1 Boring Old Man

The Surge Worked
By JOHN MCCAIN and JOE LIEBERMAN

It was exactly one year ago tonight, in a televised address to the nation, that President George W. Bush announced his fateful decision to change course in Iraq, and to send five additional U.S. combat brigades there as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy and under the command of a new general, David Petraeus. At the time of its announcement, the so-called surge was met with deep skepticism by many Americans — and understandably so.

After years of mismanagement of the war, many people had grave doubts about whether success in Iraq was possible. In Congress, opposition to the surge from antiwar members was swift and severe. They insisted that Iraq was already "lost," and that there was nothing left to do but accept our defeat and retreat. In fact, they could not have been more wrong. And had we heeded their calls for retreat, Iraq today would be a country in chaos: a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, overrun by al Qaeda and Iran.

Instead, conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge. Whereas, a year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq was entrenched in Anbar province and Baghdad, now the forces of Islamist extremism are facing their single greatest and most humiliating defeat since the loss of Afghanistan in 2001. Thanks to the surge, the Sunni Arabs who once constituted the insurgency’s core of support in Iraq have been empowered to rise up against the suicide bombers and fanatics in their midst — prompting Osama bin Laden to call them "traitors."

As al Qaeda has been beaten back, violence across the country has dropped dramatically. The number of car bombings, sectarian murders and suicide attacks has been slashed. American casualties have also fallen sharply, decreasing in each of the past four months. These gains are thrilling but not yet permanent. Political progress has been slow. And although al Qaeda and the other extremists in Iraq have been dealt a critical blow, they will strike back at the Iraqi people and us if we give them the chance, as our generals on the ground continue to warn us.

The question we face, on the first anniversary of the surge, is no longer whether the president’s decision a year ago was the right one, or if the counterinsurgency strategy developed by Gen. Petraeus is working. It is. The question now is where we go from here to sustain the progress we have achieved — and in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge…

• "After years of mismanagement of the war…" "If the mismanagement of the Iraq war from 2003 to 2006 exposed our government’s capacity for incompetence, Gen. Petraeus’ leadership this past year, and the conduct of the troops under his command, have reminded us of our capacity for the wisdom, the courage and the leadership that has always rallied our nation to greatness."  These are a relatively remarkable things for them to be saying. Who mismanaged the Iraq War? Best I can tell, this war has been in the hands of George W. "The Decider" "Commander in Chief" Bush. Is he the one that "mismanaged the war? Is the reason we didn’t send more troops something other than the Bush Administration ignoring everyone who suggested that from the start? People from Colin Powell down through the ranks of our active duty military commanders.
• ".. opposition to the surge from antiwar members was swift and severe. They insisted that Iraq was already "lost," and that there was nothing left to do but accept our defeat and retreat." I think it was the Iraq Study group lead by James Baker, Bush Senior’s best pal, that suggested we get out of Iraq. The rest of us have been saying we should never have gone in the first place.
• "American casualties have also fallen sharply, decreasing in each of the past four months." after the eight bloodiest months in the war – bloody enough to make this our worst casualty year in the war in spite of the improvement in the last four months.
• "…in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge." By my reckoning [below], they can’t come home. Iraq will stabilize only if we make it happen with overwhelming force. Like Bush and Cheney, Lieberman and McCain seem to assume that our continued presence in Iraq is a given. We are, by this logic, going to stay until Iraq is an "American Democracy." Now, the very people who deceitfully conned us into invading Iraq, who "mismanaged" the War for four years, are heroically declaring that they’ve prevailed against the anti-war nay-sayers and are back on the road of destiny again by sending more troops [something they resisted for years before that]. Double-talk at best…

The "Surge" didn’t work. We just went to war again. Deep inside, these people think that our continued military presence in Iraq is the bottom line. They couldn’t get away with it by letting the Iraq War smolder along for four years, so they regrouped and now justify our continued presence by fighting in earnest. But there’s a monotonous sameness about their conclusions – they always conclude that we must stay and stay. Bush and McCain now say it openly. They lied to get us there. Now, they’re trying to make sure we stay there. If we leave things up to them, we’ll never leave Iraq.

So "…in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge." is the most ingenuous part of this op-ed opinion piece. Neither Joe Lieberman nor John McCain have any interest in bringing home the troops – at least in bringing them home in the way most of us think of bringing them home. Neither George W. Bush nor Richard Cheney have any intention of bringing home the troops in the way most of us think of bringing them home. Whether they were on a quest for oil, or were convinced that we needed to establish ourselves in the Middle East, or became a Foreign Policy arm of the Israeli government, or really thought that they could fight Terrorists by fighting Arab States instead of the Terrorists themselves, or who-knows-what, they went to Iraq to stay in Iraq. Now they’re trying to snooker the people that follow them in the White House to stay in Iraq.

Our decision about what comes next for us in Iraq cannot continue to be reactive. The current level of sectarian violence, the parameters measured by those graphs I’m so fond of reproducing [below], should not determine America’s Foreign Policy. That’s a trick. Violence is up, we must stay to stop it. Violence is down, we must stay to insure the peace. Staying trancends the reason for staying.

• Do we want to continue to pour our National Treasury into Iraq?
• Do we want to continue to sacrifice our children in those deserts?
• Is there some vital reason to maintain a massive military presence in Iraq and the Middle East?
• Is fighting in Iraq the correct way to fight the threat that Islamic Jihadists make to our country?

These are important questions that need to be considered by many minds, from many angles. The only sure thing about these questions is that there are some people who can not be involved in answering them – George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, any number of people at the American Enterprise Institute for starters. We know what they think. We know how they’ve foisted what they think on us and the world. We know where their thinking has gotten us. We know what "the surge worked" means to them – a reason to stay in Iraq indefinitely.