Respectfully disagreeing with Major Connable

Excuse me sir, but I think you've gotten this wrong.

Marine Major Ben Connable wrote this in today's WaPo:

The common wisdom seems to be that Iraq is an unwinnable war and a quagmire and that the only thing left to decide is how quickly we withdraw. Depending on which poll you believe, about 60 percent of Americans think it's time to pull out of Iraq.

How is it, then, that 64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work? Why is there such a dramatic divergence between American public opinion and the upbeat assessment of the men and women doing the fighting?

The only poll I could find that came close to agreeing with this statement was a November 17, 2005 poll by The Pew Research Center For the People and the Press.

In the poll, military "opinion leaders" did indeed believe that a stable democracy will succeed in Iraq. However, there's nothing that says, as Maj. Connable does, that these are the people "doing the fighting." In fact, many of the military "opinion leaders" weren't even asked this question. Or any questions. The methodology explained:

The military leaders sample was drawn from a Lexis-Nexis search of retired generals and admirals quoted in American news sources in the past year. Also included was a sample of outstanding officers selected to participate in the Council on Foreign Relations' Military Fellowship program since 2000.

There's nothing that says whether these retired general officers are recent retirees who might have actually served in Iraq (at which point they might also have the added incentive to be optimistic due to their own contributions) or whether they've been out of the Army for many years. There's also nothing that says how many of the 47 military "opinion leaders" were general officers and how many were members of the CFR Military Fellowship program, so suggesting that there's any way to gauge whether this is the opinion of people "doing the fighting" is, at best, problematic and, more realistically, impossible. The major goes on to say that mid-level officers and NCOs also seem to be optimistic about Iraq, but there's no data except his personal impressions and, I'll tell from an NCOs perspective, a Marine major probably has little chance of actually knowing what his NCOs really think. That's not a dig on him. It's just the truth.

One thing that Maj. Connable didn't mention from the same poll was that those same military "opinion leaders" were all but evenly split on the topic two major issues: A) military leaders support the choice to go to war in the first place by only 49-47 percent; and B) believe that the Iraq war has helped make us safer by only 47-45 percent.

So this poll really tells me that military "opinion leaders" (whoever they are) still believe in the ability of the military to pull America's fat out of the fire in Iraq even though they're evenly split over whether we should be there in the first place and whether it's doing us any good.

Cross-posted at Nitpicker.

•  Recommend?

  This op-ed will probably come around again and again in defense of Bush's policies. I would like this explanation of its errors to be known as soon as possible--before it becomes part of the Iraq War mythos.

  by nitpicker on Wed Dec 14, 2005 at 09:39:07 PM PDT

  •  You know...

    I read this earlier and was just shaking my head. In reading the column you see that he offers nothing...he just says we will succeed (whatever that really means), that most military people agree with him, but gave no actual examples or proof.  

    I have to wonder if Major Connable is one of those who wrote, misrepresenting himself as an Iraqi, some of the feel-good stories that appeared in the Iraqi press, courtesy of Uncle Sam.  And btw, has the White House gotten around to "looking into" that?  I know that they said they were very "concerned."  </gag>  

    by BarbinMD on Wed Dec 14, 2005 at 10:00:31 PM PDT

    •  If a 5-year old wrote a WaPo op-ed

      to the effect, "we all should live in peace," the editors would reject it as facile. Yet they have no trouble presenting Connable's twisted public relations essay prominently.

      There's something seriously wrong at the Washington Post.

      And there's something seriously wrong with us if we take the "word of the troops" as gospel. If my world consists of making hamburgers, rest assured my opinions will all point toward more hamburgers and more freedom for hamburger makers.

      Major Connable's arguments would work as well applied to hamburger makers.

      by doorguy on Wed Dec 14, 2005 at 10:15:25 PM PDT

•  Military leaders are the guys who own hammers.

  64% of them will always think every problem looks like a nail.

  by irate on Wed Dec 14, 2005 at 10:28:59 PM PDT

•  I know Ben Connable

  He is a good and decent man.  He is an outstanding Marine officer and, quite frankly, one of the brightest I have ever met.  Let's minimize the personal attacks on him (i.e. suggesting he wrote letters representing himself as an Iraqi???)  Agree or disagree with what he has to say.  Bottom line, he has been to Iraq and is going back.  He has a more informed perspective than those who have not been there, it may be a skewed perspective but it is certainly a more informed one.    

  by bulldog on Thu Dec 15, 2005 at 02:59:11 AM PDT

  •  I agree

    Connable shouldn't be attacked personally. He's serving his country honorably in the Marine Corps. My problem with him is that he's doing the readers of the Washington Post a disservice by misrepresenting the beliefs of those in service.

    Also, as a guy who was in a position to move around Afghanistan with more freedom than 95% of soldiers, I was often surprised when I went from, say, Ghazni to Herat and found that the commanders and staff there had almost no concept of what their counterparts were dealing with--and these were Lt. Colonels and Colonels who took part in the General's daily Battle Update Briefing. It's often the case that many service members get locked into their area of the war and know their "slice" of it inside and out, but cannot see the larger picture. Connable can tell you about his mission, but extrapolating that portion onto the whole would be like my describing the entire American political scene based on my observations of Stafford county, Kansas. My guess? Bush would still win there with about 62% of the vote.

    I still remember sitting with a journalist from Germany's Die Zeit newspaper as she explained the current state of the Afghanistan war to a smart, very soldierly infantry brigade commander. Being trapped in one area of the country by his duty, he could only take the reporter's word for the situation the country was in--though, for the record, she felt very positively about it.

    by nitpicker on Thu Dec 15, 2005 at 05:32:56 AM PDT

    •  Major Connable

      Major Connable is a close, personal friend of mine.

      He is intelligent, thoughtful, and probaby far more educated than 90% of those who post here.

      Due to his position in the Corps, he actually has a very unique, special insight into what is going on...most of it in Al-Anbar Province, which is acknowledged as probably the "heart" of the insurgency. That being so, his slice is not small, it is indeed the much broader picture.

      If you actually want to listen to Major Connable, he was just on a BBC World Call-n program(me).

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

      Click on the right hand side where it says "listen to the programme". I think you will find him far more engaging, and intelligent than some of you cretans probably thought.

      by scalesmd on Sun Dec 18, 2005 at 03:56:26 PM PDT

  •  And

    There's no way to tell what Maj. Connable's reading/research habits are, but I would argue that he's shown a willingness to either misread or misrepresent poll numbers and personal experience, as I've said, will only get you so far.

    by nitpicker on Thu Dec 15, 2005 at 05:42:30 AM PDT