Smearkrieg No. 4--Rush Smear Needed!

The American right has such a reputation for immorality that some knee-jerk reactions are predictable. The upcoming smear campaign against the seven soldiers who authored today's New York Times op-ed on the surge is one of them.

The op-ed, "The War as We Saw It," was written by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray, and Jeremy A. Murphy of the 82nd Airborne Division and is a devastating account of the war from the perspective of soldiers fighting it. In fact, one of the men was seriously wounded while the piece was being written. It took a lot of guts for the soldiers to write in defiance of the White House position and I'm sure that the military will find a way to punish them.

But military consequences are the least of their problems. Ultimately, the authors will have to face the wrath of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and the horde of right-wing talk show hosts and bloggers. Josh Marshall of TPM and John Cole of Balloon Juice both argue that the right-wing media will attempt to ignore the soldier op-ed, but that seems naive. Even more than the 24 hour cable networks, the right-wing media apparatus needs controversial material to chew over in order to hold listeners and keep advertising rates up. Because the soldier op-ed is ripe for potential controversy, the right-wing media will be drawn to it like moths to the flame with the ironical outcome that the conservative media will be giving wider circulation and more prominence to a view they might prefer to censor.

There are times when capitalism bites the right-wing in the butt.

If the right-wing media wants to turn the soldier op-ed to their advantage, they're going to have to smear the soldiers. That's because the soldiers rip the case for war optimism to shreds. Optimism, the soldiers claim, is a luxury of Americans coming in for short visits.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Iraqis are pessimistic because the security situation is so bad that they are in a Hobbesian nightmare where they can't count on basic services, can't invest in new enterprises, can't plan beyond the simplest survival needs, and can't protect themselves and their families.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act . . . When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

For the authors of "The War as We Saw It," the "battle-space" in Iraq is still too crowded and complex for Americans to credibly claim victory despite the enhanced efforts associated with the surge.

Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

If the various forces in Iraq don't "fit neatly into boxes," the American mission in Iraq does fit into a box of its own making. The American military cannot supply security for ordinary Iraqis because it cannot control "Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes." The American military also can't control the Iraqi Army and police and it can't control the collapsing al-Maliki government either. As a result, the various segments of the Iraqi population rely more on local militias and corrupt politicians to provide protection and get things done which makes these forces even stronger than they would have been.

Far from viewing the U. S. as gaining ground through the surge, "The War as We Saw It" paints the Iraqi population as being on the verge of throwing the Americans out.

In this context, the right-wing isn't going to be able to adequately refute the soldiers' op-ed by citing the work of other soldiers, war-romantic Michael Yon, or Gen. Petraeus. As a result, the right pretty much has to smear the authors and the only way to do that is to perform opposition research on them the same way they would a politician. If any of these soldiers has misbehaved in Iraq, they can expect to be swift-boated for their troubles. If any of them has enemies in their units, they can expect those enemies to be interviewed by the right-wing media. If any of them has any blemishes on their civilian records, they can also expect them to come out.

And they'll have to do their smearing quickly before "The War as We Saw It" gets baked into American political memory.

That's why the right badly needs a "rush smear." They need to destroy the authors of "The War as We Saw It" before the truth of the soldiers' argument is just assumed.