Iraq and spin

Professor Kahl commented on my post below, I put in a (rather incoherent) comment myself.

I disagree with his analysis of US COIN strategies in Iraq, how they have evolved, and where they are going. I realize that as an academic he doesn't put his personal feelings about the war in his discussions, so I don't really know what he thinks about the war.

I personally feel that it is essentially a criminal enterprise in concept, that many of the actions that the US has followed there are and have been crimes (Abu Ghraib, the under reported air war, the general indifference to and lack of accounting of civilian deaths). I'm also convinced that almost six years of Rumsfeld running the Pentagon has placed people in command that are unsuited for it.

A big feature of the war has been the effort to spin what was happening. Great efforts have been exerted to direct public opinion, discourage objective reporting, and to manage the story, as if that was the road to victory. Professor Kahl says that now the US 'gets it', and is thus able to 'do it'. I can find no reason to believe this, I think the surge is nothing but ongoing spin, and that he's fallen for it.