On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> Ferguson and Krauthammer used to their advantage the idea that the
> "surge" is working and that al Q is "on the run". The Iraq war is being
> won one "fragile" metric at a time, they said, and we're prevailing in
> the War on Terror (or Long War, or War Against Extremism or,).
> Considering the way US media outlets (and maybe Canadian too) have
> repeated this White House talking point -- demolished on the
> info-margins by non-bubble journos such as Nir Rosen, Patrick Cockburn
> and Pepe Escobar -- they were cruising down a well paved road.
BTW, just for the record, your (correct) analysis of why surge is a failure, and why thinking it is succeeding is nonsense because it's actually made things worse, is not only in the margins, but can also be seen in centers of the establishment, like this headlined article by Steven Simon in the last issue of Foreign Affairs:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87305/steven-simon/the-price-of-the-surge.html
Of course, as Doug been suggesting a lot since he began his book on the ruling class, perhaps this establishment of grown-ups is marginal too nowadays when it comes to real power.
And it's certainly marginal in terms of most people's media exposure (in re your discussion of whether one could really campaign using Kraut's outline).
But there's no excuse for Powers and Holbrooke not hearing it. This is what they consider their home arena.
Michael