Big But Sighting

aka Re: first Murtha...

I share your enthusiasm for the trend,

BUT...

Immediately prior to denigrating the achievement of the troops over the past few months, Webb offers the requisite preface to any such attack..."I don’t want to take anything away from the performance of the United States military" - which seems to be the magic phrase for members of one particular political party that apparently protects them from any potential backlash from doing it anyhow. You can see the BIG BUT coming like a slow-motion train wreck, because these days such a claim is like a piercing siren with twelve flashing lights warning that the speaker is going to do exactly that.

Of course, most politicians are a bit too astute to offer the actual word

"but"

I don’t want to take anything away from the performance of the United States military tactically when they’ve been put into a situation.

But

there are a lot of other pieces to this, and al-Anbar is a classic example.

"Security is good now because the coalition, Iraqi Army, and Iraqi police all work together," said an Iraqi fruit stand owner. "One hand does not clap."

Numerous factors contributed to our military success here, the surge and the awakening movement are two of the most significant. Neither would have succeeded without the other, and yes, the awakening movement came first*. I'm not sure exactly why acknowledging that would be seen as slighting the accomplishment of the Americans here - but Webb seems to feel very strongly that it does.

Feh - let's cut out the bull shit. That's the very point he's trying to make. Short version: Iraq is less violent now than last summer, but this isn't due to efforts of US troops. US troops were given a job that was too tough for them by our political opponents who also failed to give them training and equipment. We don't want to deny credit to the troops for that drop in violence (in fact deep down we actually know we're being complete assholes) but we must or else the foundation of our position erodes to nothing.

And oh, by the way, bring the troops home.

*You can spare yourself from sounding ignorant on this particular topic if you read this and this (scroll to "Close Air Support..." entry) before making any comments on the subject.