Harman - Pro-Occupation

The Center for American Progress just released their interview with Jane Harman.

They put up the wrong lead. I think the headline should have been:

Senior House Democrat Supports Long-Term Iraqi Occupation

She says the conduct of the occupation is the problem, not the occupation itself. And if you look at what she wants the mission to be changed to

Change the combat mission to a training mission and a counter-insurgency mission

you see there's no recognition of the situation in the country and how unprepared we are to manage to bring stability to their "democratically elected government". A training and counter-insurgency mission would require tens of thousands of military troops in Iraq for many years to come.(A look over the Armed Services counterinsurgency manual makes that pretty obvious)

Harman ignores the situation in Iraq and holds out hope where none is warranted. She clings to the pipedream of leaving Iraq better than we found it even after her self-pronounced criteria to be met within a Friedman Unit show Iraq has only gone backwards.

The sad reality is that there's nothing that the United States can do to redeem the situation in Iraq that has been so incredibly fouled up by the Bush Administration. Harman could have bit the bullet, accepted the failure of this occupation and her role in facilitating it and then moved on to try to mitigate the disaster by getting us out.

Instead, she stubbornly continues to see our presence as part of the solution, not part of the problem, and throws a bunch of head-fakes to the anti-war folks to soften the impact of her pro-occupation positions.

I should add that theoretically there's an increased level of troops, specialized Arab speaking nation building forces, and financial commitment over the long-term (ie. at least several years) that could turn things around and make things better as Jane Harman wants to. But there aren't any more troops to add to the forces already there, and there certainly aren't the specialized forces needed to build up the civil society and get reconstruction going.

Not to mention that any effort commensurate to such a mission would require a sacrifice in lives, ability to confront real threats to our nation, and treasure that an overwhelming majority of Americans would agree to it knowing those costs.