So What’s Going on in Iraq Now?

Via Kevin Drum:

SLOW BLEED….Remember “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down”? Apparently that’s no longer operative:

Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

So we’re going to defeat the insurgency without significant help from Iraqi troops?

I remember writing, before the surge began, that unfortunately it wasn’t going to work. I also remember noting that there is a big difference between Iraq and Vietnam: in Vietnam, our allies wouldn’t actually shoot American troops if they thought they could get away with it, which makes training our, um, allies in Iraq problematic at best. If there is a solution, and after driving the car onto the rocks its kind of doubtful, this administration is not capable of finding or executing it. Staying on is just delaying the inevitable.