It is time to assess the "Surge"

How you look at the Surge and what it has or has not accomplished is mainly a function of whether or not you see a point in having American troops secure the Iraqi population. What the serge seems to have bought is a bunch of tactical successes. If I am not totally wrong the number of large car bombs seems to have gone down. People praise the addition of checkpoints. And some safety sprouted. But there is a rotten core here and it's the Iraqi Government. All those purple fingers didn't add up to as much as we might have been led to believe. The Sunnis boycotted and thoroughly screwed themselves. Information has come out that accuses Iran of diving in with all sorts of covert and overt manipulation of that pivotal election. Now this is in January 2005 right before Bush's post election State of the Union. All those gleeful Republicans and their purple fingers.

The "surge" is basically an admission of failure of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz. Those neocons who drank all the cool-aid and couldn't fathom a hostile or divided Iraqi population. The mission that Gen. Petreaus set out to accomplish was to secure the popluation from secterian violence and militias and the terrorists. My Dad called me on Friday and said so it looks like the Surge is working. He is confident. I'm going to ask him why . So is the Surge working? " of course it is working you have more soldiers in the more neighborhoods doing more patrols finding more bombs and killing more insurgents. We have great soldiers and small unit leaders that I will NEVER bet against. So it seems true that we have slowed the violence. But I am not sure of this and I will call my readership to check out the Iraq index, a statistical compilation of economic, public opinion, and security data.

Now because this is kind of dense I recomend that you just look at the graphs and charts to get a feel for how we are doing over there. What I get from the index is that things are improving. Slightly. So for that slight improvement we must begin to look at the long term costs of keeping it up. The consideration foremost in my mind is the idea that we are about to break the Army. The U.S. Army may begin to fall apart from the strain. Alread I am hearing that if the Surge is extended much more we will begin to shed career N.C.O.'s and officers at a rate that would take decades for the U.S. Army to recover from. Because Rumsfield and co. refuesed to expand the Army and Marines years ago because they were dead certain that we needed more precision guided munitions rather that squads and platoons we are at this terrible crossroad. If we pull back troops to save the Army we risk the lives of Iraqis. If we stay longer to give even more time to the pathetic Maliki government we may ruin the Army. This is not an easy calculation to make. Ideas keep popping into my head that are horrible. Arrest Maliki install Iyad allawi and in the process take on the Mahdi Army in the hopes of shaping a positive end state. Other than that we have to accept the horrible inept corrupt theocratic Iraq we have made and wait for all the nice normal urban secular Sunni citizens to be ethnically cleansed.
It's yucky all around. But I can garuntee that George W. Bush will do his best to tie the hands of the next President before he leaves office. Because he is a sick, sick man.
But before you make up your mind watch the video that is attached to this story in the New York Times (regestration required, it's free). If that little Iraqi girl doesn't melt your heart then you're probably one of those GOP invasion hawks that now want to blame this whole mess on the ungrateful Iraqis. In which case you are an ass.

Love,
Chris