Knight-Rid­der’s Wash­ing­ton Bureau, now owned by McClatchy, was long-regard­ed as the most reli­able source of infor­ma­tion about the inva­sion of Iraq both dur­ing the run-up to the inva­sion and through­out the occu­pa­tion. I men­tion this because I think it gives use­ful con­text to their report that sol­diers in Iraq view troop surge as a lost cause:

Sol­diers inter­viewed across east Bagh­dad, home to more than half the city’s 8 mil­lion peo­ple, said the vio­lence is so out of con­trol that while a surge of 21,500 more Amer­i­can troops may momen­tar­i­ly sup­press it, the notion that U.S. forces can bring last­ing secu­ri­ty to Iraq is misguided. …

Almost every foot sol­dier inter­viewed dur­ing a week of patrols on the streets and alleys of east Bagh­dad said that Bush’s plan would halt the blood­shed only tem­porar­i­ly. The sol­diers cit­ed a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing incom­pe­tence or cor­rup­tion among Iraqi troops, the com­plex­i­ties of Iraq’s sec­tar­i­an vio­lence and the lack of Iraqi pub­lic sup­port, a cor­ner­stone of coun­terin­sur­gency warfare.

Sen­a­tor Pat Roberts gives the war in Iraq anoth­er 6 months, anoth­er six months, say­ing “I don’t think this war can be sus­tained for more than six months if in fact we don’t see some progress.” Of course, he’ll prob­a­bly for­get that state­ment, and blame the lapse on his “mem­o­ry pills.” 

In any event, Sen­a­tor Roberts is no longer what I’d call a reli­able source on the mat­ter. Nei­ther is Pres­i­dent Bush, nor wash Sec­re­tary Rums­feld. The sim­ple fact is that they were wrong about Iraq. McClatchy (née Knight-Rid­der) was right, as were var­i­ous oth­er peo­ple who were ignored. At this point, when Pat Roberts or George Bush says that Iraq will get bet­ter, that’s only plau­si­ble if some­one like McClatchy agrees. In this case, McClatchy’s report­ing is con­firm­ing the con­cerns of the sorts of peo­ple who were right before the war, con­cerns that the U.S. troops will sim­ply be placed in the mid­dle of a civ­il war with­out the abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly pre­vent that war, or dimin­ish its effects.

Or, as Sergeant Chance Oswalt told McClatchy “They can keep send­ing more and more troops over here, but until the peo­ple here start work­ing with us, it’s not going to change.” And that will mean engag­ing the polit­i­cal process in Iraq, and engag­ing neigh­bor­ing nations, includ­ing Sau­di Ara­bia.

Cas­san­dra’s curse is to be right, but ignored. The first time that voic­es of wis­dom were ignored, it may have been an hon­est mis­take. The sec­ond time will be inexcusable.