Last week I put up a post entitled "Drowning in the Desert", which laid out my basic rationale for rejecting staying the course or surge strategies. Lang and McGovern describe more concretely what this drowning will look like if Bush/McCain/Graham/Lieberman, et al. get their way, as it looks like they will:
Whether Robert Gates realizes it or not (but the generals should), once an "all or nothing" offensive like the "surge" contemplated has begun, there is no turning back. It will be "victory" over the insurgents and the Shia militias or palpable defeat, recognizable by all in Iraq and across the world.
Any conceivable surge would not turn the tide–would not even slow it. We should have learned that last summer when the dispatch of seven thousand U.S. troops to reinforce Baghdad brought a fierce "counter-surge"-and the highest number of casualties since the Pentagon began issuing quarterly reports in 2005. Those who believe still more troops will bring "victory" are living in a dangerous dream world and need to wake up.
A major buildup would commit the US Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there would be no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway pointed out on Monday, "If you commit your reserve for something other than a decisive win, or to stave off defeat, then you have essentially shot your bolt."
I would be a matter of win, or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground would commit every ounce of their being to achieving "victory," and few measures would be shrunk from.
Analogies come to mind: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Algiers. It would be total war with the likelihood of all the excesses and mass casualties that come with total war. To take up such a strategy and force our armed forces into it would be nothing short of immoral, in view of predictable troop losses and the huge number of Iraqis who would meet violent injury and death. And for what? If adopted, the surge strategy will turn out to be something we will spend a generation living down.
In other words, the best case scenario is that we’ll have to destroy Baghdad to save it. Do I know for a fact that this will be the outcome? No. But we all know it’s the most likely outcome. Let’s say there’s a ten or even twenty percent chance that success is achievable. Is it worth the cost? For god’s sake, even Hillary Clinton is against it.
What’s at stake here? American prestige and honor? Any that we had has been long lost. We’re universally perceived as fools and torturers. Is it the need for stability in the region? Well maybe this is one China shop that would be better served by the removal of the bull rather than straining to find ways to keep him in it. Is it about access to all that Iraqi and Iranian oil? That’s the banana in the jar that the monkey can’t let go of. But in the final analysis, this is about saving Bush’s & Cheney’s asses. They will do whatever they can to postpone the moment when they will have to be confronted with the enormity and criminality of their failure.
Ask yourself, who really wants this war and whose interests are being served by it? It’s certainly not in the interests of the broad American public or of the soldiers who are being sent to fight it. What kind of a system of governance do we have that allows these proven failures to persist in their idiocy?
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