Everywhere I look I see the news media ready to put up victory flags and declare the so-called “surge†a success. Just a few months ago, the Iraqi government was on the brink of collapse, civil war was not only inevitable, it was happening and Sen. John McCain couldn’t walk down the streets of a Baghdad market without a whole battalion to protect him. So this must mean that the “Liberal Media†was lying the whole time about Iraq right?
It all seemed too good to be true to me. That simply putting in a few thousand more troops was turning the tide in Iraq. Turns out, most of the success has had nothing to do with military engagements, and been attributed more to the actions of Sunnis, tired of infighting and tired of war and the collapse of the Mehdi Army (Sadr’s military force). Much of the success, such as in Anbar Province, has had nothing to do with the Surge at all.
So what, if it works, it works right? However, the success itself is somewhat a myth. Attacks are not down as much as the military as led to believe, and 100 attacks on the U.S. every day is still pretty discouraging. Women’s rights are far worse off than before Saddam and the average Iraqi is not nearly as happy as the Bush Administration seems to be. With Turkey engaged in battle within Northern Iraq (threatening the so called “quiet†North), the Shiite Iraqi government still on the verge of collapse, and most of the country living in a state of catastrophe, losing less American soldiers each month (we are still losing soldiers every day) is of course a positive event, it’s just not synonymous with victory. In fact, it could lure us into a false hope that could engage the U.S. into a longer haul, with the same disastrous result as Nixon’s “Vietnamization.â€
Robert Scheer, on last week’s Left, Right and Center, took on ridiculous conservative Tony Blankley on the Surge issue. Listen yourself and tell me who sounds more rational. Scheer is packed with the facts while Blankley calls upon this well known fact that the Surge is working.
Much of the major news media seems to do the same exact thing. Most of the cheery upbeat articles I’m reading are coming from news sources in New York or other state-side sources, and speak largely about incidents in the U.S., like a “surge in McCain’s poll numbers†as a result of the Surge success, or Huckabee praising Bush for the Surge, and do not seek to question the success of the Surge. Plus we are now losing major ground in Afghanistan, and a major shakeup is currently underway over the losing strategy. In other words, we’re cooking rabbits that we have yet to catch. Hell, we don’t even have the kitchen ready.
Juan Cole, Mid-East Scholar has written up 10 myths that are being misconstrued out of the chaos in Iraq. The facts from the ground paint a vastly different picture than the one resonating from cheery news sources, especially the broadcast media, which seems to have forgotten that American and Iraqi people are continuing to lose their lives in what is STILL a quagmire. I urge you to take a look at these myths and try, if you can to find any shred of evidence that contradicts them, gut feelings and “what O’Reily said†do not count.
I know we want to win in Iraq, but since there are no terms for victory, there is no way to win a political war with military force. If Iraq does eventually calm down, it will be a decades long return to normalcy as it did in Lebanon, where peace is still very delicate (as the Israelis proved last summer). We are hemorrhaging money in the desert. Billions a week are spent to prove that Bush was right. A massive bill is being written up for our grandchildren to pay for our decadent pointless venture. All money that can improve our decaying schools, health-care system and failing economy. There is no question that the U.S. has the stomach to stay in Iraq indefinitely. The real question is does it have the money?