Brooks is fond of citing academic literature to give his punditry a faux intellectual veneer. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to read these works very carefully.

Unfortunately, Brooks engages in some very selective citation...

All of this should sound very familiar to people who read Walt's work.

Talk about a lack of self-awareness. Wow.

I have never seen so much said about the war. I hate wars but it seems like just yesterday they were chanting Country First. I don't understand, to me it seems like George Bush
avoided the real war because he knew Afghanistan would be a very difficult war with such tribal people who believe in protecting the Taliban. He left Afghanistan and went to Iraq because he had a gut feeling they had safe havens and weapons of mass destruction. This crazy attempt just to go to war and not look for Osama, cost us our gas prices which triggered the recession. High gas cuts in all delivery services Fedex,UPS, USPS, Delta etc. OPEC just assummed we would be at a supply and demand and then 4 dollar gas came about. Nobody buying cars, nobody could refinance homes (the housing market bubble burst) more job loss. If they would have stayed in Afghanistan this would have not happen. For all I care about rebuilding after we destroy is crazy and Iraq got money the could pay for it themselves. They killed Hussan and his sons because they were bad people, I thought vengance was God's not America. All those people who was singing War, War now saying stop because of a new Commander and Chief. Iraq civil war was worse because of the Sunnies fighting for power. I want us to leave because of the death toll and let Osama come out of hiding and then go get him. We can not find and destroy all the safe havens there. I just wanted to say Americans are so wishy washy with their ideas. If it is Bush we are doing the right thing (War on Terror) but since it is Barry we need to stop.

I wonder if fear of reputation loss from abandoning an ally (in this case, Pakistan) is as large a motive for this administration as it was for Nixon and Kissinger in Vietnam.

Lol I wonder if "David in DC" is David Brooks. Someone do a writing analysis to see if Brooks writes in short snappy sentences!

"I MADE THE MISTAKE of watching French news the night of Colin Powell's presentation before the Security Council. . . . Then they brought on a single "expert" to analyze Powell's presentation. This fellow, who looked to be about 25 and quite pleased with himself, was completely dismissive. The Powell presentation was a mere TV show, he sniffed. It's impossible to trust any of the intelligence data Powell presented because the CIA is notorious for lying and manipulation. The presenter showed a photograph of a weapons plant, and then the same site after it had been sanitized and the soil scraped. The expert was unimpressed: The Americans could simply have lied about the dates when the pictures were taken. Maybe the clean site is actually the earlier picture, he said."

Somewhat similar? Of course I only have three sentences to compare it with, but it does seem interesting a David in DC would be the only disparaging comment...

The Philadelphia Inquirer
September 27, 2009

The Point: What Bush Got Right Offers Clues For Obama

By Mark Bowden
Inquirer Currents Columnist

Three years ago, the war in Iraq seemed lost.

There was little disagreement that the Bush administration, having toppled Saddam Hussein with relative ease, had badly bungled the aftermath. Tank units led by Gen. Tommy Franks had led U.S. forces triumphantly into Baghdad. There had been a ceremonial toppling of Hussein's statue, and the presidential "Mission Accomplished" news conference . . . and then the real war started.

It was a mistake seemingly made in every war in human history; commanders enter superbly prepared to fight the last war, not the one they are in. It turned out that the war in Iraq was not about seizing territory but battling a stubborn, murderous, and determined insurgency embedded in the Iraqi population.

President Bush made a courageous decision in the summer of 2006 to reverse direction, but not the reversal sought by Congress (including then-Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden), the American public, the overwhelming majority of the press (including this newspaper), and even most of his own military advisers. Instead of cutting our losses and pulling out of Iraq, as we did in Vietnam, Bush doubled down. He invested more troops and, more important, embraced an entirely new strategy.

And Bush was right. What had happened beneath all of the politics was a small revolution in war-fighting philosophy, championed and implemented by an unlikely military leader, Gen. David Petraeus, a soldier/intellectual molded as much by the think tank as the battlefield. He calls the movement his "Counterinsurgency Nation," and it has rewritten the way America fights. It is not a completely new idea - there are few of those in the study of war - but its basic principles came into clearer and clearer focus as a new generation of military officers fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its guiding principle is simple: The prize in these countries is not territory, but people.

Now President Obama must decide whether to let this new generation of battle-tested soldiers apply what it has learned to Afghanistan. Those who argue that the methods employed in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan are right and wrong. They are right that the two conflicts are not identical. What worked in Iraq will not apply in all cases in Afghanistan. But they are wrong to assume the lessons of Iraq have no application in Afghanistan. The counterinsurgency consensus grew out of experience in both wars. America's new military leaders have been managing both conflicts simultaneously for most of this decade, and the hard-won lessons they have learned derive from both.

I am not a military expert, but I suspect that most wars that last for more than a few weeks follow a roughly similar trajectory. Established generals misjudge the war, and once the battle is joined, a generation of younger leaders discovers the truth, adapts by hard necessity, making life-and-death decisions on the battlefield, and learns, often by trial and error, how to define and fight the new war on its own terms. If the national leadership is smart enough to embrace this knowledge and experience, as Bush was, the tide turns.

There are a number of excellent studies that document this turnabout, notably Thomas Ricks' The Gamble, Linda Robinson's Tell Me How This Ends, and Kimberly Kagan's The Surge. The Iraq war is not over, of course. It remains to be seen if Iraqis can forge a nation from its various contending factions, but there is no denying the extraordinary reversal engineered by Bush, Petraeus, and the remarkable soldiers who have risked and all too often sacrificed life and limb for the last six years. They accomplished it amid a persistent chorus of critics and doomsayers - doomed was actually the word then-Sen. Biden used to describe Petraeus' chances in April 2006.

Counterinsurgency doctrine is as warm and fuzzy as war can get. It embraces distinctly liberal, humanistic values like protecting civilians, cultural sensitivity, and rigid adherence to ethical standards and the law. It is geared toward partnership, not dominance, and always seeks to minimize violence. In Iraq it rapidly (in months) isolated the murderous extremists who were trying to provoke civil war. The new effort set up a sharp contrast between their methods and goals and America's. As one Marine officer, Col. Julian Dale Alford, said at a conference in Washington last week: "We gave the people of Iraq a better choice."

But counterinsurgency is not like the "Get out of jail free" card in Monopoly. It demands risk. It means getting soldiers out of the relative safety of large, well-defended bases and impregnable vehicles, and ordering them to live with the people they are tasked to defend. It makes them more vulnerable - the initial impact of the surge in Iraq caused a sharp increase in U.S. casualties - in order to build long-term security. It is a dreadful bargain, courting greater risk in order to lower the violence. It is also counterintuitive. But it works.

Counterinsurgency wars are also long wars. They require a commitment of troops, time, and money over not just months, but years, because success depends on convincing the Afghan or Iraqi people that America is serious about protecting them and will not abandon them. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal's leaked assessment of Afghanistan makes clear, pursuing the war against the resurgent Taliban will require more of everything.

The new strategy also pointedly rejects the approach reportedly championed by Biden, which is to forgo efforts to protect and win the population and concentrate instead on finding and killing extremists, using drones and special forces. Ironically, this was the very approach tried and abandoned by Bush in Iraq. It turns out that an insurgency can be killed only by poisoning the sea in which it swims. You need the people.

Obama's war-fighting promise was to scale down Iraq and ramp up Afghanistan, which he argued was the necessary war. He has the strategy and the men to do just that, thanks in large part to the man who is least likely to be given credit, George W. Bush.

Mark Bowden is a journalist and author, most recently of "The Best Game Ever." E-mail him

at mbowden@phillynews.com.

Philadelphia Newspapers' Reorganization Copyright 2009

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20090927_The_Point__What_Bush_got_right_offers_clues_for_Obama.html

I would think the relevant statistic would actually be Petraeus's track record in successfully quelling counter-insurgencies; that research is much less difficult to do:

It's 1 for 1.

Shouldn't we at least give him a chance?

I mean, leftists such as yourself have spent the past 4+ years telling us that this was the 'good war' and that Bush took his eye off the ball and it was really important to win it, after the Kerry campaign gave you this talking point. So, how 'bout it?

I'm a liberal Democrat, a Realist, a native Pakistani, and a proud American citizen.

Obviously there are strong feelings about pulling out of Afghanistan on the 'Left,' and I usually agree with Walt's assesments - but I HAVE to disagree with this conclusion.

On this issue I must side with the Ahmad Rashids of the World.

I detest the gross incompetence and devilish belligerence of the Bush administration, but what we must do now, for our long term security, requires troops and a firm committment to the Afghan people.

My read of the current situation is this, and please any of you feel free to correct it:

- the most optimistic assumption is to rebuild SOME of the infrastructure of the country in order to kick-start a viable economy that can replace cash crops like opium and provide incentives to abandon internal warfare.

- building requires security; security requires more troops; and the American people have no appetite for deploying additional troops.

- NGOs have been more successful and cost effective in rebuilding schools and wells than have government contractors.

- Large scale industrial projects like the Afghan National Highway have been funded by western governments, but their contractors, particularly American ones, have sat on the money and found excuses not to actually work on the projects.

- lack of security, tangible rebuilding success, and rampant corruption within Karzai's government and his non-Pashtun warlord backers have lead to popular dis-content against the Government and its Foreign supporters.

- this has created an environment ripe for the Taliban to capitalize on, and they are resurgent in the majority of the country.

What we're faced with now is war and donor fatigue. All in a nation that occupies terribly rigid terrain, and is home to the world's fiercest martial races.

Those who want to keep troops there and possibly add more troops still want to be opptimistic about the prospects of stabilizing the economy.

Others think we're royally screwed and need to get out of this mess while we can and take our chances in believing that no Afghan is dumb enough ever to host Bin Laden or any other terrorist network with international reach - EVER again.

In any case, the Al Qaeda leadership has most likely moved on to East Africa anyway, so looking for them is just a farce.

Ergo, we have the current debate.

Well of course, if the Soviets, Brits and Alexander couldn't do it, then the US should hardly bother trying. Let's think of a whole laundry list of issues where others have tried and failed and not bother to give it a try.

Yes, let's just leave Afghanistan to its own fate and allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to do whatever they want. Let's not shed another drop of US blood there and stick our head back in the sand and wait for another attack. That is some serious thinking.

David from DC tried to dismiss Dr. Walt's research here by using a statement made by Beeny Morris that seems to take issue with Dr. Walt's use of Morris' work.

Morris is not relied on "heavily" by Dr. Walt. He is referenced 14 times in the Index, twice in the footnotes and once he is just named as an Israeli historian. For comparison, the NYT is referenced 30, Netanyahu 25 and Krauthammer 18 times.

Morris' work is used only during discussions of the 1947 and 1967 wars. All quotes from the book follow:
pg. 81: Morris refers to this description of the balance of power between the Arabs and Israel as "one of the most tenacious myths relating to 1948".
pg. 82: "It was superior Jewish firepoer, manpower, organization and command and control that determined the outcome of the battle."
pg. 83: "The remarkable turnaround was due to the fact that the IDF's machines . . . were better trained than their Arab counterparts."
pg. 84: The longest quote in the book, a third of a page, discussing the general land grab after 1948, by Israel, Transjordan, Syria, Egypt.
pg. 85: Two-liner re Sadat and Hafez Assad trying to regain territory lost in 1967.
pg. 95: On the subject of transfer, Morris notes that "it was common practice in Zionist bodies to order stenographers to 'take a break' and thus to exclude from the record discussions on such matters.'"
pg. 96: Dr. Walt states that Morris is certainly correct when he notes that "the vision of Greater Israel as Zionism's ultimate objective did not end with the 1948 war."
pg. 99: Morris estimates that "Israeli security forces. . . killed somewhere between 2,700 and 5,000 Arab infiltrators. . . this freefire policy led to a series of atrocities against the infiltrators."
pg. 100: "Israel likes to believe and tell the world they are running an enlightened occupation . . ."
pg. 102: Morris speculates "that the Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews."

There are 463 pages in the paperback edition, and above is the entire use of "heavily referenced" Morris. Morris says nothing that is not known from other sources. That he may have taken umbrage at Dr. Walt's conclusions does not reflect on the facts that Dr. Walt quoted, via Morris.

It does appear that David from DC belongs to the Norman Dershowitz school of scholarly analysis, or maybe the Joan Peters school?

I don't own the book and Walt's research in book form is not online. However, his paper is. The figures I quoted were accurate - ~25 mentions in 88 pages. Find the pdf and do a search yourself. (Seventeen references in the book seems substantive to me too.)

More importantly, and the fact that all of Walt's defenders are ignoring, is that Morris' indictment of Walt's work is based on the fact that Walt is misrepresenting Morris' scholarship. Just as Walt accuses Brooks,

Brooks is fond of citing academic literature to give his punditry a faux intellectual veneer. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to read these works very carefully.,

so is Walt guilty.

Anyone can read Morris' critique and see that he refutes some of the points (from Kassandra's post above) that Walt is trying to make by cherry picking lines from Morris' work.

The defense Morris says nothing that is not known from other sources is cogent, far better than dismissing all criticism as coming from the Lobby or quibbling about the subjective term heavily, but it still falls short.

First of all, and back to my original point, Walt is still shown to be a hypocrite by doing what he accuses Brooks of.

Second of all, what Morris shows is that Walt is not presenting the entire story. He is cherry picking sources to support his pre-determined conclusions. He is doing it with Morris within his own work, taking bits here, leaving out pieces there, and is also doing it in the larger picture. So the fact that he cherry picks a similar citation, which may or may not be derivative from the first, doesn't disprove the point. When someone doesn't know better it is a lot harder to catch these lies of omission, and trying to sway public opinion, not present a balanced and intelectually honest analysis, is obviously the point of W&M's extended op-ed in book form.

It is customary to discuss the book, not the review. And the book lists only the references cited above in 463 pages.

Prof. Walt used Morris as a reference only insofar as the 1947 and 1967 wars were concerned. Prof. Walt's thesis in the book is that both wars are highly misrepresented in the Lobby's propaganda, i.e. poor little Isreal fighting all them bad Arabs by itself. Do you think it untrue when Morris says that "the remarkable turnaround came about because the Israeli war machine was simply better trained and equipped?" Is that a lie, and please show just how Prof. Walt misrepresented that fact? Please give us concrete examles of Prof. Walt misrepresenting Morris' work. Just how does Morris show that Prof. Walt is not presenting the entire story? And you know all this after reading (maybe) an 88-page review?

Morris is rather an interesting case of paranoia himself. He was known as a radical Israeli historian who forced Israel to confront its role in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, to quote the Guardian. He refused military service in the West Bank. Later he was jailed.

Since his jail time he has changed his tune. In a 2002 article in the Guardian he referred to the fact that it is rumored he has had a brain transplant, and went on to savage the Palestinians.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/feb/21/israel2

In 2008 in a NYT piece entitled Using Bombs to Stave Off War
he was urging the Samson Option.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html?pagewanted=2%_r=1

Looking at Morris' history it is no wonder that he would now find fault with Prof. Walt's work. He reminds me of the old Bolsheviks asking the Party's forgiveness for their previous ideological errors.

To paraphrase, one always knows better when the book under discussion has been read and it is easy to catch lies of commission based on an ideological agenda. It's hard to look smart when you don't know what you're talking about.

It is customary to discuss the book, not the review...And you know all this after reading (maybe) an 88-page review?

This "88 page review" (which is actually 83 pages, I mistyped that) to which you refer is the paper written by Walt and Mearsheimer, which is the basis of the book, not a review of the book.

I already referenced Morris' critique and I will direct you to it again - it is entitled "And now for some facts" and should be easy to find. (Why ask me what it says when you can go read it yourself? Does anyone really want to see the thing cut and pasted here?)

Ad homenim attacks are generally the refuge of those who know they are losing the argument, and you are no exception with your attacks on Morris and me. You will need to address the facts to make your case rather than launch personal attacks. It becomes even more painfully obvious when you are reduced to making charges that you can't possibly know--you can't know whether or not I read the book (I did, although my critique here was limited to the paper because I have immediate access to it**), and when the basis for making them--you confused a clear reference to W&M's Harvard paper with a book review, is false.

[**If the book differs in substance rather than length, someone needs to point it out to me. It wasn't obvious to me when I read it and if Walt listed the things he thought he had wrong in his paper that he subsequently changed in the book, I have never seen it.]

I asked for some concrete examples, you give me nothing but pilpullistic reasoning and empty words. You answered none of my questions. It's hard to look smart if you don't know what you're talking about.

Isn't this analysis beside the point?

A foreign state is NOT fighting a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan or Iraq.

There is NOT a politically consolidated government in either place to fight such a counter-insurgency.

And what exactly is a "counter-insurgency" in an area where you do not have a nation-state or politically consolidated government?