Surge working? Apparently not

[Meemer]

Seeing and reading the Sadr thread and reading the word surge got me to bring this column here from WaPo. It's an interesting read on the 'surge' and why it is not working as intended and as promised by GW himself.

Defining Victory Downward
No, the surge was not a success.

By Michael Kinsley
Thursday, February 21, 2008; 2:30 PM

Why was President Bush's decision more than a year ago to send another 30,000 troops to Iraq called "the surge"? I don't know who invented this label, but the word "surge" evokes images of the sea: a wave that sweeps in, and then sweeps back out again. The second part was crucial. What made the surge different from your ordinary troop deployment was that it was temporary. In fact, the surge was presented as part of a larger plan for troop withdrawal.

It was also, implicitly, part of a deal between Bush and the majority of Americans, who want out. The deal was: just let me have a few more soldiers to get Baghdad under control, and then everybody, or almost everybody, can pack up and come home.

In other words: you have to increase the troops in order to reduce them. This is so perverse on its face that it begins to sound zen-like and brilliant, like something out of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." And in General David Petraeus, the administration conjured up its own Sun Tzu, a brilliant military strategist.

It is now widely considered beyond dispute that Bush has won his gamble. The surge was a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They're all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled.

Skepticism seems like sour grapes. If you opposed the surge, you have two choices. One is to admit that you were wrong, wrong wrong. The other is to sound as if you resent all the good news and remain eager for disaster. Too many opponents of the war have chosen option two.

But we needn't quarrel about all this, or deny the reality of the good news, to say that at the very least, the surge has not worked yet. The test is simple, and built into the concept of a surge: Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? And the answer is no.

In fact, President Bush laid down the standard of success when he announced the surge more than a year ago: "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home." At the time, there were about 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Bush proposed to add up to 20,000 more troops. Although Bush never made any official promises about a timetable, the surge was generally described as lasting six to eight months.

By last summer the surge had actually added closer to 30,000 troops, making the total American troop count about 160,000. Today, there are still more than 150,000 American troops in Iraq. The official plan has been to get that number back down to 130,000 by July, and then to keep on going so that there would be about 100,000 American troops in Iraq by the time Bush leaves office.

Just lately, though, General Petraeus has come up with another zen-like idea: he calls it a "pause." And the administration has signed on, meaning that the total number of American troops in Iraq will remain at 130,000 for an undetermined period.

So the best that we can hope for, in terms of American troops risking their lives in Iraq, is that there will be just as many in July -- and probably in January, when Bush leaves office -- as there were a year ago. The surge will have surged in and surged out, leaving us back where we started. Maybe the situation in Baghdad, or all of Iraq, will have improved. But apparently it won't have improved enough to risk an actual reduction in the American troop commitment.

And consider how modest the administration's standard of success has become. Can there be any doubt that they would go for a reduction to 100,000 troops -- and claim victory -- if they had any confidence at all that the gains they brag about would hold at that level of support? The proper comparison isn't to the situation a year ago. It's to the situation before we got there. Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its "debaathification" campaign so that Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and that "only" 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium.

You might have several words to describe this situation, but "success" would not be one of them.

 

[Gunny]

Seeing and reading the Sadr thread and reading the word surge got me to bring this column here from WaPo. It's an interesting read on the 'surge' and why it is not working as intended and as promised by GW himself.

Of course the Washinton Post would come up with some convoluted crap "why not" even when all indicators point the other direction.

They know they've always got someone to spread the manure.

 

[rayboyusmc]

So has the surge made just Baghdad or the whole country more secure? If only Baghdad, then how many more troops have to be surged to secure the whole country?

I will believe in its success when I see the Iraqis taking over more of their security and government and the number of our troops begin reduced.

If this takes another 2,3 or 4 years, then the surge didn't work as it was promised.

 

[JimH52]

Of course the Washinton Post would come up with some convoluted crap "why not" even when all indicators point the other direction.

They know they've always got someone to spread the manure.

Is there any news organization, besides FOX which calls the WH for news stories, that is not out to get bush?

You are so predictable!

 

[Lookout]

Seeing and reading the Sadr thread and reading the word surge got me to bring this column here from WaPo. It's an interesting read on the 'surge' and why it is not working as intended and as promised by GW himself.

Careful dude, you could be heading for the conspiracy zone!!

Oh, thats right, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. you're safe.

 

[eots]

So has the surge made just Baghdad or the whole country more secure? If only Baghdad, then how many more troops have to be surged to secure the whole country?

I will believe in its success when I see the Iraqis taking over more of their security and government and the number of our troops begin reduced.

If this takes another 2,3 or 4 years, then the surge didn't work as it was promised.

the surge is only phase one.. phase 2 of McCain's brilliant and strategic plan tentatively call the big shove
its kind of beyond most people with out highest levels of military strategy but in lay mens terms it means to lower the recruiting standards ,instituting compulsory services ,extending tours...and sending many more young men and woman to be killed and maimed brining much needed security to all of Iraq and beyond

 

[rayboyusmc]

but in lay mens terms it means to lower the recruiting standards ,instituting compulsory services ,extending tours...and sending many more young men and woman to be killed and maimed brining much needed security to all of Iraq and beyond

Well now that it is explained like that, it makes more sense.

The Bush Children will need to get practice sending our kids off to die. Make a family fuckking thing.

I'm sure the twins will drink to that.

 

[Gunny]

Is there any news organization, besides FOX which calls the WH for news stories, that is not out to get bush?

You are so predictable!

Talking out your ass again, I see. I trust NO single media outlet. Some are less trustworthy than others ... they NYT and WP being atop that list.

I believe I have posted ONE (count all of 'em) story from Fox News on this board, nor do I use it as a source for news on a regular basis. You'll find most of the articles I post from Yahoo, CNN, MSNBC and the BBC.

But DO try again.

 

[Gunny]

Careful dude, you could be heading for the conspiracy zone!!

Oh, thats right, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. you're safe.

Keep it up and YOU won't be.

 

[jreeves]

Seeing and reading the Sadr thread and reading the word surge got me to bring this column here from WaPo. It's an interesting read on the 'surge' and why it is not working as intended and as promised by GW himself.

Liberals like to have an ever changing definition of success. One minute it's lives lost, then it's troops at home.....next it will be military equipment not destroyed...or less tire tracks in the sand....LOL

 

[Dr Grump]

Liberals like to have an ever changing definition of success. One minute it's lives lost, then it's troops at home.....next it will be military equipment not destroyed...or less tire tracks in the sand....LOL

No liberals I have met have changed the definition. To succeed in Iraq would be to have a govt and social structure in place that can take care of itself and have no acts of terrorism. That is it.

 

[maineman]

Liberals like to have an ever changing definition of success. One minute it's lives lost, then it's troops at home.....next it will be military equipment not destroyed...or less tire tracks in the sand....LOL

the surge was always designed to do one thing: create enough peaceful "space" for Iraqi politicians to accomplish the compromises necessary to form a multicultural democracy. Our military succeeded in creating the "space". The Iraqi politicians have failed to uphold their end of the bargain.

another instance of the failed vision of the PNAC assholes who thought that creating a jeffersonian democracy blossoming like crocuses on the banks of the Euphrates was a reasonable task for the US military.

 

[Gunny]

No liberals I have met have changed the definition. To succeed in Iraq would be to have a govt and social structure in place that can take care of itself and have no acts of terrorism. That is it.

No reason to continually change it if you make it an impossible goal to begin with, eh?

 

[Gunny]

the surge was always designed to do one thing: create enough peaceful "space" for Iraqi politicians to accomplish the compromises necessary to form a multicultural democracy. Our military succeeded in creating the "space". The Iraqi politicians have failed to uphold their end of the bargain.

another instance of the failed vision of the PNAC assholes who thought that creating a jeffersonian democracy blossoming like crocuses on the banks of the Euphrates was a reasonable task for the US military.

I don't recall seeing at any point in the last 18 years anyone claim the military could or would establish a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq.

 

[maineman]

I don't recall seeing at any point in the last 18 years anyone claim the military could or would establish a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq.

what exactly are we hoping that the shiites and sunnnis and kurds living within the boundaries of Iraq are going to create? what was the surge designed to have those politicians create? another sunni baathist dictatorship? a shiite theocracy?

 

[Gunny]

what exactly are we hoping that the shiites and sunnnis and kurds living within the boundaries of Iraq are going to create? what was the surge designed to have those politicians create? another sunni baathist dictatorship? a shiite theocracy?

We removed a despot from power. The government of Iraq was elected by the people of Iraq.

What the people of Iraq choose as their form of government is their business.

 

[maineman]

We removed a despot from power. The government of Iraq was elected by the people of Iraq.

What the people of Iraq choose as their form of government is their business.

great. then let's get the fuck out and let them get on with it!

 

[rayboyusmc]

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush's much-heralded "surge," Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence.

My guide, a thirty-one-year-old named Osama who grew up in Dora, points to shops he used to go to, now abandoned or destroyed: a barbershop, a hardware store. Since the U.S. occupation began, Osama has watched civil war turn the streets where he grew up into an ethnic killing field. After the fall of Saddam, the Americans allowed looters and gangs to take over the streets, and Iraqi security forces were stripped of their jobs. The Mahdi Army, the powerful Shiite paramilitary force led by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, took advantage of the power shift to retaliate in areas such as Dora, where Shiites had been driven from their homes. Shiite forces tried to cleanse the district of Sunni families like Osama's, burning or confiscating their homes and torturing or killing those who refused to leave.

"The Mahdi Army was killing people here," Osama says, pointing to a now-destroyed Shiite mosque that in earlier times had been a cafe and before that an office for Saddam's Baath Party. Later, driving in the nearby district of Baya, Osama shows me a gas station. "They killed my uncle here. He didn't accept to leave. Twenty guys came to his house, the women were screaming. He ran to the back, but they caught him, tortured him and killed him." Under siege by Shiite militias and the U.S. military, who viewed Sunnis as Saddam supporters, and largely cut out of the Shiite-dominated government, many Sunnis joined the resistance. Others turned to Al Qaeda and other jihadists for protection.

Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening."

At least 80,000 men across Iraq are now employed by the Americans as ISVs. Nearly all are Sunnis, with the exception of a few thousand Shiites. Operating as a contractor, Osama runs 300 of these new militiamen, former resistance fighters whom the U.S. now counts as allies because they are cashing our checks. The Americans pay Osama once a month; he in turn provides his men with uniforms and pays them ten dollars a day to man checkpoints in the Dora district — a paltry sum even by Iraqi standards. A former contractor for KBR, Osama is now running an armed network on behalf of the United States government. "We use our own guns," he tells me, expressing regret that his units have not been able to obtain the heavy-caliber machine guns brandished by other Sunni militias.

The American forces responsible for overseeing "volunteer" militias like Osama's have no illusions about their loyalty. "The only reason anything works or anybody deals with us is because we give them money," says a young Army intelligence officer. The 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, which patrols Osama's territory, is handing out $32 million to Iraqis in the district, including $6 million to build the towering walls that, in the words of one U.S. officer, serve only to "make Iraqis more divided than they already are." In districts like Dora, the strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight. All told, the U.S. is now backing more than 600,000 Iraqi men in the security sector — more than half the number Saddam had at the height of his power. With the ISVs in place, the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. "Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," as U.S. strategists like to say. David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calls it "balancing competing armed interest groups."


But loyalty that can be purchased is by its very nature fickle. Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge/print

 

[Dr Grump]

No reason to continually change it if you make it an impossible goal to begin with, eh?

Then what was/is the point? Iraq shall forever have acts of terrorism? Unstable govt? Be unable to look after itself? If these things were known BEFORE the invasion then surely the Bush admin were negligent in getting involved in the first place??

 

[midcan5]

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick02252008.html

"A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in a tent filled with Shia pilgrims walking to one of their holiest shrines south of Baghdad, killing at least 40 of them and wounding 60.

The attack shows that al-Qa'ida has restarted its bombings of Shia Iraqis, whom it sees as heretics, and remains capable of launching numerous suicide attacks on the same day in different parts of Iraq.

The claim by the US military of a significant drop in violence in Iraq is being dented by a rise in sectarian killings and by the Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan last Thursday in pursuit of Turkish Kurd PKK guerrillas."