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The Surge Worked; “We” Won the War
“We” is the United States. We won the war. The surge worked. The naysayers were all wrong; thanks to U.S. military might, Iraqis (see them? Shiny, happy Iraqis!) have been liberated from death, destruction, grief, and sorrow.
Well. At least, that’s what it looks like from 10,000 miles away. Close up, it looks a bit different.
But, by gum, we won, and Iraqis are free. Because we said we did, and because we say they are.
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86 Responses to “The Surge Worked; “We” Won the War”
“we cant win against an insurgency in a nation that is not ours because historically the only way to do so is genocide. “
That just isn't true. Insurgencies that are contained in one country are almost always defeated. When forces have “safe havens” where they are free to retreat and are supplied by an outside force. In Iraq they may have been supplied by outsiders but they were not able to cross borders at will. Historically speaking as long as the will to fight was maintained the odds that the “insurgency” would succeed was thin art best.
“If only it were.”
It arguably is lower. The issues would be what numbers get added and how to calculate the numbers. The 100,000 Kurds would be added. I think the 500,000+ that died in the Iran/Iraq war get left out. The 65,000+ Marsh Arabs would be added. The numbers really are just a shot in the dark but there is a good chance that there is a lower rate of death in Iraq right now than pre war. There is more electrical power, more potable water, better sewers, more food, better health care, more medicine. One of the things people overlook is that while the cities are dangerous and have high rates of violence the country side was ignored under Saddam, as far as services goes, so there the quality of living has skyrocketed.
Who are you to judge what is “true and actual progress” for over 28 million Iraqis? How can you even pretend to know such a thing?
“we reversed all of the damage we did to the Iranian regime in the 80's by funding Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war.
“A) There was a measuring stick?
B) What was it?”
Good one. I set myself up for that one, didn't I? But seriously, even if you argue that we should have had a more defined measuring stick, does that mean that we failed by definition? No, we can look back and realistically measure whether the surge helped or hurt.
“Did that include the I.5 million refugees living in Jordan, Syria and other neighboring countries?
BTW, why don't we ask them if their life is better than it was in 2001 prior to GW Bush's great Iraqi adventure?”
Let me be clear that I am not arguing that the Iraq war was the right decision. In retrospect I don't think we should have done it. But this discussion is specifically about the surge, not the Iraq war in general. With that in mind, I suspect the vast majority of those refugees were already refugees by the time the surge started, and so they are irrelevant in terms of measuring the success of the surge.
“Please show where you found these stats(page) in the study. I did a couple of pdf searches and didn't find these results.”
I added up the number of people that said “quite good” and the number that said “very good” to arrive at my numbers, which probably explains why your search didn't find the exact numbers. It was the very first table in the PDF were I took the numbers for the first question.
Good guess EEllis but wrong.
The wiki article – “United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war” is a good starting point for anyone interested in the facts.
Emphasis mine.
Who are you to judge what is “true and actual progress” for over 28 million Iraqis? How can you even pretend to know such a thing?
OK, who the hell are YOU to to make the same judgments either, then?
I am going on the lack of Saddam's Secret Police and torture chambers; actual elections where you don't get 'disappeared' for voting wrong; and the polls where Iraqi's themselves say things are better.
I really don't see it the same. Our biggest contributions were not in military hardware but intelligence and assistance in the UN. Sure we sent weapons but as you didn't note the amounts I stand by my statements that ours were a minority by a large amount. The economic aid would have freed up money to be used for the war effort but was not directly related to military efforts and is consistent with aid to the palestine people. We are not “arming” them by freeing up resources so giving non-military aid should not be considered funding a war.
We supplied the weapons at good rates because we preferred them to Iran which I actually think was a wise foreign policy decision at the time due to Iran's public stance, at least as much I think any of our foreign policy decisions are all that wise(not trading them arms for hostages would have been pretty wise). France was also getting oil from them which again makes it a wise foreign policy decision do you have an issue with that as well? Would you have preferred that we make nice with the Iranians instead right after the hostage crisis or just stayed totally out of it allowing a middle east super power to rise, which sadly is what is likely to happen now.
Extermination followed by assimilation of the populace or mass migration are the most common successful strategies of course it was most commonly successful before the “civilized” era which is why it is so unusual to be successful now. Was Britain successful eradicating the IRA before it began negotiations? When its in your country or even a neighboring country it can usually be dealt with rather easily but the problem with distance colonization type insurgency warfare they have a constant resupply of foot soldiers depending on whose family member or friend was most recently killed and who the person blames. Insurgencies are dangerous because they are the people. Al Qaeda is separate because they are not local, their families have not died in this war against their will so they are not the ones likely to strike back in vengeance attacks or by joining insurgent groups anymore. It has been isolated and contained but we now remain as the lightning rod. For instance did Britain ever truly rule India or was it a long line of different movements rebellions insurrections and headaches? When you are the foreigner you are just easy to blame, I am not even saying that we are bad and evil, the war was a nightmarish blunder but the military has done incredibly considering their situation there. Regardless unless the populace continues to see you as liberators it is unsustainable to do so because insurgencies will rise and break against you wave after wave until you go home where you belong. When we leave though Iraq's ties will only grow with Iran and the insurgency will end in a puff of smoke because they will no longer have a legitimate adversary in the eyes of the people, plus their funding will shift to a different area. Democracies are also terribly built for the types of wars needed to fight insurgencies especially popular ones because the final option to “win” is just to never leave and continue to take it on the chin for the profit you make off of the adventure but we are not making anything off of this adventure.
Why haven't the French, Romans and Spanish been able to put down the Basques that have been bucking anyone that laid claim to their land since the romans invaded? Because once a movement starts if you cant exterminate it the only other choice is the long ball option to sit back and deal with random uprisings. You can negotiate with or exterminate an insurgency but I can think of no other options shy of relocation and that one isnt really feasible here nor is it always successful.
“Would you have preferred that we make nice with the Iranians “
Huh? I was just objecting to the false idea that we funded the Iran Iraq war. I'm not suggesting anything about if it would of been good or bad just the incorrect info that keeps being used.
I am going on the lack of Saddam's Secret Police and torture chambers; actual elections where you don't get 'disappeared' for voting wrong; and the polls where Iraqi's themselves say things are better.
AD, torture and secret police did not end with Saddam's overthrow. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped or disappeared and brutally tortured before being murdered. I'm not sure what you mean by “actual” elections. It's true that, under heavy armed guard by U.S. military personnel, Iraqis have been able to go to the polls and vote, and the votes themselves were unconstrained. However, that doesn't mean Iraqis got to select who would be on the ballot. It was the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer that hand-picked Iraqis to put on a Governing Council, and those U.S.-selected Iraqis in turn chose the candidates for the interim government. The Bush administration had de facto veto power over any potential Iraqi leader — and indeed they exercised that veto power. They didn't like Jaafari so they got rid of him and put in al-Alawi, then they got disenchanted with him and went for al-Maliki.
Iraqis have had the skeletal outer framework of free elections, but not the meaningful reality of them.
Furthermore, al-Maliki's government is absolutely riddled with corruption; its support is shaky, to say the least, and the fact that the entire process that led to this point was controlled and manipulated by the United States certainly has a lot to do with its dysfunction.
As for Iraqis saying in polls that things are better: better than what? I'm not saying Iraqis don't find some or even many aspects of their lives to be better, but without much detailed information about what the “better” is being measured against, it doesn't tell us much here in the U.S. “Better” is a relative word, and you have to know what the “other” is that “better” is being measured against. Better than under Saddam? Better than when headless corpses were turning up every day by the dozens in the streets and in the river? Better than when the civil war was killing thousands of Iraqis and turning millions into refugees? Or maybe better than six months ago? Who knows? You have to know which polls, when they were conducted, how the questions were worded, and the larger context of what was going on at the time.
It also should be obvious that telling a pollster things are better in 2008 or 2009 than they were in 2005 or 2006 does not mean Iraqis think the invasion and occupation itself was a good thing. I doubt you'll find too many Iraqis who are happy about a foreign military invasion and occupation that has lasted almost six years now.
So the IRA was successful? the Basques, anyone? Hell it's held up in the colonial period also. If you don't lose the will to fight then the current power wins. We won VN before we quit. France won Algeria before they quit. For an insurgency to succeed they almost always need two things. Support from outside in terms of weapons and supplies and a base that cannot be attacked, normally across a border. Even with those two things it is historically unlikely they will succeed.
*Sigh.* I know what Fascism is, JD. My post was a facetious spin on AR's earlier screed.
“As for Iraqis saying in polls that things are better: better than what?”
The poll I cited didn't have Iraqis saying things were “better”, they said things were “quite good” or “very good”. “Good” certainly is a vague term, but not a less relative than “better”. It is true, however, that many more Iraqis say things are going “good” than they said in 2007, which is why we can say that things are “better”.
“It also should be obvious that telling a pollster things are better in 2008 or 2009 than they were in 2005 or 2006 does not mean Iraqis think the invasion and occupation itself was a good thing”
Absolutely. And the numbers in the poll I linked to point that out. The majority think that is was bad that the US invaded Iraq (although it is not an overwhelming majority), and I agree with them. But that is irrelevant to the question of whether the surge has improved the situation or not.
Care to make a list of Insurgencies that have been defeated by outsiders since the end of WWII, hell that have been defeated period that did not involve genocide…
Hell, if you have AK47, RPGs, Semtex and the passive support of the local population an insurgency can run on for decades on end… see Palestine, Lebanon, Vietnam, Algeria, East Timor, Sri Lanka ( that one seems to be ending in a nice little genocide).
Not only did we fund the Iraqis, we also sold weapons to the Iranians…
The majority think that is was bad that the US invaded Iraq (although it is not an overwhelming majority), and I agree with them. But that is irrelevant to the question of whether the surge has improved the situation or not.
Sounds reasonable, but here's the problem I have with that statement: The surge was intended as a solution to a problem that the U.S. created in the first place. So, to my way of thinking. what we did in the surge was clean up the mess we made. (Although we didn't even really do that, but that's what the idea behind the surge was about.) Now, if the Bush administration had been honest about this point, it would have been one thing. Cleaning up your mess is generally considered highly appropriate and desirable. But the Bush administration did something completely different. It claimed that, by reducing the level of violence, the surge enabled the U.S. to succeed in its mission in Iraq — or, put slightly differently, the Bush administration claimed that the surge allowed the U.S. to win the war, to declare victory.
That is what I find so offensive. That, and the unseemly credit-hogging by the Bush administration on behalf of the U.S. military, which completely ignored the fact that there would not have been, could not have been, a surge, if Sunni tribal leaders had not decided it served their interests to cooperate with the U.S. military. And if I'm remembering correctly, the latter preceded the former; i.e., the idea for the surge grew in part out of the Sunni tribal leaders having put out feelers to the U.S. military. And, in addition, a third reality that the Bush administration ignored was the extent to which the sectarian violence had already succeeded in creating ethnically “pure” neighborhoods in which everyone who was not part of the desired group had already been killed or forced to flee.
“But the Bush administration did something completely different. It claimed that, by reducing the level of violence, the surge enabled the U.S. to succeed in its mission in Iraq”
I would say that the surge helped (along with other conditions on the ground as you noted) bring us much closer to success in our mission, which I would define as overthrowing a tyrannical regime which we thought had WMDs (an inexcusable intelligence mistake, the blame for which is shared by the Bush administration, the intelligence community, the media, and let's not forget Saddam himself whose own generals thought he had the stuff) and replacing it with a stable democracy. However, the cost of this “success” has been much greater than what was anticipated, as I think I've heard even the Bush administration say. So, even if we say that we have succeeded or are close to succeeding in Iraq, that doesn't necessarily mean that it was worth the cost, which is why I think the war was a mistake even while I would agree with your unnamed Bush administration official that we are close to something resembling success now.
So, I'm guess you'd phrase things a bit differently, and maybe you think we are farther away from “success” than I do, but in general I don't think we're too far apart on the question of whether the Iraq war was a mistake.
“or, put slightly differently, the Bush administration claimed that the surge allowed the U.S. to win the war, to declare victory.”
Personally, questions of “win” or “victory” sound pretty shallow to me, as I'm guessing you'd agree by your tone. Things aren't that black and white. So, yes, to the extend that a government official is claiming “victory”, or the extent that the Bush administration claims any credit for doing anything other than successful damage control, it is unwarranted. My argument is just that the damage control known as the surge has been successful so far and has worked as advertised, contrary to your post.
(on a side note: our military personnel–not the administration–has earned the right to call their efforts “victorious” if they so choose. They are victors insofar as they have overcome the monumental challenges that they were called upon to face, regardless of our debate about whether the war itself was justified or worth the cost. Anyway, this is tangential to our discussion, but I wanted to be clear about that).
Austin,
I think we need to differentiate between hating America and hating the American government policies.
Kathy has obviously been very critical of America's foreign policy, as have I. Perhaps more than is necessary in your view. But the government is not America. One can love America without liking its government's policies.
Conservatives criticize government policies all the time when it comes to domestic issues, and I would assume that conservatives do not believe themselves to hate America for doing so. Yet conservatives have a completely different set of standards when it comes to foreign policy. A liberal/progressive (or even paleoconservative or libertarian) who criticizes foreign policy with as much passion as a conservative who criticizes domestic policy is deemed to hate America. The knee-jerk adultation of government by conservatives whenever it comes to the military or foreign policy is baffling considering how much they claim to support smaller government.
Ironically, when it comes to domestic policies, Kathy has actually been very supportive of the government (too much, in my opinion). I suppose, by your standards, Kathy must really love America when it comes to domestic issues.
Government is government.
“Who are you to judge what is “true and actual progress” for over 28 million Iraqis? How can you even pretend to know such a thing?” (to Austin Roth).
Some of us have actually been there, Kathy. I've spent 3 years of my life there. I can tell you without bias that the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly enjoying that very progress. They like it. They know that there is much remaining to do to bring Iraq up to a productive nation in the world economy. They also feel that, once we leave, it will most likely get better. That's why the populace wants us to withdraw.
Should I presume that you will not accept the above description since it does not support your liberal agenda? I hope that is not the case.
“*Sigh.* I know what Fascism is, JD. My post was a facetious spin…”
My bad, Vera. Wasn't attempting to insult your intelligence. It's easy to get in “corrective mode” when I see many others use illogical arguments and misuse words for their own spin. Sorry again.
“But the Bush administration did something completely different. It claimed that, by reducing the level of violence, the surge enabled the U.S. to succeed in its mission in Iraq”
This is much like the Obama Administration claiming that it is waiting for the elections in Kabul to go through prior to making a decision on more troops. That decision has already been made. They are postponing that decision's public release until after AMERICAN elections. Both Bush and Obama are wrong in that tactic. It's dishonest. Politics cannot and should not be a part of ANY decision dealing with our troops. We supposedly learned that lesson in Vietnam. But the American attention span being short, perhaps they wish to learn that lesson again. I won't put up with that. None of us should.
nic -
Criticizing the government or its policies is one thing, and quite fair game; claiming every ill in the world and every bomb that goes off is America's fault is quite another. It is the latter that she engages in, and that I object to, and that I take issue with.
Criticizing the government or its policies is one thing, and quite fair game; claiming every ill in the world and every bomb that goes off is America's fault is quite another. It is the latter that she engages in, and that I object to, and that I take issue with.
Your claim that I “claim every ill in the world and every bomb that goes off is America's fault” is clearly nonsense. At best, it's a gross exaggeration; at worst, it's a deliberate, knowing falsehood. I criticize U.S. government policies that in my view are wrong and/or harmful and therefore need to be criticized, and I hold the U.S. responsible for the “bombs that go off” when the U.S. is in fact responsible for the conditions and circumstances that led to the bombs going off.
As it happens, the U.S. is actually responsible, to varying degrees, for much of the bad stuff that goes on in the world because our foreign policy since the end of World War II has been, in general, abysmal. We can argue over specific policies and whether they are helpful or harmful, but what we cannot do is support the idea of “American exceptionalism,” and then claim that we are not to blame for the negative effects of our own policies and actions. We cannot simultaneously acknowledge and laud the fact that the U.S. has global economic and military dominance in the world and that it should ever be so and that our global policies should be directed toward maintaining and increasing that dominance, and insist that our global dominance has no adverse effects at all on the rest of the world. You and others like you want to believe that everything we do in the world is good for the world, that we're the indispensable nation, that we're a beacon of freedom and enlightenment, that we're that shining city on the hill — but then when you see evidence that this is, at the least, not entirely true, you bitterly and angrily blame and attack the messengers.
You cannot have it both ways, AR. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. If you want to believe that the U.S. is the most important nation in the world and that it is our right to act in the world in pursuit of our interests regardless of the consequences for others, then you cannot logically or justifiably or rationally claim that when bad things happen on our watch, and those bad things are pointed out, that constitutes “blaming America first” or “blaming America for everything bad that happens.” You want America to BE first in the world, while rejecting all of the unwelcome consequences of being first in the world. That's a ridiculous, untenable position, and it's intellectually dishonest of you to blame me for pointing it out.
As a closing note, I would like to request that you stop referring to me in this comments section as “SHE.” I read and contribute to these comments, as you may be aware. I am here. Please do not refer to me in the third person.
Thank you.
Should I presume that you will not accept the above description since it does not support your liberal agenda? I hope that is not the case.
Despite the laughable hypocrisy of your snark, I will say that I do accept the validity of your own direct observations and perceptions in Iraq. But I do have a couple of caveats.
First, unless you have had personal conversations with all 28 million -plus Iraqis, you cannot say that “the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly enjoying that very progress.” How many ordinary Iraqis (meaning, Iraqis not part of the ruling class or directly associated with the U.S. military) that you know or have spoken with one on one have told you Iraq has made progress because of the U.S. presence, and that they “like” and are “enjoying that very progress”? Did you speak to these Iraqis in their own language (Arabic, I assume)? Do you think they might have been telling you what they thought you wanted to hear?
Please understand: I am not trying to tell you you're lying or not being honest when I ask these questions. I am merely trying to find out if you have considered them in weighing what Iraqis have told you and what you have observed.
My second caveat is that, although the Iraqis you met and spoke with may very well think Iraq has made progress under U.S. occupation and be enjoying it, you are only one person. Many other observers — including other Americans like yourself who have served in Iraq — have come away with impressions and perceptions quite different from yours. Do you accept the validity of their descriptions?
First, if I am responding to someone else about you or posts you have made, then talking about you in the third person is the correct voice. It is incorrect to talk at you directly in the third person, or about oneself in the third person, but your objecting to the use of 'she' to refer to you when discussing you with someone else is just ignorant.
Second, your stated position that I hold the U.S. responsible for the “bombs that go off” is exactly what I am talking about. Do you blame the US for 9/11 therefore? Do you excuse any and all killings of innocent, third-party civilians by terrorists pissed at US policy as justifiable? Your statement sure seems to say you do, and absolutely justifies my criticism of your being anti-American.
You seem to only see the bad that America has indeed done, and still does, but never the good, and you do so while overlooking or even as you just did justifying the bad that others do as 'understandable'. I find that reprehensible, and again anti-America.
Finally, do I want America to have global economic and military dominance, be the indispensable nation, a beacon of freedom and enlightenment, and a shining city on the hill? You bet. It sure beats giving that title away freely to Russia or China or India (or Iran).
Do I think we are perfect? Hell no. But overall we are a damn sight better than the others you seem to feel are morally superior to us. You cannot expect perfection; we do not live in a world of saints, and I look at the ledger overall as America being a positive, not negative, net influence on world affairs.
I agree with most of the above, and especially the last paragraph. The one thing I would dispute is your reference to the surge having enabled us to achieve the goal of a stable democracy in Iraq. Iraq is anything but a democracy, much less a stable one. (Although it's hard to see how democracy can even be democracy in the absence of stability.)
… your objecting to the use of 'she' to refer to you when discussing you with someone else is just ignorant.
The above is rude and boorish in tone and inaccurate in substance. Take a look at nicrivera's comment addressed to you, concerning me, the first line of which begins, “I think we need to differentiate…” You will notice that nicrivera refers to me throughout that comment by my given name. I think that must have been a deliberate choice, because I just checked, and I did not see the personal pronoun “she” anywhere. That is a (maybe not the only, but *a*) respectful way to refer to a specific third person when that third person is privy to the discussion. Although I haven't told nicrivera thus far, I will say now that I appreciate it. It's actually a courtesy I might not have noticed if I had not seen the opposite treatment.
I indeed misunderstood the intent of your comment, as you did my initial use of 'she'. I meant no disrespect at all, as as I stated, it was perfectly grammatically correct. I was replying to nic, as you said, and he had already identified who we were talking about (you), so I considered the use of your proper name again as redundant and not necessary. I was not trying to snub you at all. That is why I could not for the life of me understand what tense other than third person you wanted me to use.
“You cannot expect perfection; we do not live in a world of saints, and I look at the ledger overall as America being a positive, not negative, net influence on world affairs.”
Since the 1960s, the radicalized Left has not only expected perfection (as it defines) of the USA, but has been obscessed with fault-finding and disparaging the USA (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the West; this is a Western, not only a US, phenemenon). It is pathogical — diseased, self-loathing variation of nihilistic tendencies — by definition.
That's not quite right…
Most of us who are critical of the US watch the media produced by the US and assumed that it reflected reality, when we got a little older we did a compare and contrast essay in our minds. Rarely if ever did the reality match the propaganda, once in a blue moon it was better, but most of the time it didn't even come close to it.
The propagandist told us that the US was in favor of peace, democracy and prosperity. In reality, we have overthrown Democratic regimes (Mossadeq, Arbenz, Sukarno, Allende, etc..)like they were going out of style, we have supported more Dictatorships (Shah of Iran, Saudi Royalty, Mubarak, Pinochet, Franco, Salazar, Somoza, the Greek Colonels ) than I care to name (pretty much any non-communist mass murdering scumbag that has walked on the face of this earth in the last fifty years), we have started more wars(Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice, Afghanistan twice, Granada, Panama ) than any other country in the last fifty years and our economic policies where they have been exported (Latin America & other third world countries) have been a humanitarian disaster.
So much for Democracy, Prosperity and Peace.
The only upside that I can see, is that our economic elites are in the process of imposing all those fine policies upon the US population.
“First, unless you have had personal conversations with all 28 million -plus Iraqis, you cannot say that “the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly enjoying that very progress.” How many ordinary Iraqis (meaning, Iraqis not part of the ruling class or directly associated with the U.S. military) that you know or have spoken with one on one have told you Iraq has made progress because of the U.S. presence, and that they “like” and are “enjoying that very progress”? “
Yes, Yes, and yes.
I was not in contact with the “ruling class”, Kathy. I leave that to the State Department and the Generals.
Everyday Iraqis LIKE their prospects. They don't like the current situation and are ready for us to leave., but they acknowledge our contributions.
You did not answer my question. Read the part of my quote you pasted, above, again, then read your reply. It doesn't follow.