Glamorizing the Surge
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Joe Conason
Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, is more candid than his publicists in the media and on Capitol Hill. Unlike the senators and editorial writers who claim that the glorious “surge” should be hailed as one of the most successful military campaigns in history, he warns that the escalation’s achievements are mixed at best—or as he put it, progress on the ground is “uneven,” “fragile” and “reversible,” with “innumerable challenges” remaining to be addressed.
His caveats cannot dampen the enthusiasm of the politicians and pundits who would maintain the occupation of Iraq, and even expand our aggressive presence in the Mideast. Selling that policy requires propaganda proving that the surge is succeeding and that if we only stay long enough, spend enough money and sacrifice enough young men and women, then someday we will achieve a great victory. We’re “closer,” says the general, carefully.
Yes, everything is getting better and better every day in Iraq—and it will always be getting better and better, even if we have to stay for a hundred or a thousand years.
To promote these illusions, John McCain and his sidekicks, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman, repeatedly cite statistics showing violence has fallen since last summer, a trend that was real, while neglecting to mention the more ominous recent toll, which is equally real. Both American and Iraqi casualties have been rising since the low point in December 2007, and with greater velocity over the past several weeks. A dozen American troops died within the few days before General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared on Capitol Hill to report, an average that harks back to the war’s most lethal months.
The worsening casualties reflect the Iraqi government’s blundering assault on the militias and strongholds of Moktada al-Sadr, which exposed its own military deficiencies just in time for the Petraeus-Crocker show. To Mr. McCain and his cohort, the aborted battle of Basra showed the “progress made by the Iraqi security forces,” as he wrote in the right-wing weekly Human Events, blithely ignoring mass desertions by thousands of Iraqi officers and troops.
With that kind of progress, victory must be only decades away.
Meanwhile, the lives of ordinary Iraqis are hellish, despite the billions of dollars flowing into the government treasury every day from rising oil revenues. Despite the enormous budget surplus enjoyed by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the United Nations humanitarian agency recently reported that between 4 and 9 percent of Iraqi children under 5 suffer from malnutrition. More than five years after the invasion, most Iraqis still have no reliable electricity, medical care, employment or even clean water.
Yet New York Times columnist David Brooks eagerly tells us that the Iraqi people are more optimistic than they were last year, quoting an ABC News poll conducted in March. And nearly half say the U.S. was right to overthrow Saddam, he announced with an air of triumph. He omits the less comforting findings of that poll, which showed that 42 percent of Iraqis still also consider it “acceptable” to attack American troops, 61 percent believe the presence of our troops is making security worse rather than better, and only 26 percent support the occupation. What the ABC News survey actually reveals is that Iraqis remain profoundly divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. Despite the “awakening” of tribal opposition to Al Qaeda among the Sunni, for example, they remain extremely hostile to the U.S. and the Shia-dominated government—as do the Shia masses loyal to the Sadrist movement.
Those persistent divisions—and the irresistible impulse of every faction to manipulate us to their advantage—have blocked the political reconciliation that was supposed to be the ultimate objective of the surge. Senators Lieberman and Graham praise “benchmark legislation” passed by the Iraqi parliament on amnesty, provincial elections and other issues. But a recent report issued by the United States Institute for Peace, an official nonpartisan institution funded by Congress, disparaged the supposed advances by the Iraqi government, which it described as “tactical horse-trading’’ designed to acknowledge those benchmarks as minimally as possible.
The proponents of war and occupation gladly accept this benchmarks charade along with all the other deceptions and corruption because their eyes are fixed on the eastern horizon. Senator McCain and his friends constantly proclaim that our fight in Iraq “cannot be separated from our larger struggle to prevent the emergence of an Iranian-dominated Middle East.” In other words, their remedy for the destructive consequences of this war is a wider and even more dangerous conflict.
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See, I don't understand. The administration came under fire when they attacked in 2003 without the proper number of soldiers, now that they tried to rectify this oversite on Rummy's part, they are attacked again by the press! So which is it Joe, what will make you boneheads happy??
It's true, the ragheads don't deserve democracy, nor could they run anything that resembles a democracy; most of them want to move to Dearborn anyway. But since that can't happen, they have to make the best of a bad situation.
What I love about you, VanGogh, is that you're consistently out of your mind. I've never read anyone else who gets it wrong every time. Congratulations! You're a perfect idiot. By the way, there's nothing quite like a dash of racism to bolster your already staggeringly bad argument. Way to go!
In the Intellect Olympics, Conason gets the Gold, and you're still waiting in line outside the stadium.
The surge has worked and it drives Conason crazy. Especially, since both Obama and Clinton opposed it with McCain taking the principled, yet politically risky, position in support of the surge. No, the last six months hasn't ended the war in Iraq - but the future there looks better today than it did before the surge began.
Clinton has said that a precipitous withdrawal would endanger the American civilians living in Iraq and those Iraqi citizens that have been helpful to America in rooting out the insurgents. She is right on this issue. Iraq must be a free, self-governing state allied with the United States in our global war on terror. President Bush had the vision and determination to make this happen and history will reward him even as the small-minded current critics continue sniping at him. 25 million Iraqi citizens and 10 million Afghan citizens live in freedom and have a brighter future today because of President Bush.
To SuperDem:
Actually VanGogh's real name is Steve G. He's some wingnut asshole who stole somone else's moniker.Ignore him, he's a complete dumbass and a rascist who get's his talking points from Rush Limbaugh.
He's a sad little man.
Oh and Douglas, have you been asleep or something. The Green zone has been continously hit by mortor attacks and the Iraqi security forces failde to adequetly stop the Mahdi Army. Please pull your head from your ass.
Johnny B.
Re: Glamorizing the Surge
The "Surge" never worked as claimed by Senator McCain or anyone else. What apparently "worked" was paying Sunni militiamen to switch sides and cooperate with us. The situation now looks very much like a stalemate, with neither side (al-Maliki or Muktadar) having enough military might for victory in what can only be accurately called a civil war. When a foreign military intervenes in a situation such as this one, the only way it can bring about a resolution is to pick one side and crush the other.
Ironically, Bush was essentially right when he got up on the aircraft carrier and declared the war to be over. It is. What is not over is the occupation. We didn't have enough troops to hold the country when we so benevolently invaded it, and we still didn't during the Surge. (Even so, the insurgency might have been nipped in the bud with more competent leadreship in 2003, when it would have made a difference).
The benchmarks are a joke, and victory, as Joe Conason says, is mere decades away. Maybe we should do what General Westmoreland suggested 35 years ago and simply declare victory and go home.
Gary Berkowitz
I agree with Gary B.. We "bought" a reduction of violence and Al-Sadr's cease fire had a lot to do with it, too. The fact that the neighborhoods have already been "ethnicly cleansed" is also a factor resulting in the appearanceof less violence and killing. We must not forget this occupation is ALL about control of the Iraq oil, not their democracy. Until the Petrochemical Sharing Agreement (PSA) has been passed by Iraq Congress, you will hear all sorts of reasons why we must still militarily occupy Iraq. Once the 4 western oil companies got control of the oil and production through the PSA, I'm sure Bush planned to call it a victory and withdraw all troops, except enough to protect the "oil assets" for the oil companies exploitation. One big problem, going all the way back to the Brenner/CPA, they don't want to give up control of their oil. Hence the stalemate.
I find it amusing and pathetic at the same time that there are dissenters who post on this board (VanGogh, SuperDem, Douglas) who completely ignore what has been said in this column and parrot out a pathetic mix of insults and disproven talking points. It was this stubbornly ignorant and myopic mindset that got us into this mess in the first place. Some people will only believe what they want to believe and never listen to anything that departs from their cherished opinions.
"The surge has worked and it drives Conason crazy."
The surge helped some as did the ceasefire that Al Sadr started. Also the "Sons of Iraq" are taking our money now to stop fighting us and to fight Al Qaeda. Kind of like you can pay the Mob protection money.
Truthfully though to think surging 20,000 more troops has made any long term changes is short sighted. Until the politicians in Iraq make the proper changes (which was what the surge was for) nothing there will really change.
Even this week the wheels are starting to come off of the surge bandwagon.
I'm an idiot who posts stupid sh*t. Please disregard my asinine blather.
Gotta go, Star Trek is on.
Surge or no surge fact is we are a lot closer to bankrupting OUR military and OUR economy than Iraq is to gaining independence!
Hit Rush Limbaugh with a "war" tax and see how quickly he starts screaming that the Democrats should have done more to get us out of Iraq...
To Steve G.
I realize that the reason you are doing this is because you can't win an arguement so it's much easier to steal other's monikers and then post childish responses.You are indeed sad.
You are such a coward little man.
Ross
Please ignore my posts. I troll this site spouting comments that are illogical and meant to boost my tiny ego. I usually use more than one screen name to fool the other monkeys on this site.
Joe---I want to assume that you are the son of Ellie and Red who owned that wonderful store in White plains. Hopfully I am correct.I was aDansk salesman who called on them and remember them well.
I also want to tell you how much I value your writing that we see in the Press Journal in Vero Beach Fl every Sat during our 5 month stay .
Thanks for your point of view and I will now attempt to go on the Observer web site and read you more often.
Regards--Hoyt Chapin
To Steve G.
Enough already. If you art too cowardly to post your real name, then stop posting. No one here (including me) is amused by your childish postings.
Stop or risk being banned from this site.
Joe C.
Just as they cherry picked and made up intelligence to justify invading Iraq, so will the neocons cherry pick and make up "facts" to prolong the occupation. Both the Iraqi and American people understand the grim reality. Political progress in Iraq is virtually nonexistent-the so-called benchmarks have not been achieved in any meaningful or lasting way. "100 years" McSame can't get even the most rudimentary facts straight about the conflict and is therefore unfit to become president. His chief ennablers, Rape Gurney Joe Lieberman and Huckleberry Graham will join him in the historical dustbin of colossal failures along with President 28%.
To VanGogh: If,the surge was to correct a "mistake"..Then how in the hell could the Bush Administration have afforded to make the "mistake" of not putting enough "boots on the ground" to protect us/the U.S. from the level of threat that Suddam was supposed to have posed?...Unless the Administration already knew that NO such "threat" existed in the first place!!!
We know for sure North Korea has nukes...yet, the Bush Administration finds ways to give North Korea more MONEY every time they test a nuke!...the long and short of it is...we (America) never attack an anybody that we know for sure has a nuke!!
The simple fact is the leadership, except of course at the very top, is quite different today than it was in March 2003 and before, during the lead up to the invasion. Therefore, strategies not implemented are now being corrected. Whether or not there are/were WMD's has no significance. We are stuck in Iraq and the new leadership is trying to find ways to extricate the US.
I like Van Gogh's idea that we fucked up in Iraq so we must pay the price by sacrifice. Lets throw away more American lives and money. Why quit now when we can stay and have 10,000 or 100,000 American dead and wounded if we wait long enough.
The way to deal with an inconvenient, misplaced hole is to dig it wider and deeper and throw more bllod and treasure into it.
VanGogh is not only a bigot and a racist, he is dimwitted as well. With a few more brains, he'd make a decent halfwit.
VanGogh is deservedly getting beat up on this site, and his arguments would be laughable were it not for the thousands of dead soldiers and civilians who have paid the price for this lunatic policy.
You can dress up a pig in a suit, but it's still a pig. No amount of spin will ever obscure the insanity and wastefulness of the Iraq War.
You can dress a Democrat up in a suit, but he/she will still be an idiot.
To Steve G.
You're an asshole and a coward. Fuck you.