Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

There are plenty of people out there who could advocate for the Surge’s effectivness and that in general, the American strategy is working.  So why does the News Hour, which is the best nightly news show, call on Fred Kagan to debate Nir Rosen on the Surge.  It’s not that Fred Kagan isn’t qualified to debate it out, it’s that he was the principal architect of the Surge itself.  There is no possible world in which Fred Kagan wouldn’t declare that the Surge is a success.  It’s also true that Nir Rosen isn’t exactly the least biased observer out there (he did advocate withdrawal as early as December of 2005) but he doesn’t have as intense a personal and professional interest in the outcome of the Surge.  Of course, I wouldn’t want them to get Kimberly Kagan to advocate for the Surge, but maybe Eli Lake?

Also, if you watch the video (or read the transcript) you’ll see that Kagan tries to claim that the US presence in Iraq isn’t an occupation – citing UN resolutions and international law.  This is an amazingly flatulent statement.  If you ask Iraqis whether they wouldn’t call some 160,000 foreign troops in their country, regularly engaging in military actions all over their country, killing Iraqis and dropping bombs an “occupation” because of some technicalities of international laws, you’d be laughed at.  The reason why occupations, and imperialistic foreign policy in general, rarely work is because the people being occupied nearly inevitably get pissed off and extremely violent.  Kagan, who unlike Rosen hasn’t been in Iraq on-and-off since the invasion, doesn’t really seem to get the distinction between homegrown violence and foreign, occupying violence and why people consider them to be different. He also fails to explain how after we heavily arm and support these “Concerned Citizens” of Iraq, who were mostly ex-Sunni Insurgents, why they won’t just turn on their enemy Shiites in the central government.  The reason they turned against Al Qaeda was two-fold, us giving them money and AQ threatening them and their territory.  So they’re still very provincial, and well, tribal.  So why do we expect them to not want to take on the Sunnis.  Kagan also doesn’t address what happens after the Surge, which is still the most important question for Kagan, McCain et. al to answer.