More Spin On The Surge

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University, wrote in the WaPo the other day that the surge is basically a failure….its all smoke and mirrors you see….and he proceeds into the new and improved liberal talking point these days – “but we’re still failing because the political situation isn’t all that good!”

Nevermind that a year ago it was all about the violence and the “civil war”. Now its all about the politics. These people will never be happy until the United States ultimately fails:

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: “We’re paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?”

In short, the surge has done nothing to overturn former secretary of state Colin Powell’s now-famous “Pottery Barn” rule: Iraq is irretrievably broken, and we own it. To say that any amount of “kicking ass” will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of failure.

I love that. The Sunni’s have turned against AQ because we are paying them. That’s the only reason! Not because they brutalized the Sunni’s and turned against their host. No, its because of the big bad ole US of A.

And putting in a cherry picked quote from one military member does not make your point Andrew.

The fact remains Andrew has been against the war from the start, he lost his son in the war and most obviously harbors some ill will toward the war, understandably so. But don’t spin the facts to make a point that you just can’t get over. He wants us to just deal with failure. Nevermind that this would mean giving al-Qaeda a whole nation from which to base attacks from, plus give them the revenue of a whole country. Nevermind the unimaginable horror the people of that nation would face akin to Pol Pot. Nevermind that the whole world would once again know that we are indeed nothing but a paper tiger, who run when the going gets tough.

He should be ashamed of himself.

Just learn to deal with the consequences of failure! Disgusting.

For a more well balanced and reasonable take on the war check out this article by Frederick W. Kagan, Jack Keane and Michael O’Hanlon in the same paper:

Iraq’s parliament this month passed a new de-Baathification bill, which awaits only expected approval by the five-member presidency council before becoming law. Much remains to be done, but this is an important step toward political reconciliation — and it further strengthens the case for America to remain committed to its crucial mission in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

~~~

The reformed de-Baathification legislation is one of half a dozen key political issues codified into American law last year by President Bush and Congress as “benchmarks” we expected Iraqi leaders to address. Other matters so identified are hydrocarbon legislation; a provincial powers act (clarifying the roles of Iraq’s 18 provinces vis-a-vis the central government); a provincial election law to facilitate the next round of local elections; a process for holding a referendum on the political future of Kirkuk, the disputed northern oil city (and for compensating individual property holders and sectarian groups who lose out in such a vote); and a more transparent and trustworthy process for purging sectarian extremists from positions of government authority.

These benchmarks are reasonable goals. It is regrettable that insufficient progress has been made on the others (with the exception of the long, slow progress of purging extremists from official positions). What really matters, however, is that Iraqis come to view themselves as a single people working together to build a new nation, and address their inevitable differences legislatively rather than violently. As such, to the extent that benchmarks are employed, we would advocate using a longer list — and include Baghdad’s sharing of oil revenue with the provinces, the hiring of Sunni volunteers into the security forces and into the civilian arms of government, improvements in the legal and penal systems, and, over time, reform of the electoral system to weaken the role of the sectarian parties. In all but the last of these considerable progress has been made in the past year.

This political progress resulted from a year’s worth of substantial effort to reduce violence in Iraq. Proponents of the surge always said that getting violence under control was an essential prerequisite to reconciliation, not the other way around. The full surge has been in place and operating for just over six months, and already violence has fallen dramatically across the country. The achievement in such a short time of significant legislation that requires all sides to accept risk and compromise with people they had been fighting only a few months ago is remarkable. It would have been unattainable without the change in strategy and addition of American forces that helped bring the violence down.

I know Andrew is trying to become the male version of Cindy Sheehan but its time to get a grip and come back down to reality. We are making progress there. It’s slow, hard work. But we ARE winning.