The Surge is Irrelevant: What W and the Pentagon don't want you to realize
A hat tip to my friends at RochesterTurning for catching that the military began to block Think Progress
shortly after it published an op-ed by General John Battiste that the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times refused to run. (link
) What was that it that a lifelong Republican and retired General said to get his voice censored by the military? Could it be the part that says "64 percent of conservative analysts feel the so-called "surge" in Iraq is having no impact, or a negative effect
"? Or perhaps it is when he says that he is "outraged that elected officials of my own party do not comprehend the predicament we are in with a strategy in the Middle East that lacks focus and is all but relying on the military to solve the diplomatic, political, and economic Rubik’s Cube that defines Iraq."
Maybe it is the part where he says if we continue the surge we will break the army and other armed services? Think Progress wrote that this is the likely paragraph that led to the ban:
The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources–those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery.
Whatever the reason for the censorship, the underlying truth is one that all the White House happy talk about the success of the "surge" in Iraq (which we all know is based on cooked up statistics anyway) is powerless to address. And that truth is that the surge really does none of the things that need to be done in Iraq: diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery.
And General Battiste isn't the only person to realize this. Aside from the majority of conservative analysts (yes conservative analysts!!) that General Battiste mentioned in his op-ed, another notable voice that has pointed this out recently is General Wesley Clark. And I think General Clark made the point more even forcefully than General Battiste. In a keynote address at the YearlyKos convention (link ), here are some key grafs of what General Clark said:
But what we've got to do is create not an argument in the United States over the troops or their tactics, but raise the debate to the administration's strategies and policies in this region.
The military's part of the solution. It's not the answer. The answer's the politics. ....
And so, we're not going to solve this problem unless we work it at the diplomatic level and that means we've got to stop isolating people we disagree with and start engaging those people.
When we argue about troops, what we're doing is we're playing on George Bush's home court. That's what he likes. ....
We need your help. We need you to hammer on the theme of the strategy and the policies. Stop Isolating people we disagree with. Start engaging. Come out with some real American leadership instead of simply leading by sending men and women in uniform into combat.
So when we say the surge is failing and they try to turn that into a criticism of the troops, we need to turn in back and say it is the failure of the President's leadership that is the issue. The Iraq Study Group pointed out a sane approach that most of us thought even someone as stubborn as George W. Bush would recognize as a sane option in Iraq. Their recommendations, while far from perfect in my estimation, included the diplomatic and other efforts that sane people everywhere are now again recommending. (pdf link to their recommendations here ) Yet, to our amazement, and somewhat to our horror, Bush, ever the petulant
child, basically thumbed his nose at their recommendations and, with the help of serial liar Fred Kagan
, came up with his own stupid plan, insisting all along that he was a visionary
rather than a petulant child.
Again, to put it in a nutshell, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the surge is working or not, because the surge itself is irrelevant. The lies cooked up by the White House in an effort to pretend the surge is working were a complete waste of time. That is because sending troops into battle is no substitute for diplomacy, political reconciliation, economic recovery or for talking to one's enemies.
Comments :
Excellent work again, Mike.
You've been on fire lately. One of the frustrating things about the debate over American involvement in Iraq has been the rapidly shifting goalposts in terms of whose authority we're supposed to trust to make these decisions, whether it's the Iraq government, the U.S. Administration, the Pentagon, the generals, the already-forgotten War Tsar... who knows anymore. And of course, who we trust tends to fall with whoever at a particular time is pushing for a surge or pulling for a withdrawal, depending on your flavor. It's like we're playing a no-stakes game of checkers, with horrifying repercussions for people in another part of the world.
But it doesn't help that the people we want to trust are so often peddling a transparently political, irresponsible strategy (and I'm sure people on the other side feel the same way about Democrats). What remains to see is how they attempt to claim credibility after proposing one set of experts after another, then drop them when the experts' opinions turn against them. Those who think Bush is still a visionary leader are dwindling.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Thanks Pico!
I'm hoping that all the talk we hear about an imminent attack on Iran turns out to be wrong. I think Bush will lose the surge discussion in the hearts and minds of the American people unless he does something like invade Iran, and then I'm not sure what will happen. But I'm pretty sure things will be even worse than they are now.
Invading Iran would be the absolute WORST thing Bush could do.
Invading iran would be the absolute worst thing that Bush could do, especially at this point in time. He's already made an already-volatile situation in the mid-east worse as it is. Let's get out of the mideast before anymore damage is done.
Axis of Evil review-
recall Bush's fiery "Axis of Evil" speech?
emphasis added
How's that turned out?
We invaded Iraq and it's now Al Qaeda's primary training ground and a cash crop to boot. We've petulantly threatened Iran. They remain less than friendly. And North Korea?
story
That sounds positive. Strangely enough the one success had nothing to do with the military and everything to do with diplomacy.
It's almost as if there were a message there about the efficacy of substituting military power for sensible foreign power...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
hahaha
Indeed!
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Very good piece
It is really remarkable how there seems to be different debates regarding Iraq.
There is the very public debate in which the Right things everything is sunny in Iraq and where even bad news is really good news and the Left thinks that nothing good comes out of Iraq.
And then you have the real story. The professionals are saying that IT DOESN'T MATTER. They are looking for ways to restructure our presence in the Middle East so that we could actually regain the influence we should have there, an influence that continues to wane due to Administration intransigence.
But it just doesn't seem to much matter to this Administration. They plod on despite what the professionals say. And they push their message to their true beilevers who embrace this ideology that the "experts" are agenda driven hacks hell bent on bringing down the Administration.
Over at Volokh they had an interesting post
about an article that suggests that Israel was against the invasion of Iraq 
That's right. Israel, our critical ally in the region was AGAINST our invasion...
But they ignored those concerns so they could begin their quest to achieve a New Middle Eastern Order starting with the weak sister that was Iraq at the time.
When the historians look back on this Administration they will, IMO, come to the conclusion that their own hubris and unwillingness to consider opposing arguments was their undoing.
Hadn't seen that piece on Israel
Makes sense, though -- it wasn't hard to predict that toppling Saddam would strengthen Iran.
Of course the military escalation is useless without political progress, but I think there's an increased realization even within the WH that we can't just kill all the bad guys to create a stable Iraq.
Or maybe I'm just being optimistic and the real plan is to string everyone along with turning more corners until the inevitable withdrawal can be spun as the Democrats stabbing the troops in the back and losing the war.
Always nice to hear from you, by the way.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Hey Brendan
Always good to hear from you as well. I've been bouncing between blogs. RedState is getting a little loony these days. It really isn't even much fun to have debates there now as a fairly small group of people that just attack anyone who doesn't agree with them.
I really do think that the Administration has to be coming to grips with the notion that this isn't a War that can be won.
So I think they will be looking for their own variation of a "Peace With Honor" solution. I don't think that they have any sinister intent by doing so. Just human nature to want to say "It's not my fault".
It is notable to see that we as a nation really haven't evolved from the Victory by Body Count view of war. It simply doesn't work in assymetric warfare. Each person we kill is quickly replaced by someone else and each relatively innocent person killed adds 3 more people to the insurgency.
One of the reasons why I really like Obama is that his foreign policies view seems to take into account how our actions will be perceived by other nations. That doesn't mean we should allow the world to dictate to us what we should do. But it does mean that we should understand that other peoples of the world do not inherently trust our intentions and we cannot expect that they will.
Hey Flyer!
I didn't know you've been around SC for so long. Good to hear from you though. I've always read with interest your stuff over at RS and agree with you there. I drop by there still sometimes to see if they've evolved from the "If you disagree with us you're stupid/incoherent/below us/can't read" commentary. Although there are some good posters over there, I'm afraid its getting worse.
Perhaps we'll see more from you here in the future?
http://wealthweekly.blogspot.com
Wii FC:2805-8311-8040-2678
Brawl: 2277-7051-2186
I will try to come by more frequently.
The only gripe I have with Swords Cross is that the majority of the content seems to be open threads, although I have a tendency to miss a lot of the non-promoted diaries because of the format.
You guys do seem to have a pretty good group of people.
Yeah, we're trying to encourage people
to move discussions from the loooooong threads to separate diaries. We're working on it =)
Agree with you on Obama. I hope he gets the chance to show what he can do.
(By the way, not sure if you've been there already but you might also like The Forvm
as far as blogs go.)
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Thanks Brendon
Looks interesting.
I can say that interview
they link to was just downright depressing.