Almost daily Corner bashing

When I read this blog entry, my first reaction is that nobody could be as stupid as Loyola appears to be. "Surely," I said to myself, "you must have taken that quote out of context." So I clicked on the link and found myself at NRO's "The Corner", which appears to be an affirmative action program for writers who are too stupid (or too dishonest) to work as legitimate journalists.

I did find an defense of sorts of Loyola's assertion that civilian casualty rates "are the wrong metric," but the defense of the assertion is worse than the assertion itself:

"...if the surge succeeds in enhancing the perception that the new democratic government of Iraq is permanent, and that its authority cannot be defeated, the surge will succeed. And we will have won..."

A fundamental function of government is to provided security to its citizens, and the recent civilian deaths demonstrate that the government cannot do that even with an unsustainable amount of assistance from American troops. That's hardly the way to enhance the perception that the authority of the government cannot be defeated.

Furthermore, asking American soldiers to risk their lives merely to "enhance a perception" strikes me as morally abhorrant. Perhaps Loyola assumes that changing the perception will change the reality, but he doesn't say so.