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Juan Cole highlighted a bit of sanity emerging from historian Andrew Bacevich in the Washington Post. To wit:
Surge to Nowhere
Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.
As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.
In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons...
...In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news.
At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future...
...According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.
Excerpt only, follow link for full column.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html
Those of us who recognized immediately the purpose of "Teh SURGE!!!(tm)" as a giant domestic propaganda operation to eliminate the momentum building after the 2006 elections and the "Iraq Study Group Most Important Report EVAR!!!" to do something about the US occupation are not surprised.
However, I disagree with Pr. Bacevich that the occupation / SURGE!!! supporters somehow are "unable to see" what a blunder Iraq is and will continue to be.
The problem is not that they do not see this. The problem is that they do not care. If you keep blaming powerful people for failing to achieve goals that you think they are aiming for, perhaps you have erred in understanding what their goals are.
