The Dog-and-Pony Surge: Five Questions

July 8th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest

Arianna on the Surge:

And the media — and even a number of Democrats — are swallowing this triumphalist nonsense whole, and washing it down with a pitcher of revisionist Kool-Aid. The result: a collective case of political amnesia. Everyone seems more than happy to forget what the president’s own stated goal for the surge was: to create “the breathing space [the Iraqi government] needs to make progress in other critical areas.”

More: Arianna Huffington: Surge Amnesia: The Media’s Newest Affliction - Politics on The Huffington Post

Five Questions you will not see addressed by the mainstream media:

1. Is the reduction in violence in Iraq actually a result of the surge, or of other factors?
2. Is the reduction in violence in Iraq actually significant to the fate of Iraq, or is it more like a band-aid on a knife wound?
3. Should the success of the surge be judged by fluctuations in the level of violence or  by Iraq’s larger political goals?
4. Does the reduction of violence in Iraq have any implications for when American troops leave Iraq? Isn’t this, along with a stable government and political reconciliation, the real measure of any success in Iraq?
5. If the surge has been successful in reducing violence, does it vindicate the judgment of those who called for war, or would that be something like congratulating someone who stabbed themselves for putting a bandaid on the wound?

Unfortunately, such questions will seem like leftist sour grapes over the surge’s “success.” But of course, that success is already a questionable premise created by our simplistic public discourse. That a reduction in violence seems like “success” after the irreparable devastation of an entire country by what amounts to one large war crime, is really a shame.

Some of us frankly put our priorities in this order: a) the fate of an entire country and millions of people b) the lives of American soldiers c) the massive waste of American resources necessary to real security measures.

The surge is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show for an easily manipulated media narrative. It has little to do with Iraq’s ultimate fate, and it has nothing to do with when the United states will stop wasting its lives and money to run a post-catastrophe putlic relations campaign.