In the meantime, JD Johannes has been hanging out in Anbar Province and says the war doesn't look lost to him. He makes a good case that the war is already over in much of that most-troubled province.

I think his case has more leaks than the Bush White House.

To give credit where due, He does make a decent rhetorical case - not backed up by much in the way of stats or hard facts beyond the anecdote level though - that we're now fighting an intelligent counterinsurgency in Anbar. I'm willing to believe that. We may even have some locals on our side who don't like Al-Quieda. I believe this too. And that's all good news and whatnot. Neat.

But the simple fact that, after four years, that we're now fighting the war the right way should not be equated with, "now we're winning". You can try your best to fight the smart way and still lose.

There's a complete absence of the following info:

a) attacks in Anbar going down
b) US deaths in Anbar going down
c) ISF and Iraqi civilian deaths going down
d) insurgent surrenders up

or any other metrics that would back in any way back up the equating of getting some Anbar locals on our side to beating the insurgency

The IDF, for example, got significant numbers of Lebanese to 'their side' in the form of the SLA. They still lost. We've had lots of Al-Quieda hating Shias in Baghdad on our side for some years now, and it doesn't seem to be beating the insurgency.

The bottom line is, this piece does not make it possible to evaluate the relative strength, popularity, and pervasiveness of pro-American Sunnis vs. pro Al-Queida Sunnis. Not only that, it completely fails to differentiate between anti-Al-Quieda Sunnis who are still Baathist militants blowing up U.S. soliders, and those who are really cooperating with the U.S.

I think an example of a really good pro-war article that doesn't have the problems discussed above would be this .

This is the most convincing, and the first remotely credible sounding success-selling article I've read since two thousand and four.

I'm still not buying it. I've read this.

http://iraqsinconvenienttruth.com/Gen_McCaffrey_Report_032707_Iraq.pdf

Which, despite all the cheerful stuff about how effective the USAF is as a military force doing military things, has a better grip on the big picture then Max Boot: i.e. it explicitly states that there is no possible military end to the insurgency with available military forces.

Just like it's easier to lose the big-picture amidst anecdotal bombings, it's just as easy to lose it amidst anecodotal feel-good stories.

It would be nice if glasnost went on vacation for, say, a year.

I really tire of his self-righteous, long-winded left wing rants after every article. I'm usually just a reader and most comments are intriguing rather I agree or not but...

hi
i appreciate your nice pictures and writings about tunisia and berbers but the thing is i dont think u know a lot about berbers or u can make a difference cuz if you want to know berbers u have to travel from canary islands to egypt to really see who are berbers and how their bars or houses look like .the thing that u saw in tunis is just a forgotten place in some poor and remote region
ps: tunisia is not in the middle east. it is a north african country

That sure was off-topic.

I am aware that Tunisia is in North Africa. I was there. Arab North Africa is the exact same civilization as the Arab Middle East, and is therefore often included as such by scholars and historians of the region, as well as by journalists.

Tunisia belongs to the Eastern world, depsite the fact that it is west of Greece and south of Italy. It's physical location is incidental.

Arab North Africa is the exact same civilization as the Arab Middle East

Well, that's rather like saying Spain is the exact same civilization as Bavaria because they're both majority Catholic and have historical ties to the Roman Empire. They may be similar to an American, but there are still lots of important differences. I suppose it tends on where you're looking from. You might want to respect the fact that Tunisians don't like to hear their country referred to as "Middle Eastern", for many good reasons not related to geography - they speak a dialect of Arabic that is mostly incomprehensible to people in the Levant, the Arab peninsula or Iraq, and of course the majority of the population is not really genetically or culturally Arabic - the Arab language was imposed on the Berbers through conquest. "Ex-Ottoman Empire" would be strictly more accurate than "Middle Eastern" for the countries you're reporting about, but I suppose that would confuse a lot of people.

Of course there are important differences, Vanya. All Arab countries differ from each other. I have yet to visit two that are the same.

I could make a case that the Arab countries with Mediterranean shorelines have things in common with each other that they don't have with the others whether they are formally Middle Eastern or North African. Also, Tunisia shares traits with Lebanon that it doesn't share with Libya, which is right next door.

If this is what having won in Iraq looks like, then I cannot ewen imagine what having lost would look like.

It's not over, Larry. No one said it was.