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Iraq & The Dirty Secret of the Surge
The self congratulation over the ongoing success of the Surge strategy – resulting in a welcome plunge in U.S. and Iraqi civilian deaths – has reached bacchanalian proportions with conservative commentators (and some moderate and left-of-center types, as well) high five-ing like so many drunken frat boys dancing around a keg of beer on a college homecoming weekend.
But a Google search using the keywords surge, success and Iraq shows that these revelers are going to have a bummer of a hangover: This is because of the 30 pieces that I read using those keywords, only three noted that the very purpose of the Surge has been fatally undermined, which puts its “success” in an entirely different light. (Incidentally, one of those three pieces was by Yours Truly.)
The Surge was initiated to give various factions breathing room to work out their differences and move toward an Iraq unified enough and stable enough that U.S. troops could leave in substantial numbers.
But that will not be happening because of a tin-horn, reconciliation-averse central government in Baghdad that exists in name only, a U.S. occupation leadership that has been unable to grasp the social, economic and cultural barriers standing in the way of democratizing Iraq in any real sense of that word, and a White House that has come very late to the realization that politics are no substitute for policy.
Not to get all nit-picky, but the military success itself is qualified. This is because of:
* A sharp increase in air strikes that have resulted in fewer U.S. casualties but more collateral Iraqi civilian casualties. In the first nine months of 2007, American planes hit targets more times than in the previous three years combined, and the ill will that the one-time liberators sew each time innocents are blown to smithereens by fire from helicopter gunships is not supposed a part of the counterinsurgency play-book.
* A sharp increase in curfews that limit civilian movement. Haven’t heard any bad stuff out of Falluja lately, have you? Could this be because the one-time hot-spot is under virtual lock-down with a ban on private vehicles?
* A failure to train up the Iraqi army sufficiently and the continuing dismal state of national police forces means that they cannot be relied on to replace U.S. forces and not merely supplement them.
Of all of the lies that President Bush has told regarding his war, the claim that the “success” of the Surge might allow him to begin drawing down the number of troops in Iraq is the most obscene and dishonors the memory of the nearly 4,000 American men and women who have died as well as the thousands more mouldering in hospitals and rehab centers with grave physical and psychological wounds.
This is because present troop levels will be unsustainable after next April because the 15-month tours of duty for the five combat brigades that were sent to Iraq for the Surge will begin to expire and there are no units in the president’s exhausted and depleted Army to replace them.
What will happen when that forced draw-down commences puts the ultimate lie to the frat boys frolicking around the keg: The splintering of Iraq will accelerate as various groups — militias, insurgents and criminal gangs — rush in to fill the resulting void.
What, for example, will happen in Fallujah, a once bustling city that is now surrounded by concertina wire and where unemployment stands at 80 percent?
There are indeed many uncertainties. But while the Bush administration has tried to suspend belief for the past four and a half years it has been unable to suspend the laws of nature. And it is no secret that nature abhors a vacuum.
In other Iraq war-related news: The shocking reality of what the war has done to the War on Terror and ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff is back with a new cause.
17 Responses to “Iraq & The Dirty Secret of the Surge”
This year’s slogan: “The surge is working!”
Next year’s slogan: “We’ve actually won in Iraq!”
Shaun:
Does not this remind you of Vietnam, where, after a bad month or two there was always victory ‘around the corner.’ Then there was a good month or two, and ‘there never has been a problem.’
3 mos from now, when there’s another spike upward, what will be the mantra?
10 years in Vietnam, folks. 1/2way there already.
cosmo:
Correcto mundo. The Vietnam analogies were inapt earlier in the war but have become unavoidable. It’s bloody tragic.
Actually I would love to see us come home tomorrow. Let the middle east be. Let it find balance. Let Iran get the bomb. Let Israel nuke the entire middle east once their paranoid leaders become convinced they are about to be nuked themselves.
Lets leave it be so that Muslims and can kill Muslims. Lets let gasoline get to be 8 or 10 bucks a gallon. Lets let the economies of the west slide into worldwide depression.
Lets go for Shauns view of how we should do things in the middle east. Yeah see in a perverse way he is right. The only way middle east oil will become insignificant is if oil becomes so expensive as to force us to create a new energy policy. This will only happen if we pull out of Iraq and let the middle east burn. Let Iran go unchecked. Let the Middle east and the EX Soviet Empire control the oil flow.
IN his own reckless way Shaun is dead on about Iraq. We need to leave now and let all hell break loose so that this nation will be forced to embrace an energy policy which renders oil obsolete.
Only when they have nothing to give will we then treat them like Darfur…….Let them kill themselves all they want. They have nothing we need.
Liberals/Democrats are dead right. Let the SOB’s die. Kill themselves. As long as they are not blowing up our cities we dont care what they do.
I love it. Can’t wait to see these policies in action.
There are so many new develpments every week, that we’ll be redefining our goals, announcing new atrategies and referring to mistakes made indefinitely.
What will happen with the PKK/Turkey problem?
The Shias are becoming more resentful because of our alliance with Sunnis.
The Iraqis who want the US to go away so they can have theri country back haven’t died out
The Iraqi governemtn won’t be ready for real responsibility for a very long time..
We are sitting ducks, appearing to be responsible for every unresolved problem in the region while world opinion weighs in with advice and condemnation, but no help.
On the other channel, the administration seems ever more determined to start a war with Iran.
I’m glad the casualty list is becoming shorter, but I sure don’t feel like celebrating.
gotta love Newspeak. The Surge is working! Irrefutable Evidence!
We’ll stand down when Iraq stands up! ( of course how can they stand up when their limbs are zip-tied and their shirts are pulled over their heads hockey-fight style?)
While the military part of the surge is seeing some succes, everything else is a mess. IG Stuart Bowen from the administration doesn’t paint a promising picture.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101802201_pf.html
This link to a Baltimore paper goes even further.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/iraq/bal-te.iraq19oct19,0,3632210.story
Bill Lind also calls out the increase in airstrikes as a sign the surge is “failing”.
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11130
More Lind:
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11130
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11530
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind08092007.html
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge†is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn’t.
I can assure you this is a huge and gross distortion that speaks volumes about the authors intentions.
Are we winning? Who knows. Who really cares anymore. Yet I can point to the much lower casualty rates and say they are a direct result of the insurgents realizing once again that death from above is a very real possibility.
No this quote is pure unadulterated BS. Pure and simple from someone who’s only interests are misleading his readership to support his agenda. Which is certainly to bring the boys home.
Im ready for them to come home too but the antiwar accuses us of lies to get us into the war and yet they are resorting to:
LIES to get us out of the war.
Oh wait…mabey that means they just arent interrpreting the facts correctly. Hmm that could be. Mabey they dont have the full picture. Mabey they are making the facts fit their preconceived conclusion and ignoring other data that does not.
I propose the Antiwar is Bush reincarnated. They seem to be using the same logic, goals, aims and intell. They just skew it to fit their agenda.
Somebody:
It is you who are proffering the supersimplistic POV.
Pulling out of Iraq does not mean no MidEast engagement nor the letting of Iran rum roughshod w nukes.
To even have to state that shows how silly your POV is, even if it is an emotional reaction to Shaun’s. Get real, or get better at parody.
“Yet I can point to the much lower casualty rates and say they are a direct result of the insurgents realizing once again that death from above is a very real possibility.”
Somebody, did you ever see the Team America movie? There is a scene in there where they roll in calling in an airstrike to take out the bad guys, destroying everything around it and killing civilians. You really should watch that. Then they sit there high fiving eachother on a job well done while the people caught in the middle wail and stare death to them.
Airstrikes don’t help the larger effort when you are trying to put down urban insurrection and win over the populace. We lose fewer guys no doubt, but we actually get farther from winning.
And I am shocked to find myself agreeing with your first post. We should pull out of there and leave them to sort things out themselves. Let the tribes tear eachother throats out. Maybe it will be so bloody they will end up taking a step into the modern world. We should so get the hell out of there.
So, is Petraeus still a liar?
I think Shaun’s larger point about reconciliation is valid, and I would go one further and suggest that our current strategic goals are unattainable. However, IF the reduction in violence continues and if it continues to decline, then that is a good thing in and of itself, but also gives the next President strategic flexibility in formulating a different policy on Iraq.
Entropy – No one will disagree about less violence, but the “surge” wasn’t just a military operation. Most COIN experts say 20% military and 80% political, on this front calling the surge a success is absurd. But until Iraq is really a sovereign country, so what.
Somebody – I’ll take experts like Lind and Bracevich over Kristol, Boot and the Podherz anytime.
The surge is doing exactly what most thoughtful people thought it would do. Get insurgents to lay low until it blows over without actually fixing anything. While I agree less deaths is very welcome, the different parties are still at loggerheads, there is little water and electricity, and life is no closer to normalcy for civilians that it was before the surge started.
In short, pro-war folks got what they wanted, some nice stats to crow about, and anti-war folks get to continue spinning their wheels about how the problem is no closer to being solved.
Sam:
As an Aussie friend says, “that’s it in a bit, mate.”
Air strikes can help, but somewhere “beneath” (on a smaller scale than) strategic bombing, no, they do not solve the problem. Air strikes are valuable to the extent they recognize that the most important targets are on the ground (something I discussed with a few guys during work on a fighter plane project a few years ago), but strategic bombing and even air strikes sometimes are a modern variant of the same conceit that used to be held by advocates of naval power prior to the development of aerial warfare.
Related to my remark about the “real targets” (on the ground) — control (including what defines a successful occupation or pacification operation) is defined in terms of ability to occupy the ground in question.
And related to this is something else worth posting here, which is somewhat “divergent” in the type of criticism but is still relevent to what Sam is thinking of.
(printable page)
DLS – LOL I agree 100%, I thought the surge was supposed to be door to door operations to root out the rats. Killing as many inhabitants as rats won’t make the renters happy.
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