7f03c51c-50cb-43bf-ba6f-1a6128edb2b9.jpgGood morning, perros de fuego el lago! Have some really nice chocolate (and I mean really nice chocolate) with that coffee and tell me how your day’s going so far.

I’d like to talk about the "surge" (read: escalation) this morning, and to look at what it was supposed to do, what it actually did, and the lies and goalpost-moving being done to try and fool people into thinking that it, and our war in general, is working.

For make no mistake, we are still very much at war in Iraq. Not just occupation, not mere peacekeeping. War. We don’t drop thousands of tons of bombs (as we did last year alone) and kill untold numbers of civilians in plain old "peacekeeping" missions.

And as Siun’s mentioned, the violence level hasn’t actually dropped at all if you count the violence that we’re inflicting, particularly on civilians — especially via the sharply escalating air war, which generally just isn’t being reported except in terse mentions placed at the ends of articles whose main thrust is trying to convince us that things are improving when they’re not. (And things aren’t improving. Not. At. All.)

The main reason we’ve seen a drop in violence on the part of the Iraqis is because of the six-month truce declared in August by prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mahdi Army. And Sadr’s under pressure from his people, who have been attacked by Sunni insurgents as well as by rival Shia groups, to let the truce expire and not extend it when its six-month lifespan runs out in two weeks. (If you were wondering why General Gates canceled the planned troop drawdown last week, now you know: He’s not counting on Sadr to extend the cease-fire.)

But of course, the surge wasn’t just supposed to lower the level of violence and bloodshed. It was also supposed to improve security in order to give the Iraqi government “the breathing space it needs” to “make reconciliation possible.” And it didn’t:

CLAIM: “The surge worked.”

FACT: In October, the Government Accountability Office assessed that of the eight political benchmarks set forth by President Bush and Congress, the Iraqi government had only “met one legislative benchmark and partially met another.” Since then, progress has stalled on key areas laid out by Bush: an oil law, de-Baathification reform, a process for amending the Constitution and provincial elections.

CLAIM: “Conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge.”

FACT: Though the “surge” has helped Sunni Arabs in Anbar province push al Qaeda in Iraq to the sidelines, the decision to turn on al Qaeda was not caused by the “surge.” U.S. commanders wisely “took advantage of these changing dynamics,” but they did not cause them. Additionally, as al Qaeda’s presence has decreased, sectarian strife has increased.

CLAIM: “We have at last begun to see the contours of what must remain our objective in this long, hard and absolutely necessary war — victory.”

FACT: Only politicians and pundits are speaking of victory. At the end of last year, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, cautioned that “recent security gains are fragile and still reversible.” “We are trying to be cautious as we describe the progress that is taking place in Iraq,” Petraeus told Foreign Affairs. “There are a number of concerns that we do have.”

Even the Bush people knew that the surge could never meet those goals — which is why they started moving the goalposts right away to lower the threshold of ’success’, and have kept moving them ever since.   Meanwhile in Baghdad, Patrick Cockburn describes how the surge hasn’t done diddly — aside from validating the bloody ethnic cleansing of 2006:

Iraq remains a great sump of human degradation and poverty, unaffected by the "surge". It was not a government critic but the civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, Tahseen Sheikhly, who pointed out this week that the city is drowning in sewage because of blocked and broken pipes and drains. In one part of the city, the sewage has formed a lake so large that it can be seen "as a big black spot on Google Earth".

In the coming weeks, we will see the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by American and British forces on 19 March, and the fall of Saddam Hussein on 9 April. There will be much rancorous debate in the Western media about the success or failure of the "surge" and the US war effort here.

But for millions of Iraqis like Bassim, the war has robbed them of their homes, their jobs and often their lives. It has brought them nothing but misery and ended their hopes of happiness. It has destroyed Iraq.

Over 1.1 million Iraqis have likely died as a result of Bush’s actions since he started his war five long years ago. That’s four percent of Iraq’s prewar, preinvasion population, or one out of every twenty-five people.

Imagine if over twelve million Americans had died over five years as a direct result of America’s being invaded, subjugated and repeatedly bombed by a foreign occupying power. Is it any wonder they want us gone?

Say it with me now, everyone:  The surge is a failure, and so is the war.  (Unless, of course, you define ’success’ as utterly destroying one nation and endangering the well-being of your own home country.) 

Related posts:

  1. Torture: Obama Heeded Maliki on Abuse Photos, Says McClatchy; What That Says for Our Occupation
  2. Come Saturday Morning: Is This Really What You Want, Wingers?
  3. Come Saturday Morning: Credit Where It’s Due
  4. Come Saturday Morning: Things Many Think Are True (But Aren’t)
  5. Come Saturday Morning: Argument by Analogy