The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird
By This has to be one of the more inept commentaries I’ve seen in some time, which — beyond explaining why it appeared in the Weekly Standard — also likely explains why Instahack has linked to it (twice, evidently) along with his Wisconsin mirror site. Indeed, one might concoct a bingo scorecard to keep track of the thoughtless assertions contained in the avaerage piece written by Bill Stuntz. This one has everything:
The picture is clear: More soldiers mean less violence, hence fewer casualties. The larger the manpower investment in the war, the smaller the war’s cost, to Iraqis and Americans alike. Iraq is not an unwinnable war: Rather, as the data just cited show, it is a war we have chosen not to win. And the difference between success and failure is not 300,000 more soldiers, as some would have it. One-tenth that number would make a large difference, and has done so in the past. One-sixth would likely prove decisive.
The “data cited” had to do with two periods in 2004-2005 when temporary increases in troop levels coincided with reductions in Iraqi civilian and US casualties. Without bothering to consider the difference between correlation and causality, Stuntz concludes that a successful counterinsurgency is within our collective reach, if only we “choose” to succeed by throwing good corpses after bad.
In warfare, waste and excess are productive: They send the message that victory is inevitable, that whatever resources are needed to obtain it will be given to the task. That is the essence of what military historian Russell Weigley called “the American way of war.” Overwhelm the enemy–instead of investing just enough, invest far too much. Make sure the other side knows that our capacity to give and take punishment immeasurably exceeds their capacity to absorb and inflict it.
Adding his voice to the racist cries for“more rubble, less trouble,” Stuntz also evidently supplies us with the most coherent defense yet seen for punishing seditious whistleblowers who urge more public oversight of this grotesque, trillion-dollar war. By trying to cut waste, they’re stabbing us in the back!
In a speech delivered a month after his reelection, Lincoln carefully surveyed the North’s resources and manpower and concluded that the nation’s wealth was “unexhausted and, as we believe, inexhaustible.” Southern soldiers began to desert in droves. Through the long, bloody summer and fall of 1864, the South had hung on only because of the belief that the North might tire of the conflict. But Lincoln did not tire. Instead, he doubled the bet — and won the war.
The “speech” to which Stuntz refers was Lincoln’s Fourth Annual Message to Congress — which was in any event not a speech at all but a written text that avoided direct reference to the Civil War until more than fifty paragraphs had passed. Unlike the Bush administration’s manifesto-driven public statements, Lincoln’s 1864 message was a remarkable and humble document that could actually proclaim substantive accomplishments, including the reorganization of governments in Arkansas and Louisiana as well as the initial successes of Sherman’s destructive march through the heart of the rebellion. (George Bush, by contrast, has the Emerald City and a government only Iran could love). More revealing, though, are the three paragraphs prior to the sentence quoted by Stuntz. There, Lincoln urged a lame duck Congress to recognize the “reliable indication of public purpose” represented in that fall’s elections, which gave the Republicans 70% of the seats in the House and 80% in the Senate. Stuntz would no doubt insist that the 1864 elections demonstrated what a successful “gamble” can accomplish; I would merely point out that when an administration fouls up a war as badly as they’ve done in Iraq — and loses control of Congress to boot — they, too, should take proper measure of the “public purpose” and admit they have a problem.