Key Iraq Advisor Leaving

In December of 2005, Daniel Drezner wrote about the poli-sci implications of the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."

With the 2005 "Victory" plan, was the Bush administration "more concerned with the domestic politics of the Iraq war than with actually winning on the ground in Baghdad," as Laura Rozen had suggested at the time?

Mr. Drezner had written about a NYT article that had indicated that many federal departments had contributed to the document and that a political scientist had joined the N.S.C. staff as a special adviser in June of 2005 and had closely studied public opinion on the war. Dr. Peter D. Feaver had been "recruited after he and Duke colleagues presented the administration with an analysis of polls about the Iraq war in 2003 and 2004. They concluded that Americans would support a war with mounting casualties on one condition: that they believed it would ultimately succeed."

The assumption underlying Feaver and Gelpi's hypothesis is so simple that it's never stated in the article -- if a sufficiently large majority opposes an ongoing military intervention, any administration will have to withdraw regardless of the strategic wisdom of such a move. This is why, I suspect, the administration reacts so badly whenever it deals with domestic criticism about the war -- it recognizes that flagging domestic support will translate into a strategic straitjacket.

Today we learn that the deputy national security adviser for Iraq Meghan L. O'Sullivan will be departing.

O'Sullivan, 37, known for her 100-hour work weeks and steady optimism over the eventual outcome in Iraq, said in an interview that with the completion of months-long reviews of policy in Iraq and Afghanistan - which she also oversees - she felt it was the right time for a change.

"There's never a good time to leave this kind of job. ... But (I decided) this would be as good a time as any," she said..

O'Sullivan allegedly, per anonymous sources, had helped conceive and draft the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" that was designed to convince you and me that this war needed to be "won" - which, as I stated back then, was not addressing the realistic potential of the brand of victory, based on the cost in blood and treasure, for which the American public would stand.