John McCain for a nationally-televised town hall meeting at the largest active-duty military complex in the nation, in Fort Hood, Texas.

I'm not sure why these folks fight it any longer: "McCain's Won the Iraq Argument."

At this point I'll simply defer to genuine experts on Iraq to rebut the Kos talking points that "nothing about this narrative is correct."

For example, see Bill Ardolino, "Why the Violence Has Declined in Iraq," at Long War Journal, Peter Feaver, "Anatomy of the Surge," from Commentary, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, "Iraq's Jihad Myths.

See also, Greyhawk, at Mudville Gazette, on the tactical and strategic origins to military succes in Iraq: "Genesis, Parts I and II" (here and here).