Black Box Report

Gosh, has it been a year already? A whole year since our president went on the teevee to explain to an irritable and pessimistic public that, despite earlier predictions, the flowers and candy had not yet arrived from our Iraqi hosts, and the situation there was somewhat a lot worse than it was when we started. Even though we had turned multiple corners over the course of the conflict, we had nothing to show for it except an exagerrated limp to the right. So, without acknowledging that some idiot had shot this idea down from the very beginning when it might have done some good(*cough*Rumsfeld*cough*), Bush announced The Surge - and forget about all those other things that were going to help find us the pony in Iraq - this was going to do the trick. Dumping thousands more troops into Iraq and refocusing them to curb violence in Baghdad and Anbar was going to help the Iraqi government accomplish all sorts of exciting stuff:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

Like I said, exciting stuff. None of that exciting stuff actually happened, however. So, as is standard procedure when people start to point out things like this, it's time to move the goalposts yet again.

Seriously, they should just put wheels on them.

Remember all that stuff about benchmarks? You know, measurements of progress by the Iraqi government? Well, that was last year.

There's a new catchphrase in town: "Iraqi solutions." And it means that while the Iraqis might have failed to accomplish just about all the goals the U.S. set, that's OK, and you gotta just roll with it and let the Iraqis do their thing.

Same old disaster, but with a fresh coat of paint!

This, I think, is what's technically known as failing and giving up and then pretending that failing and giving up are part of a brilliant new strategy.

And with all those benchmarks left unachieved and now officially discarded, remind us again what the price tag for this pointless excercise was?

Approx. 789 US troops died to not achieve all that stuff.

I'm sorry. That was the cost in American lives. The actual price tag is about $15 billion a month. Of course, none of this stops the dynamic duo of John McCain and Joe Lieberman from taking to the pages of the Wall Street Journal today and declaring The Surge Worked! Which might be convincing if you didn't bother reading past the headline:

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.

That's not the relevant part I wanted to point out, but isn't that just the coolest straw man ever? But I digress...here's the funny part:

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.

"Political progress"....like the kind defined by the benchmarks we set a year ago....none of which have been met...and we've now abandoned.

Not to mention...as the title of the op-ed infers...The Surge - by necessity - is over...past tense...It cannot be maintained at its present level...without breaking our military...And once that happens...violence will begin to rise...again...just as it would...in any uncompleted civil war.

I feel the need to type slowly when responding to an argument like this because even the Surge's architects and Gen. Petraeus himself acknowledged that military success on its own will not win the war in Iraq, and the whole point of the surge was to provide cover for political progress to occur.

Which it hasn't.

Actually, there was another point to the surge - to provide just enough military success to enable war supporters to be able to claim short term "progress" (at the expense of long term stability) and argue for more time, more money, and more war. In that sense, and only that sense, the surge has been a rousing success.

Happy anniversary!