Why the Surge is not Working
By Larry Johnson on September 4, 2007 at 2:17 PM in Current Affairs
Ignore for a moment that many in the media are misrepresenting the actual casualties–US and Iraqi–in Iraq. The real goal of the surge was to create enough security so that the political process could move forward and the sectarian rift be bridged.
So how is that going? Not well. Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times are front and center in doing what good journalists do. They report the facts. The Newsweek piece, Baghdad’s New Owners, confirms my earlier prediction that we would see a decline in civilian casualties in Baghdad because of the “success” of the ethnic cleansing. As you drive the Sunnis out of their neighborhoods there are fewer Sunnis to kill. Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow write:
Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually “has increased the IDPs to some extent.”
Also worth your time is Tina Susman’s piece in today’s Los Angeles Times. The so-called success in Al Anbar does nothing to address the fundamental issue of reconciling Shias and Sunnis. In fact, the arming of the Sunnis and their willingness to cooperate in protecting their home turf is simply self-preservation. The Sunni tribes recognize that they will be fighting the Shias and must be armed and ready to do so. According to Susman:
Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved.
The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration and Iraq’s Ministry for Displacement and Migration.
Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions. Last month, as many as 400 people were killed in a bombing in a village near the Syrian border, the worst bombing since the war began in March 2003. In July, 150 people were reported killed in a village about 100 miles north of Baghdad.
Same points I made on Friday. But don’t expect these facts to sway the Congress. The Democrats appear to be in a “squat and quiver” mode. Some are willing to challenge the Bush lies about the so-called progress in Iraq. But most are more worried about taking too firm a stance because it could affect their re-election chances. And we all know it is more important to elect people who do nothing of substance and take no stands of principle because . . . .Hell, come to think of it, I cannot come up with one good reason to vote for such clowns.
The current policy towards Iraq is harming the United States (it also is not doing much for the Iraqis if your keeping tabs). I gave money to Democratic candidates in 2006 and fully expected a change. Instead of a change in policy we are confronted with careerist legislators who love the perks but do not have the courage to confront an Administration caught in demonstrable lies. This is unacceptable. My checkbook is closed for 2008. Maybe George Bush had it right. He said, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
If the Senate and the House buy into the lie that the surge is working then I am inclined to believe it does not matter whether we elect a Democrat or Republican. We need to elect people who will fulfill their promises to voters. I am tired of being played for a fool.
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