VA scandal is an indictment of US health care, not Big Government

Bravo, Mr. Wapshott!  Conservatives too often employ a version of the following syllogism: John is bad; John is a government employee; thus all government employees are bad.  

Here's a good 'graph:

Cannot those employed on salaries by private companies, particularly employees of corporate behemoths who operate near-monopolies, also ration their customers and say they have been put them on waitlists that do not exist? Can employees of commercial firms not also be corrupt and lazy? Does the free market not employ salaried workers? This muddled thinking is simply partisanship posing as intellectual rigor.

Intellectual rigor mortis, yes, but intellectual rigor among conservatives? Heck, no!  

Waitlists, Charles Krauthammer laments?  Gee, I called my primary care physician in January; he said the earliest he could see me was April.  Rationing, he says?  Gee, what do you call preferred providers networks, approved lists of procedures, payment ceilings, and the whole list of restrictions that private insurance companies put on our health care to cut costs and increase their profits?Private health insurance is all about rationing, because that's the only way they make money!

VA scandal is no mark against big government

By Nicholas Wapshott

June 3, 2014 | Reuters

For some, the veterans hospitals scandal is a human tragedy pure and simple. Those who loyally served their nation in uniform, putting their lives on the line, were shunned when they sought medical help.

For others, however, the troubles at the Department of Veterans Affairs have provided what one pundit called “A gift from God.”

For those commentators, the scandal confirmed their worst fears. The logic runs like this: The VA provides a government-run health service; the failures of the VA are a disgrace; ipso facto, all government-run health systems are a disgrace; proving that all government-run bodies are a disgrace. So all government should be sharply reduced — if not abandoned altogether.

The VA troubles, however, prove no such thing. The poor treatment of veterans has nothing to do with funding and everything to do with administrative incompetence combined with craven deceit.

Anyone who has been kept waiting inordinately by a doctor or hospital, or who has had their treatment or prescription drugs denied by their health insurance company, knows that. Anyone kept hanging on the line for an ill-named “customer service representative” and told by an automaton, “Your call is important to us,” knows that private companies treat customers with equal disdain.

The difference is that in the VA scandal, democratic accountability eventually — it took far too long, we know — kicked in. The top man resigned and top managers who presided over the incompetence and subterfuge were fired. It is a further scandal that it took President Barack Obama himself to push the wrongdoers into admitting responsibility. But at least the problem was ultimately addressed.

When can you remember a chief executive officer of an aberrant cable TV company or phone or utility company or even a health insurance company — fill in your favorite offender here — falling on their sword for keeping their customers waiting?

This is the full quote from the “Gift from God” analyst, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson: “What’s happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the healthcare provider.”

Perhaps, as a brain surgeon, Carson is given special treatment when he visits the doctor. But the rest of us endure “layers and layers of bureaucracy” whenever we try to access the healthcare we have so expensively bought.

One reason American healthcare is two-and-a-half times more expensive than in comparable countries is because of the “layers and layers” of insurance sales agents, ID checkers, referral faxers, hospital debt collectors from insurance companies and all the other expensive bureaucrats with no medical knowledge who are employed to administer and police the system. Add to that routine over-charging by doctors and Americans seeking healthcare are being ruthlessly abused and exploited by a commercial scheme that offers them little real choice.

Why do even the smartest free-market dogmatists, who like to paint the world in black and white, fail to see the flaws in commercial companies? Here is the dean of conservative commentators, Charles Krauthammer: “If there’s ever been evidence that a government-run system of healthcare is a disaster, it’s here,” he said. “It’s rationing, it’s waitlists, and corruption and laziness — as you get when people are salaried, rather than working in the free market.”

Cannot those employed on salaries by private companies, particularly employees of corporate behemoths who operate near-monopolies, also ration their customers and say they have been put them on waitlists that do not exist? Can employees of commercial firms not also be corrupt and lazy? Does the free market not employ salaried workers? This muddled thinking is simply partisanship posing as intellectual rigor.

The public-private divide is a red herring that used to distract the left from clear thinking. For a century or more, socialists and communists believed that the world’s problems would be solved if only the “commanding heights” of an economy and the “means of production” were brought into state ownership. Many otherwise smart people fell for an ideology that failed to fulfil its promise the second it was put into practice.

State socialism is now as extinct as the broad-faced potoroo and few except die-hard ideologues dare suggest the government should run everything. Yet the government, tempered by democracy, still has an important role to play when the private sector is found wanting.

It is not merely in treating veterans — whose profound mental and physical wounds can often be so expensive to treat that private insurance companies cannot offer an affordable rate. In many Western European countries taxpayer-funded health systems keep down the skyrocketing costs of treating their ageing populations, just as here in the United States the Social Security system provides an equitable, and relatively inexpensive, way of providing a decent standard of living for retirees.

Other essential services, too, are best administered by the state. Such as the armed services and the police. Schooling, too, is too important to the nation to be left solely to the private sector. State education too often fails, but it is not because taxpayers fund it — it is because the money is spent unwisely.

The question is not whether to have the government provide services the private sector cannot supply. It is a matter of where to draw the line between public and private.

Have historians been unfair to Dubya?

Prof. Stephen Knott argues that Dubya has been treated unfairly by historians making their Best & Worst Presidents lists.  (As if their lists matter to anybody, but let's forget that for now....)

There are two ways to evaluate the success of a U.S. president: by what the evaluator thinks a president did right or wrong; or by how effectively a president got what he wanted; furthermore, one could evaluate how enduring were the gains a president won.

By the first measure, many people, including many Republicans, think Bush was a failure. But partisanship, ideology and ego affect our judgment, so it's one of those things best left to argue over beers. By the second measure, however, I'd argue that Bush was pretty darn successful, unfortunately. And his "achievements" endure.

Why do I say "unfortunately"? We had a recent example. Last night, when noting the nation's reaction to the apprehension of the Boston bombers and their alleged Islamist beliefs, I posted: "It's still Dubya's America and we're just living in it... including President Obama."

That is, I meant that Dubya and his team (including his team at FOX News and Clear Channel) have been extremely successful in framing our view of Muslims, so successful that even President Obama seems prisoner to our prejudices.  The Left is silent while Obama is under constant pressure by the Right to link the entire religion of Islam to terrorism.

Here's the latest bulletin from the conservative GWOT Language Police: "The language of terror," by Charles Krauthammer.  You have to read through a lot of nothing to get to Krauthammer's point at the very end:

Obama has performed admirably during the Boston crisis, speaking both reassuringly and with determination. But he continues to be linguistically uneasy. His wavering over the word terrorism is telling, though in this case unimportant. The real test will come when we learn the motive for the attack.

As of this writing, we don’t know. It could be Islamist, white supremacist, anarchist, anything. What words will Obama use? It is a measure of the emptiness of Obama’s preferred description — “violent extremists” — that, even as we know nothing, it can already be applied to the Boston bomber(s). Which means, the designation is meaningless.

You see, it makes all the difference in the world that the Boston bombers' alleged motivation was Islamist beliefs, and that our President says so. Why? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Because it's ammunition for those who want to categorize all Muslims, including legal U.S. residents and citizens, as suspected terrorists. There's no other reason for the Right to police this language issue so severely. 

And as George Orwell warned us, language controls our thoughts. Control our language, control our thoughts. That is just one "achievement" of the successful George W. Bush "imperial" presidency, but it's a mighty one.

How about some more?  Bush's Great War on Terra (GWOT) continues and even escalates: with drone attacks, G'itmo, sanctioned rendition and torture, domestic spying and Internet surveillance, prosecuting government whistle blowers, and assassinating U.S. citizens when they are overseas. Obama continues Bush's extra-constitutional practice of presidential signing statements. Bush's occupations of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq are inexorable; Obama cannot or will not get out of them. Deregulated Wall Street banks may still gamble, legally, with depositors' and taxpayers' free money and are now Too Bigger To Fail. Deregulated for-profit colleges that live on government-backed student loans still hold the majority of student debt, now at $1 trillion. The budget of Bush's Department of Homeland Security now rivals the Pentagon's. Bush's unfunded Medicare Advantage entitlement is still wildly popular even among seniors in the Tea Parties... yet to put Medicare's finances back in order requires cutting or reforming Medicare Advantage, giving Republicans the opportunity to accuse Democrats of "cutting Medicare." Clinton's federal assault-weapons ban was allowed to expire in 2004; meanwhile right-to-carry and concealed-carry laws were passed in most states with Bush's encouragement, even as mass shootings increased.  And speaking of guns, Obama ironically got blamed for Bush's "Fast and Furious" "gunwalking"/drug-interdiction program by the ATF. And finally, Bush's unaffordable tax cuts on the very wealthy are now sacrosanct even among Democrats who once fought them, even in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, with the two aforementioned wars still on the nation's credit card, unpaid for.  

As a result of all this and more, Bush increased our national debt 91 percent ($5.9 trillion), and yet somehow escapes blame for it; meanwhile spineless Democrats are ready to apologize for Obama's deficits (totaling $4.9 trillion or a 41 percent increase over FY 2009) caused by Bush's Great Recession and two unfinished wars. For that political magic act, we are compelled to acknowledge that Dubya was a brilliant politician. Obama is a dunderhead by comparison.

I haven't read Knott's book, but based on its title, Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics, it probably highlights Bush's achievements in fighting terrorism.  If that's so, then Knott has an excellent case to make that Bush got everything he wanted and more, i.e. he was pretty darn successful. Too bad for us. 

UPDATE (04.24.2013): Ralph Nader repeats a lot of what I've said in his op-ed: "Obama Is Comfortable With Bush's Inferno." 

UPDATE (04.26.2013):  Here's an acerbic take on Dubya's strategy of "Keep Quiet and Hope They Forget" by Alexandra Petri: "George W. Bush was the greatest president of all time, ever."  It's working.  Dumbo has outsmarted us again.  [Facepalm.]

George W. Bush is victim of a rush to judgment

By Stephen F. Knott

April 20, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17y2whL

Greenwald: Constitution doesn't stop at U.S. border

All you so-called constitutional conservatives and Paulites, here's what the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1957 on the question of whether the U.S. Government is obligated to follow the Constitution beyond its borders:

At the beginning, we reject the idea that, when the United States acts against citizens abroad, it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution.  Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution. When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land.

This goes for all our constitutional rights:

This Court and other federal courts have held or asserted that various constitutional limitations apply to the Government when it acts outside the continental United States. While it has been suggested that only those constitutional rights which are 'fundamental' protect Americans abroad, we can find no warrant, in logic or otherwise, for picking and choosing among the remarkable collection of 'Thou shalt nots' which were explicitly fastened on all departments and agencies of the Federal Government by the Constitution and its Amendments. Moreover, in view of our heritage and the history of the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it seems peculiarly anomalous to say that trial before a civilian judge and by an independent jury picked from the common citizenry is not a fundamental right. . . . Trial by jury in a court of law and in accordance with traditional modes of procedure after an indictment by grand jury has served and remains one of our most vital barriers to governmental arbitrariness. These elemental procedural safeguards were embedded in our Constitution to secure their inviolateness and sanctity against the passing demands of expediency or convenience.

Glenn Greenwald makes clear the absurdity of contrary claims by neocons and Obama admin. officials:

[D]oes anyone think it would be constitutionally permissible under the First Amendment for the US government to wait until an American critic of the Pentagon travels on vacation to London and then kill him, or to bomb a bureau of the New York Times located in Paris in retaliation for a news article it disliked [Republicans would celebrate in the streets! - J] , or to indefinitely detain with no trial an American who travels to Beijing or Lima or Oslo and who is suspected of committing a crime? 

Charles Krauthammer's false statement about the US Constitution

By Glenn Greenwald

March 15, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3ef4e

Re: Krauthammer: Obama's French Lesson on Iran

First of all, Sarkozy is not France. Just like GW Bush was not America, although French people criticized all Americans for the policies of GWB.

Secondly, how is Obama's refusal to let big-talking France and UK manipulate America into doing all the heavy lifting in a war against Iran not putting America first? It is the exact definition of putting America first. Gordon Brown and N. Sarkozy want to be big boys at the big boys table, but all they do is talk and then let America spend all the money and spill all the blood. That's like me going to a bar and being a big loudmouth and then saying "my friend here [America] is gonna kick your ass" if you don't do what I want.

Let's just be clear, because Krauthammer and the other neocons like to dance around it: they want a war with Iran. Sanctions are a prelude, a mere technical hurdle to war because sanctions never work against stalwart regimes; and indeed they turn the population against the sanctioner who makes them suffer while their leaders live in palaces. The neocons like CK want to bomb Iran, which would require attacking all major Iranian cities, and perhaps require troops (since it's debatable whether bombing alone can truly destroy all of Iran's nuke facilities). That means more U.S. boots on the ground in the Middle East, hooray. And even then, how can we be sure? You can't bomb or shoot knowledge; and the key to building a nuclear program is the knowledge how to do it. So the only sure way to kill Iran's nuclear program is to destroy its government and install a new one, and ... to support that government would require U.S. aid and administration and security and training, and.... Are you having deja vu, too, or is it just me?

These chickenhawk, chicken-necked pundits and think-tank nerds are leading you and me by the nose into another disastrous war with unpredictable consequences, and unknown duration for the third time in less than 10 years (!) and making it seem as if America has no other choice. These war-mongering jerks who sit comfortably in DC telling us we need to go to war once again have no shame after starting two disasters that are still exploding in our faces. Somebody trying to be clever once said that, "Neocons are liberals who have been mugged by reality." Well, with great sadness but in all truth I would revise that remark: "Americans are mugged by neocons who live in their own reality."

Just be clear: Even bombing Iran would mean war. And it would be a real war, in the sense that American civilians will be put at risk, not just our military. We wouldn't be at war with a nation that is a basket case hobbled by a war and a decade of sanctions like Saddam's Iraq, or a primitive tribal culture with no government or army like Afghanistan. Iran can and will use its resources to foment anti-US terrorism all over the globe, their gloves will come completely off, and they will make bin Laden look like a Girl Scout. (And you'd better believe that Iran has been preparing for this contingency for years.)

Also understand this: you can kiss any hope for democracy or liberal reforms in Iran goodbye the moment the first U.S. bomb drops. Yeah, yeah, you say their elections are all fixed but this is not actually true, and there are opposition politicians and liberal/reform movements that are strong and have some protection in Iran. (Remember when McCain and the neocons said the U.S. gov't needed to do more to support them?) But when the bombing starts, Iranians will rally around Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs, and any stragglers will be rounded up and quietly disposed of by the secret police without a word of criticism while the world community is dazzled by the shock & awe on CNN.

Taking potshots at Obama is all fine and good, but please be conscious of what policy you conservatives are tacitly supporting: starting a third war with a stronger enemy than Iraq or Afghanistan, while those two wars are still unfinished, and killing any hope for democracy in Iran. Once the first bomb drops, there will be only one exit: through the barrel of a gun.


On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 7:16 AM, <> wrote:
wanted you to see this: Obama's French Lesson
-------------------------------------------------------------
Message from :
This is why I don't think Obama cares about America first. Even France sees he lacks intention.

Obama's French Lesson
By Charles Krauthammer

URL: http://townhall.com/content/13cdf7e0-7129-4a9a-95ed-e1456160fc00

Krauthammer: Bush begat McCain

Say what you want about the rest of it, it's the last paragraph from Krauthammer's op-ed that jumps out at me for all its self-serving self-delusion:

"Bush remains popular in his party. Even conservatives are inclined to forgive him his various heresies because they are trumped by his singular achievement: He's kept us safe. He's the original apostate sheriff."

Fortunately for Bush, but unfortunately for the next President (who will have to make decisions about warrantless spying, FISA, rainbow DHS alerts, G'itmo, offensive wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, and potentially, Iran, etc.), Krauthammer's assertion is entirely irrefutable... and unprovable. We'll probably never know if anything W. did actually prevented another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Hence, many of the national security lessons of Bush's presidency are debatable, although they shouldn't be.

Neocon retreats from the 'Bush Doctrine'

Neocon Charlie's Krauthammer here does his best (but still bad) Pat Buchanan impression, timidly questioning the wisdom of the Bush Doctrine, which is: To fight terrorism, spread democracy (by force, if necessary). But then Krauthammer can't bring himself to go all the way, arguing that, as bad as it is, no "plausible alternative" to the Bush Doctrine exists.

Krauthammer argues, laughably, that sometimes the best thing for spreading democracy is to forget about it – in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Russia.

If only Krauthammer had the balls to go all the way like Pat Buchanan and denounce the Bush Doctrine for what it is: naïve, overhopeful nonsense at best; a clumsy alibi for American colonial-imperial behavior at its worst.

Regionalized Democracy
The effective spread of democratic ideals requires some room for adaptation.

By Charles Krauthammer
January 04, 2008 | Washington Post

"My mother always said, democracy is the best revenge." — Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of the late Benazir Bhutto

Washington — Of all the understandings of the democratic idea, none could be more wrong than this one. Democracy at its very core is an antidote to the kind of dynastic revenge young Bhutto was suggesting.

For the Bhuttos, elections are a means for the family to regain power. Benazir was always avenging the death of her father, the former prime minister hanged two years after a coup. Bilawal is now pledged to do the same for his mother's martyrdom. The Pakistan People's Party has always been a wholly owned family subsidiary. Hence the almost unseemly haste with which Bhutto's husband and son were given immediate control upon Benazir's death.

Democracy was meant to be the antithesis of feudalism. Popular sovereignty was to supplant divine right; free elections to supplant dynastic succession (a progression Americans have not completely mastered either). It is clear that Bilawal meant to put the best gloss on his mother's dictum. He, like she, would avenge the political murder of a parent not with violence but through the ballot box. Nonetheless, his unmistakable assumption of aristocratic entitlement clangs against his professed fealty to democratic means.

His mother was the same. In more than one journalistic profile, she was characterized as "a democrat who appeals to feudal loyalties." Part of the reason for the precariousness of Pakistan's democracy is precisely that it remains a largely feudal society practicing democratic forms.

But Pakistan is hardly alone. The very same week Pakistan nearly imploded, a close and disputed election sent Kenya, heretofore one of the more stable democracies in Africa, into a convulsion of tribal violence. These bloody eruptions come against a background of less dramatic but equally important defeats for the democratic idea. Russia acquiesces cravenly as its nascent democracy is systematically dismantled in return for a bit of great-power posturing and a measure of oil-fueled pottage doled out by Czar Vladimir. China even more apathetically continues to concede stewardship of its market economy and modernizing society to a Leninist dictatorship. How many decades will it take before we acknowledge that the axiom that economic liberalization leads to political liberalization may not be axiomatic?

[Plenty of people have already acknowledged it, Charles. We've been waiting for you to join us. – J]

This comes after the Palestinians, in their first post-Arafat parliamentary election, give the mandate to a terrorist group. And as Lebanon, the leader of the Arab Spring of 2005, watches Syrian proxies systematically kill one member of parliament after another to deny the democrats the quorum they need to elect a like-minded president.

These defeats, marking the cresting of the 30-year democratic wave that had swept through Latin America, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and even parts of Africa, raise more than theoretical questions. They challenge the core Bush notion that American foreign policy should be predicated on trying to spread democracy. Six years after 9/11 there still is no remotely plausible alternative to the Bush Doctrine for ultimately changing the culture from which jihadism arises. But while spreading democracy may be necessary, can it, in fact, be done?

We know that it can, of course, as demonstrated by our success in turning Germany, Japan, and South Korea into important democratic allies. But there we had the rare advantage of the near total control that came with uncontested postwar occupation.

[Krauthammer's imperial hubris shows through. In his mind, democracy can be imposed on any country as long as the U.S. wins "total control" by way of total victory and "uncontested occupation." If only we could crush every occupied dissenter under our steel-toed boots and tank treads, spreading democracy would be a snap! He discounts how the vast differences in history and political culture in Germany, Japan, and Korea contributed to their democratic development as compared to primitive tribal backwaters like Afghanistan and Pakistan. – J]

What is required in conditions of far less control? A healthy respect for the enduring power of local political primitivism and a willingness to adapt to it.

In Afghanistan, that means accepting radical decentralization and the power of warlords. In Iraq, that means letting centralized top-down governance give way, at least temporarily, to provincial and tribal autonomy as the best means of producing effective representative institutions.

And in Pakistan, that means accepting both the enduring presence of feudal politics and the preeminent role of the military, Pakistan's one functioning national institution, as a guarantor of the state — even (as in another secular Islamic country, Turkey) at the cost of giving it extra-constitutional authority. It also means accepting the reality that Pervez Musharraf, however dubious his democratic credentials, is not to be abandoned because his fall would unleash the deluge.

These are hard days for democracy. That is not a reason for giving up on it. It is a reason for the prudent acceptance and nurturing of local variants, however imperfect.

['Nurturing local variants'! Hah! What about the democratic variant where you get thrown in jail for waving a protest sign, your scrotum is hooked up to a car battery, and nobody ever sees or hears from you again? What is that variant called?

Here we see Krauthammer in full ideological retreat, covering his rear with desperately illogical dispatches as he high-tails it as far from the Bush Administration's litany of failures as possible. We can't expect Krauthammer to make any sense, he's running too fast from current events to think straight. – J]

The Roman Church learned that spreading the creed required tolerance for the incorporation of certain pre-Christian practices as a way of strengthening the new faith and giving it local roots. For the spread of democracy today, we need to practice our own brand of syncretism and learn not to abandon the field when forced to settle for regional adaptations that fall short of the Jeffersonian ideal.

Krauthammer on Iraq: I Knew It All Along

This is Charles Krauthammer at his most smug and infuriating. Reading this I asked myself, "Are we talking about the same Iraq?" and, "Is he mentally retarded or just pure evil?"

I've inserted my comments into the body of this stinking beast….

Now We're Getting Somewhere
The Iraq debate comes to Earth.
By Charles Krauthammer
August 24, 2007 | Washington Post

After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so.

In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities on the ground in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both critics and supporters of the war, agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster.

[I want to come up with an analogy that illustrates the profound absurdity of this statement, since Krauthammer is not the only one saying it. Even Hillary is uttering this nonsense. Saying that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the same time the government remains a disaster is like a dentist telling his patient, "Your surgery yielded considerable progress, although you still have no teeth." Somebody help me out, if you can do better!.... -- J ]

The latest report from the battlefield is from Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong Iraq-war critic. He returned saying essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest being Brian Baird (D., Wash.): Al Qaeda has been seriously set back as Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, and other provinces switched from the insurgency to our side.

[Blowback, blowback, blowback. We're arming and funding Sunni ex-insurgents in exchange for their not shooting at us. Krauthammer calls that "switching to our side." What's to prevent them from switching back… Scout's honor? This risky strategy is bound to go south on us. At the very least it's pissing off the Shi'ite militias, who aren't getting free cash and weapons from Uncle Sam like the Sunnis are. To them, America is choosing sides in a civil war. – J]

As critics acknowledge military improvement, the administration is finally beginning to concede the political reality that the Maliki government is hopeless. Bush's own national-security adviser had said as much in a leaked memo back in November. I and others have been arguing that for months. And when Levin returned and openly called for the Iraqi parliament to vote out the Maliki government, the president pointedly refused to contradict him.

[This is what we call "the Washington narrative." The current Washington narrative is that the Iraqi government would be doing fine if it weren't for the "hopeless" al-Maliki. Don't you believe this baloney for a second! It is yet another blame & delay tactic: blame Maliki for the absence of political reconciliation; delay until the U.S. can install a more "effective" puppet leader. They're jerking us around – again! Don't let them delay and draw this thing out another 6 months, another 12 months, always blaming this or that, and promising that things will get better if we only do a, b, and c. That's what they've been saying for 5 years. Enough already! – J]

This convergence about the actual situation in Baghdad will take some of the drama out the highly anticipated Petraeus moment next month. We know what the general and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are going to say when they testify before Congress because multiple sources have already told us what is happening on the ground.

[We knew what Petraeus and Crocker were going to say 6 months ago! "Well, we have good news and bad news, but more good news than bad, so we should stay in Iraq just a little longer." – J]

There will, of course, be the Harry Reids and those on the far Left who will deny inconvenient reality. Reid will continue to call the surge a failure, as he has since even before it began. And the Left will continue to portray Gen. David Petraeus as an unscrupulous commander quite prepared to send his troops into a hopeless battle in order to advance his political ambitions (although exactly how that works is not clear).

But the serious voices will prevail. When the Democratic presidential frontrunner concedes that the surge "is working" (albeit very late) against the insurgency, and when Petraeus himself concedes that the surge cannot continue indefinitely, making inevitable a drawdown of troops sometime in the middle of next year, the terms of the Iraq debate become narrow and the policy question simple: What do we do right now — continue the surge or cut it short and begin withdrawal?

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.

The problem with this argument is that it confuses long term and short term. In the longer run, there must be a national unity government. [Wow, what a casual assertion. Please define the "longer run," because in the long run we'll all be dead, and I want to live long enough to see Iraq's unity government! – J] But in the shorter term, our assumption that a national unity government is required to pacify the Sunni insurgency turned out to be false. The Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda and are gradually switching sides in the absence of any oil, federalism, or de-Baathification deal coming out of Baghdad.

In the interim, the surge is advancing our two immediate objectives in Iraq: (a) to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and prevent the emergence of an al-Qaeda mini-state, and (b) to pacify the Sunni insurgency, which began the post-liberation downward spiral of sectarian bloodshed, economic stagnation and aborted reconstruction.

[Are those really are two immediate objectives in Iraq? I can't be sure. Bush hasn't told us lately what our objectives are, except "getting the job done." – J]

Levin is right that we require a truly national government in Baghdad to obtain our ultimate objective of what O'Hanlon and Pollack call "sustainable stability." The administration had vainly hoped that the surge would provide a window for the Maliki government to reform and become that kind of government. It will not.

We should have given up on Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi Parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

[Krauthammer casually tosses yet another rhetorical grenade into the debate…. Think about what he's really saying: America should decide who runs Iraq. If that's the case, then Iraqis don't have a democracy. It's that simple. If Maliki can be replaced on a whim by the U.S., then the Shi'ite cleric and militia leader al-Sadr is right: Maliki is just an "American puppet."

Also, his phrase "We should have given up on Maliki long ago" gave me a laugh. Again, how does Krauthammer define "long ago?" Does "long ago" mean before the 'surge' began in earnest on June 15, or before the 'surge' was announced in January, or some time after April 2006 when Maliki became prime minister? If Krauthammer was sure "long ago" that Maliki was hopeless and there could be no political reconciliation with him in power, then why in the world did Krauthammer support the 'surge' in January-February 2006, whose real objective was to give Iraq's politicians "breathing space" (Bush's words) to hammer out a political compromise? Wouldn't Krauthammer have known that the 'surge' would be a waste of time??

The point is that Krauthammer and most other war apologists have known all along the 'surge' would be a waste of time, blood, and treasure. What they want is to keep the Iraq occupation going as long as possible, and they'll use any pretext that's convenient. – J]

The choice is difficult because replacing the Maliki government will take time and because there is no guarantee of ultimate political success. [Man, do you remember when we could just roll in and take down the whole Iraqi government in like 2 weeks? Ah, the good old days! – J] Nonetheless, continuing the surge while finally trying to change the central government is the most rational choice because the only available alternative is defeat — a defeat that is not at all inevitable and would be both catastrophic and self-inflicted.