Thursday, July 24, 2008

Slicing Through 'Surge' Propaganda: Haven't We Heard It All Before?

By MANIFESTO JOE

Full disclosure: I have no military background. I do have 30 years of experience as a professional journalist, and have known enough U.S. history, for long enough, that at 17, I earned 6 hours of college credit in that subject just by taking a test. Take those for whatever they're worth.

My perhaps-risky thesis: The "surge" in Iraq, now being touted as some kind of unequivocal success, is yet another deception in a military campaign that will be remembered as the war that keeps on costing.

Granted, al Qaeda in Iraq has apparently been dealt some crushing blows (for now), and U.S. military casualties are sharply down. These things are being widely reported as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is on his overseas trip, which included a stop in Iraq.

But, the latter point, about the decline in U.S. casualties, reflects the ethnocentrism with which Americans tend to look at foreign conflicts. Juan Cole, writing on Informed Comment, points out:

Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.

That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.


To read the entire Cole article, click here.

What we seem to be hearing is that when fewer Americans are being killed and maimed as a result of the "surge," that makes it an unequivocal success. When the furrenurs is gettin' whacked a little faster than they wuz two and a half years ago, well, that's their tough luck. It's an A-Murkan world.

And, we've heard all this before, at other times and in other places. And it hasn't been so long since we've heard it. I seem to recall that "we" (in the editorial sense) were supposed to have pretty much routed the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in Afghanistan. Been reading or hearing any news from there lately? It ain't over till it's over. And that one, the war "we" actually have reasonable justification for, is far from over.

I also seem to recall a day in 2003 when, just weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Il Doofus staged a landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared major military operations in Iraq to be over.

The MSM mouthpieces remain very much on the Pentagon bandwagon (not to mention the Straitjacket Express), with a mantra of "Obama was dead wrong" on the outcome of the "surge."

True, Obama didn't call it right in predicting that the "surge" would bring an increase in violence.

But, given the continued toll on Iraqi civilians, reports of success seem greatly exaggerated. I think the "surge" could be pronounced a success on the day that there are no unusual civilian deaths in Iraq, that the millions of refugees can return home safely, and that a stable Iraqi government can be elected without being propped up by a U.S. military presence. Perhaps in 100 years?

I'll venture a possibly risky prediction, but one firmly based on recent U.S. history.

In January 1973, the Nixon administration finally reached that elusive "peace with honor" deal with North Vietnam. The "peace" lasted a while. Then, a couple of years later, communist troops were overrunning South Vietnam. The American people were so sick of that bottomless pit of lives and money that they said a loud and resounding "NO" when the Ford administration had the nerve to propose that "we" go back in there.

The bottom line is that the U.S. is an occupier in a land generally hostile to the occupation. And, it should come as no surprise that the resistance will hide and play possum with every "surge" that our taxpayers can be conned into bankrolling. That's the name of the game in guerrilla warfare.

I'll gamble, and predict an outcome similar to the previously cited ones. For Americans, this will be the war that keeps on costing.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This war is costing us $3 trillion, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz (and he notes that this is a conservative estimate).

Hmm, $3 trillion: I may just be dumb, but I can't help but wonder: what, exactly, are we getting for all this money?

You know, $3 trillion would have bought a lot of security improvements in the homeland. It would have also bought a lot of goodwill among Muslim nation (so much that we'd never have to worry about future 9/11s). Oh, and it could also have been used to get our economy switched over to alternative energies, to where we'd never have to import oil from the Middle East again. $3 trillion could have done all these things---with lots of money left over.

Instead, all that $3 trillion has done is led to the deaths of one milllion Iraq men, women and children---and caused a lot of growing hatred toward to the U.S. across the Muslim world.

Anonymous said...

One thing you didn't mention in your piece is that the Surge is a success.
Since President Bush ordered the Surge, violence is down sharply and Al-Qaida is on the run.
When will you LibTards admit you were wrong all along about Iraq? Everything you Liberals have said about the Iraq War has turned out to not be true.

Manifesto Joe said...

Anon, re-read the piece. You can claim the surge is a "success" under certain conditions that don't yet exist. There appear to have been some results (for now), but I think it's likely that the insurgency is simply biding its time. It's very much a distortion to depict it as having gone away.

Oh, and, your "point" about "everything" that "LibTards" said about the Iraq war was wrong? Again, I was told by my "president," in a most theatrical manner, that major combat operations were over in Iraq back on May 1, 2003. Seems like that time, the NeoCons may have been a bit off the mark and their critics and the skeptics a bit more right. Like many of Bush's remaining defenders, you've simply been seeing what you want to see and hearing what you want to hear.

Marc McDonald said...

re:
>>>Everything you Liberals have
>>>said about the Iraq War has
>>>turned out to not be true.

"George W. Bush and other top White House officials issued almost one thousand false statements about the national security threat from Iraq following the September 11 attacks, according to a study by two not-for-profit organisations.

The Associated Press reports the study, published on the website of the Centre for Public Integrity, concluded the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences”.

According to the study, 935 false statements were issued by the White House in the two years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In speeches, briefings and interviews, President Bush and other officials stated “unequivocally” on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda, or had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to get them."

More here.