It’s too early to claim victory just yet; the operation is just two weeks old. ~Patrick Ruffini

The dreary thing about Ruffini’s article is not its predictability.  There is no surprise that a Townhall columnist and one of Hewitt’s co-bloggers is a booster for the surge.  The dreary thing about it is not its insipid boasting about a decline in violence.  This is also unsurprising.  Still, it speaks volumes about how horrible things were just weeks ago that it is now a pro-war talking point that thousands are no longer being murdered with impunity every month.  Only hundreds are dying horrible deaths, which means things are basically under control!  Ruffini is here to bring the good news: conditions have gone from insanely nightmarish to merely horrific. 

Even with a 70% drop in murders, you still have stunning numbers of murders when the monthly total is north of 3,000.  It is progress of a kind, but it seems to me extremely odd that surge supporters are so quick to start claiming successes based on the most preliminary results, especially when the lull in violence might simply be the lull before another storm. 

Ruffini’s view here is the same kind of view that inspired such contempt for opponents of the war in May 2003 after the ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment.  Because huge problems had not yet arisen by then, we were assured that they were likely not going to arise–the supporters of the war had been “vindicated.”  Of course, when things began to go very badly the premature declarations of success and easy triumph looked unusually stupid.  At the very least, you would think supporters of the surge would keep their cards close to the vest on this one after having had so many setbacks and disappointments.  The more the boosters build up early progress, the more untenable their position will be when that early progress disappears. 

How can I be so pessimistic?  Well, first, I am a pessimist.  But it’s easy to be pessimistic here–just look at the overall trend of the security situation in Iraq, which has consistently tended to become worse.  Until that overall pattern is broken for a lengthy period of time, brief lulls are not only misleading but are actually insignificant. 

No, the dreary thing about this article (besides excessive use of metaphors about holes and mallets) is that Ruffini works on the assumption that the surge is somehow fundamentally different from previous attempts to “clear, hold and build.”  Right now the clearing is apparently going as well as can be expected (considering the new plan is a half-measure with insufficient means to realise the outsized goals of its supporters), but the unavoidable flaw with the plan is that it entrusts the “holding” to an Iraqi army and Iraqi government that are not really reliable.  Placing great hopes in such a plan is bound to lead to disappointment and a bitter backlash against the administration.  Those who support the war and want to continue it until some nebulous “victory” are doing their cause and Mr. Bush an enormous disservice by continuing to cheer on this particular plan, when the plan will most likely not bring us any closer to that “victory” or permanently reduce the violence or, more importantly, the militias’ ability to engage in violence.  At present militia non-activity is taken as proof of success, when what matters is that the plan break these militias and strip them of their ability to wield political power on the street through the gun and the power drill.  It seems improbable that this one plan in a few months will achieve what four years of other efforts have not. 

If I were a war supporter advising the administration, the GOP and their talking head supporters, I would tell them to stop talking up the results of the surge.  The surge will achieve success only by radically lowering the bar for what constitutes success.  This would, of course, be seen as more of the same cynical manipulation of the public at which this administration excels, but it would have the effect of preventing a massive hemorrhage of support for the war in the event that the surge does not succeed.  For those who believe the Iraq war possessed fundamental importance for our national security, investing the surge with so much importance is a weird kind of self-sabotage.  This is either some kind of face-saving, “well, we tried really hard, but now we have to leave” approach or it demonstrates just how far out some war supporters are that they think Victory really hinges on this one plan.

Ruffini’s bio says that he is “an online strategist dedicated to helping Republicans and conservatives achieve dominance in a networked era.”  If his assessment of current military strategy is any reflection on his ability to think strategically about “achieving dominance” online for the GOP and conservatives, I don’t think the Kossacks will have to stay up nights worrying about the tough competition.