It’s very strange to attend an event like this for me: I feel very late to the game. One of my friends today said, “I did my protesting before the war,” and that’s completely understandable, and enviable. He’s got nothing to prove. Where was I back then? On my ass.

And, though I was basically prevented from participating during the past few years because of my profession, I do feel as though I haven’t done enough to end the war. I’m pretty sure I’m in a pretty large sample of the population in that regard.

Five years. Billions of dollars. Countless lives lost or affected, but what does the number of casualties even mean anymore? Thousands of American soldiers dead, and tens of thousands injured; perhaps hundreds of thousands Iraqis dead. When do the numbers start mattering? When does the will of the American people start to matter?

I don’t know. I hope it’s soon.

You can find a number of fitting rememberences around he Web today, and other resources. There’s Spencer Ackerman’s piece on the Iraq War as a recruitment tool for insurgents. Here’s Think Progress’s incredibly detailed timeline of the war , and the Center for American Progress reviewing the situation in Iraq.

So, back to the protest: I couldn’t help but be reminded of the brave souls in Silver City who stood on the corner at Gough Park every Tuesday, year after year. Simply amazing: their dedication to the cause, their foresight when so many thought war was a good option. I remember them setting up shop, the days in 2004 and 2005 when just two or three people were there. I remember the College Republicans mounting their counter protest, and then fading away as public opinion shifted.

They’re unsung heroes in our nation’s history, the people on the street corners in small towns and the nation’s capitol alike, who stood up and said “This is not the answer,” when the rest of the world was hypnotized by “Shock and Awe.”

It felt nice to stand next to some of these people tonight, and to record the moment with my camera.

It’s a poignant reminder of how crazy the current version of our policy — basically help equip anyone who’ll accept our help and kind of hope for the best — has become.

Writing about the WaPo reporter killed recently in Iraq.

Unfortunately, breaking up is hard to do, especially when you rely on something to the degree which the U.S. relies on Blackwater’s private security forces. I don’t know how all the figures add up, but Danger Room’s got the goods on how much we’re paying for Blackwater’s services to protect diplomats worldwide:

Blackwater	$339,573,391
DynCorp	47,145,172
Triple Canopy	15,550,133
[Total]	$402,268,696

That’s research from Danger Room guest R.J. Hillhouse, whose recent novel, Outsourced, is focused on the private security industry. According to Hillhouse, there are 978 Blackwater contractors employed by the Department of State in Iraq, accounting for more than two-thirds of such personnel:

The contract amount as provided by Blackwater indicates that it is highly unlikely that one of the other two contractors could fill the void if Blackwater were expelled from Iraq. No other US firms are positioned to provide such specialized services on such a large scale and only Blackwater has experience providing air support in theater to the Department of State.

And our lack of foresight and adequate planning rears its head once again.

If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to private military contractors and counterinsurgency, the U.S. has locked itself into a vicious cycle. It can’t win with them, but can’t go to war without them.

Today, contributor Kris Alexander looks forward to post-US presidential election Iraq (ie 2009). How’s this for a starting point:

First, there is another “surge” at work in the region — a surge in regional defense spending as a hedge against instability and the rise of Iran, both consequences of the war in Iraq.

The US recently gave Jordan $78 million in defense aid, and other countries are purchasing $63 billion in arms. So, if the war in Iraq is paving the way for a stable, democratic Middle East where things get a little better every day, why is everyone going on an arms buying binge? And why is the US the architect of the deal?
[emphasis mine]

It’s a lengthy post, including end-game thoughts for a post-withdrawl Iraq. What happens in Turkey, or other players in the region? Can we realistically expect to leave entirely? I’m not sure I agree with the entire premise, but this is an interesting thought:

So in the end, we’re right back where we started before Operation Iraqi Freedom — a large, semi-permanent military presence in the Middle East with the mission of “containing” Iraq. They’ll make for lucrative targets and insults regional sensibilities. We will still be occupiers, in the radicals’ eyes.

In the end, we can’t stay and we can’t go. To save our military we will have to cut back our commitment to Iraq, but to save the region, this commitment will still be robust, expensive, and vulnerable.

Did someboady say something about a Catch-22?

UPDATE: 12:06 p.m. — Singer answers six questions over at Harper’s magazine.

The crux of the matter, however, is that the Iraq war was not just about Iraq, but about a new approach to nuclear proliferation more generally. The old way had been based on binding international commitments that, while allowing the US and a select few other countries to possess nuclear weapons, did impose some real commitments on the nuclear weapons states.
[snip]
Iraq was targeted not merely on its own terms but in order that Bush might make an example out of Saddam and send a message to the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea and other states. Cutting a deal with Saddam wasn’t an option.

So, uh, how’d that work out?

In particular, the invasion force needed to be small enough, and the reconstruction plan fast and cheap enough, that the US could credibly threaten to do it again if other countries didn’t get the message.

Of course, the threat of a rapid American invasion is no longer a deterrent — we couldn’t pull it off if we had to:

The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply. We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies.

That’s Gen. George Casey, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying before Congress at a hearing he requested.

The Senate’s adoption of the Lieberman/Kyl amendment designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist group” isn’t merely embarrassing, it’s counterproductive. Designating the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group — which in contemporary American terms means they’re a target — makes it all the more important for Iran to keep us tied up and weakened in Iraq. The more we telegraph that we’d like to devote forces to regime change or strikes in Tehran, the stronger Iran’s incentive to keep Iraq an unstable morass trapping ever-greater numbers of American troops who can’t be easily diverted from a chaotic mission and are geographically vulnerable to Iranian counter-attack.

Like I said, Ezra makes a good point, but there’s more to it. Counterproductive describes the GOP agenda for most of the Bush term. For example: North Korea. Bush spent 5 years telling everybody that Clinton was an appeaser for dealing with the North Koreans. Nevermind that they actually halted their nuclear program. Clinton did it = it was bad. So, Bush talked hard, and blustered about, refused to negotiate with one of the Axis of Evil, and North Korea ended up with a handful of nukes.

Then, suddenly this February, diplomacy was pursued, and talks are underway this week to negotiate the transfer of 950,000 tonnes of heavy fuel, after the DPRK halts its nuclear program. In other words, a return to the status quo. Oh, and North Korea now has nuclear weapons. There’s that, I guess.

What about Jose Padilla? Arrested in 2002, he was then held for years while the Bush Administration argued he had no rights to a lawyer or to fight his imprisonment before a trial of his peers. Again, let’s forget the Constitution and Bill of Rights thingies, they don’t apply. It’s not like Padilla was a citizen or anything. According to Bush, he was a threat to national security, and couldn’t be allowed to communicate with an attorney.

Then, suddenly, when the Supreme Court was just about to rule on whether or not Bush could hold Padilla indefinitely, the Administration caved and charged Padilla.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

Given the stabilization of Republican support for the war, there’s not a lot Democrats can do to force the president to end the war during his term. Even if you assume heroic budgetary battles, there’s just not enough time left. Even the most aggressive timetables for withdrawal would take upwards of a year to execute. And Bush is down to 18 months.

Add to that the fact that Cole believes that all hell really will break loose once US troops leave — a not improbable assumption. And you come up with the conclusion that a Democratic president comes into office in early 2009 just in time to oversee Iraq’s descent into anarchy.

Along the same lines, Garance Franke-Ruta writes about Bush’s planned announcement to bring 30,000 troops home next summer:

Should things go according to plan, by next summer, Bush will be in a position to claim credit for a drawdown. Will Americans breathe sighs of relief and thankfulness for this, even though they will be right back where they were in early 2007? The tale of the rabbi suggests the answer will be yes.

Kevin Drum is all over this one, however:

Everyone on the planet knows perfectly well that we’re not withdrawing these troops next year because we’ve achieved some grand success on the ground in Iraq. We haven’t, and Bush knows it. We’re withdrawing them because the Army has no operational choice.

The big question, of course, is whether the American people will buy it. Do you?

The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush’s plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country — perhaps more than 100,000 troops — when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009.

Via Kevin Drum.