I learn today from one of Obsidian Wings’s conservative writers that McCain has apparently boxed Obama into making a trip to Iraq at some point soon. No matter that Obama said the same thing in March, but when do McCain folks let simple facts get in their way.

That’s really tangential to the point of the post and something I want to highlight. Charles Bird’s post is essentially about how Obama will go to Iraq and be convinced to change his position on Iraq because he’ll see the progress there. Maybe they would learn how quiet Mosul is, which John McCain said yesterday on the same day as 2 suicide bombings happened in the city. Damn those facts.

The key ideas are essentially that a) you can’t know what’s really going on in Iraq without going there yourself and looking around, and b) the surge strategy is working.

The first point is stupid on it’s face, and the second is certainly wrong unless you narrowly define “working” as a reduction in American casualties (which is good, but not good enough to end the war).

However, I don’t write as well as Hilzoy, so here’s her response in full to Bird’s piece. It’s easily the best response I’ve seen to these silly talking points:

OK, let’s be clear about this.

First, there is no way — no way at all — that Obama (or McCain, or Bush) can go to Iraq and “just look around”. They will have to have heavy security. Random people will have to be kept away. They will only be able to go to places that have been completely secured, and they will be surrounded by serious numbers of troops.

This is as it should be. When McCain did his stroll through the market, the problem wasn’t that he was surrounded by security; it was that for some reason he took what he saw as indicative of normal life.

But it does mean that saying that a Presidential candidate can’t know about Iraq without going there is silly. Just ask John McCain, who has been any number of times, but is still clueless.

Second, the stated purpose of the surge was to enable political progress to occur. This is not happening. When it does, I will say that the surge is “working”. Not before. (I hope it does.)

Third, whether or not the surge works has nothing to do with whether or not we are “bleeding”. We could have kept our casualties down in any number of ways — not letting soldiers off base, for instance. The surge works if the breathing space we give the Iraqis enables them to arrive at a political accommodation.

Fourth, whether or not the surge was a good idea has to do with more than whether it works. If it works, there are benefits. Whether it works or not, there are also costs — lives, money, and more. You have to weigh both.

Those costs are why I opposed the surge and am in favor of a time table. The world and our economy and foreign policy are all interconnected. Running a deficit, and a rather large one, to sustain a surge that isn’t actually achieving the underlying goal is hurting our nation in pretty serious ways (surging inflation, including some impact on oil prices) and also limits our options in numerous unrelated policy areas.