"What's The Rush, Major Leaker?"

"Haven't you heard that you are now permitted by your Little Brother to surge ever onwards until the year 1480/2057? 'Tis plenty of time that you have, sir."

But seriously, it appears that a certain disgruntlement has set in at the Green Zone Officers Club. Set in again, for the higher-salaried violence pros out in the occupied boondocks of Planet Crawford were leaking to this same tune six or eight months ago. They may have thought for a moment that their concerns were being addressed with the appointment of Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and the portentous unveiling of the Surge of '07™. Had the GZOC examined the panacea in question more closely, they might have expected less and avoided undue disappointment. On the other hand, the rest of the conventional wisdom crowd made essentially the same mistake, regardless of whether they thought Master Freddy's surgin' the greatest thing since sliced bread or only another stumblebumism from the same old Party of stumblebums.

Careful scrutiny would have revealed that none of the GOP geniuses involved in plannin' this ever memorable production ever made clear exactly whom or what they proposed to surge against. Considering their track record, one naturally supposes they had no clear and distinct idea themselves. Yet careless scrutinizers of every persuasion, hawks and doves and dodos and ostriches, have some excuse for assuming that whatever else the Surge of '07™ might do or attempt, it would at least clobber the Rev. Señorito Muqtadá al-Sadr. It's hard to avoid noticing that the lad remains unclobbered. Even at the Green Zone Officers Club, notice has begun to be taken, and therefore disgruntlement seeps in. The brassier violence pros really did want that particular coonskin nailed up on the wall over their fireplace. Like almost everybody else, they'd be much worse off at this point if they had got what they wanted. That point is more or less irrelevant, though, because GZOC cogitation procedes in a near total vacuum of information about native politics. Last fall, and now again, they got as far as bein' mad at poor M. al-Málikí because he doesn't want to give them M. al-Sadr's head, but of how the situation looks from Núrí Kamál Jawád's side, they know little and care less. The Chairman of the Council of Quasiministers can easily be pronounced "corrupt" or "sectarian" and that disposes of that, does it not?

At the level of colonels and generals and Majors Leaker, I think violence professionals ought to know and care about the indigs they conquer and occupy for Boy and Party more than they do, but perhaps that is an arbitrary and unreasonable demand? These folks are, of course, specialists, and the off-beat way I refer to them emphasizes that they are. Were they to take to studyin' their neo-Iraqi subjects' politics, would they not at once be reduced to the level of mere clumsy amateurs?

Probably we should disregard the fact that they have all learned by now to say Party line stuff like "Of course I realize that there can be no exclusively military solution . . . ." That's doubly disregardable: not only is it very doubtful that the GZOC gentry mean it seriously, even if they did, it would not follow that supplyin' the nonmilitary ingredients for GOP Success and Victory is their responsibility. Neocomrade R. Crocker or somebody is supposed to handle that end of occupation policy, no?

But then we come to Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton, who can't be brushed aside so easily, especially not by his subordinates. The plain thrust of his neo-MacNamaran dogmas about counterinsurgency is that it is indeed their duty at the GZOC to worry about indig politics. Such worry is the professional duty of every armed invader and occupier down to 2LT at least, and perhaps of the other ranks as well. In the absence of such worry, conscientiously pursued at a high level of quality, Petraean counterinsurgency would (I presume) be doomed. (The extracts I read even suggested that Dr. P. might not much mind cuttin' the Crockers out of the loop, but he did not actually say that, of course, and perhaps I mistook his drift.)

As things now stand, after fifty months of Party stumblebumism, Petraean counterinsurgency may well be doomed in any case, as far as Peaceful Freedumbia is concerned, but the GZOC colonels and generals and Majors Leaker probably don't think so, and if they did, they'd have no business talkin' about their thoughts out loud. They would certainly have no business deployin' a general strategic pessimism to excuse themselves from the intellectual rigors of Petraean counterinsurgency.

From the outside there is no way to judge how well the Ivy League braniac gets along with rank-and-file colonels and generals, whether or not Dr. P. thinks the GZOC is full of mentally lazy slackers, while the accused think Dr. P. a pretentious and ambitious showboat and nuisance. That might well be the case, but if it is, the New York Times probably won't be reporting about it any time soon. Here is another detail of the Kiddie Krusade that we'll probably be sure about only when more of the perps have published their memoirs. Maybe even then we won't know for sure, because a circular firin'-squad formation of the various memoirists is not unlikely.

One may speak for oneself, though: if I was Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton, this article would not please me. Those subordinates who allowed their identities to be disclosed were circumspect enough, but even they do not sound exactly enthusiastic about Master Freddy Kagan's Surge of '07™, or to claim that Success and Victory are now inevitable, given the bright new Leader as well as the brave new Strategy. (To be fair, perhaps the real Dr. P. called in Odierno and Brooks and ordered them to talk as quoted, the object being to help customers of the New York Times Company appreciate why the Surge of '07™ may require another fifty years or so to achieve all its objectives -- objectives which of course the real violence pros were too professional to expect to achieve instantly. But on the whole I'd guess that is not what happened.)

Major Leaker proper -- "several senior officers" &c. &c. -- is very displeasing indeed, and especially because he handed over a copy of that "one-page assessment" "completed in late May." It is not utterly inconceivable that Boy and Party might think an autoleakage of that sort advantageous, but if so, the event should happen at Crawford rather than New Baghdad, and perhaps the event should star Master Stephen Hadley, as in the case of last fall's "trip report." This morning's sort of thing won't do at all. The present can only be a hostile leak. Fort mauvais!, as Louis XIV used to say.

Being a towerin' neo-MacNamaran intellect, I -- that is to say, my notion of Dr. P. -- naturally regard it as more important to reflect on the sources of Maj. Leaker's bad attitude than to identify him and get rid of him. The latter is of some importance too, though, since it makes whizbang counterinsurgency more difficult than necessary to have to conduct it in a fishbowl. Indeed, if I can't even keep my own secrets safe, how shall I keep the native neosubjects entrusted to my care safe?

Nevertheless, it is a more serious matter that Leaker should think the counterinsurgent task hopeless, and most serious of all that Leaker should encourage the New York Times in its own already existing belief to that effect. Leaker doesn't actually say that he thinks the task hopeless, though. When he handed that damn paper over to the enemy, did he say something like "From these numbers you will see why we must have substantial reinforcements in order to reach our goals," something of that sort that the NYTC peaceniks would be bound to find unfit to print? If so, Leaker was very naïve about the MSM, and in any case he's guilty of a security violation and of forswearing himself, which ill becomes an officer and a gentleperson, yet possibly he's not quite such a completely treacherous ratfink as he looks to be at first.

Meanwhile, how to make lemonade from this regrettable lemon? That's mostly for the chickenhawks down at the ranch to decide, but they might ask my advice about how to handle it. Can I think of something even better than "From these numbers you will see why we must have substantial reinforcements in order to reach our goals"? How about . . . ?

At this point I shall desist, because imagining the attitudes of a Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton is within the scope of my imagination or anybody's, whereas his detailed ingenuities of Mil. Sci. and neo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency obviously are not.

Speaking again from the outside, I think he personally is smarter than to share the "Clobber Muqtadá" tomfoolery, although there are also possible counterindications. If he really lived up to the advance billing, though, Dr. P. would not have countenanced the mural madness, knowin' in advance that the vast majority of indigs would think at once of East Palestine rather than of M. Maginot or ancient China or Hadrian or Offa's dike. There was also that nonsense from his Number Two Braniac about the Arabs lacking any word equivalent to "reconciliation," the flub I was happy to see Dr. Cobban pick up on. If that reflects the actual level of appreciation of the native neo-subject viewpoint -- and after fifteen hundred days of Party stumblebumism, too! -- the best thing would be for the GOP geniuses to abandon Peaceful Freedumbia at once and then spend five or ten years gettin' up to speed about the next sovereign state that they propose to invasionize and regimechange -- before they actually march in and take the joint over.

That last brings within sight of Neocomrade B. West's interesting suggestion that Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton will have achieved sufficient Success and Victory if he manages to come up with a wonder drug that is bound to work wonders next time, even though neo-Iraq is too far gone to save. Rear-Col. West seems to have changed his own mind subsequently and decided that the Kaganiyya's Surge of '07™ may pull it off after all, but his older idea is more interesting. One trouble with it, though, is that such Success and Victory as that would be far more satisfactory viewed from West Point than from Rancho Crawford.

The GOP geniuses and Party base and vile seem to have lost sight of the forest for the trees. They are no longer concerned about vindicating the general proposition that lawless unilateral aggressions can work, only about savin' face and coverin' ass as regards the one immediate quagmire. The latest trial balloon about a South Korea Paradigm suggests that some of the perps, at least, have abandoned their minds to legacy-seekin' altogether. If Uncle Sam still has forces and fortresses in Peaceful Freedumbia in the year 1480/2057, why then surely nobody sane can say that the Titan of Crawford TX was ignominiously pushed out of the place!