But don’t those officers understand that the only real front is the home front, and the only serious battle the PR fight? Compared to the MSM and the Democrats, Al Qaeda poses only a trivial threat to our precious bodily fluids… ~Robert Farley

Farley is commenting on this report and the complaints of officers about the public comments by top commanders prior to the offensive.  While Gen. Odierno does his best to play down these complaints, they have some substance.  The story continues:

Still, he implied American commanders may have played a part by flagging the offensive in advance. “I think they were tipped off by us talking about the surge, the fact that we have a problem in Diyala Province,” he said. 

Not to dwell on the obvious too much, but “the fact we have a problem in Diyala Province” is more or less a direct result of the “surge” taking place in Baghdad.  Certainly those targeted by the “surge” in Baghdad and who have since moved into Diyala Province would have been aware, well before any public remarks were made, that there would eventually be a “surge” directed at them where they are…since they had been the targets of the “surge” in Baghdad.  This presents a basic, frequently predicted difficulty: if the targets of the “surge” are frequently leaving a place before each offensive, the securing of that place will be temporary at best and leads to other areas becoming new bases for insurgents.  This seems to be uncannily like the situation during the “hold, clear and build” months in 2006.  I also remember someone remarking years back on the clearing of Fallujah being like sweeping and spreading hot embers around so they will catch fire to many more places, which seems to be what is happening today.  Someone will still really have to explain to me how this “surge” represents anything new in terms of military tactics that differ significantly from 2004. 

I know the official line–now we’re really, really serious about training the Iraqi military and the Iraqis really have to make political progress.  Those remain the two critical pieces of the puzzle, and neither one of them is happening at anywhere near a satisfactory pace.  This sticks the military with a basically impossible task of chasing insurgents around the country with too few men in the hopes of conjuring some level of stability that will somehow facilitate a political settlement that none of the major factions seems terribly interested in creating under any circumstances.  It is therefore difficult for me to understand why it is boo-worthy when Clinton said that the Iraqis were failing to do what needed to be done on their end.  In some sense it is a cop-out for our political class as a way of avoiding their own responsibility, and it is certainly unfair, as I have said many times, to have expected Iraqis to have magically conjured up a functioning representative government with absolutely no relevant experience or political tradition on which they can rely.  That doesn’t make Iraqi failure to achieve certain levels of political cooperation and military effectiveness any less real.  It isn’t as if Iraqis have perversely desired failure, but they have been presented with a wrecked country, few resources and little relevant expertise and told by the people who helped destroy the country, “Here, you fix this–pronto!”