July 14, 2007
How Not to Debate Iraq IV Posted by Alexander Burns at 10:00 PM EST Thanks to John Steele Gordon for his substantive and succinct reply to my post. The articles he links to provide good evidence that there has been some measured military progress in Iraq. I have agreed with this assertion before, although I’m not still not sure how much these articles do to demonstrate that our forces are making progress toward some satisfactory, conclusive outcome. It’s also a bit troubling that General Petraeus himself has acknowledged that a counterinsurgency of the kind we’re pursuing has tended to take closer to a decade than a year, which would place large-scale American forces in Iraq much longer than originally projected. Whether that’s acceptable or not is a subject for another debate. For the moment, since exchanges like these generally have natural lifespans that it is best not to exceed, I’ll simply add that I appreciate Mr. Gordon’s willingness to address his original question, and to participate in another of the somewhat contentious but entirely civil and instructive exchanges that he and I have had in recent months. I’m slightly disappointed with Mr. Zeitz’s prickly response to my post. My aim was not to “coach [him] on the proper way to discuss Iraq.” It was to steer the discussion back toward a subject that’s not only interesting to me, but that’s actually connected to the nominal discussion topic: “How Goes the War?” and that’s also been addressed less frequently on this blog than Mr. Zeitz’s objections to Mr. Gordon’s rhetoric. I’ll reiterate that I sympathize with Mr. Zeitz’s objections, but I will point out that readers interested in those objections can find them here, here, here, here, and many other places as well. I’ve always found that good evidence is the best response to a debating partner one finds occasionally disrespectful, and it’s worth observing that when I presented some and requested that Mr. Gordon do the same, he did so without complaint. Fred Smoler’s post this afternoon is a deft and serious treatment of the situation in Iraq, and, frankly, I’d be surprised if anyone can do better. Thus, I’ll join Joshua Zeitz in asking: “How about that political realignment question?”
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