1st
The Surge Was Not a Success and Obama’s Iraq Plan Sucks
By Jeremy Scahill
Anyone who thinks that the “surge” in Iraq was a success or that Obama’s Iraq plan puts us on a path to “ending the war” needs to read the ongoing analysis of Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco, on his Foreign Policy blog. Yesterday, I wrote about Ricks’ piece Iraq: The Unraveling? That piece dealt with how there is already evidence of a renewed anti-US uprising.
Last night Ricks posted round two. There is a lot of great analysis in the piece, and I encourage everyone to read it, but here is one quote that will give you a sense of how outrageous it is for anyone to define the “surge” and the overall US strategy in Iraq (which Obama is continuing) as a “success.” This is from Ali Wyne of the Carnegie Endowment via Thomas Ricks blog:
Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is shifting its focus back to Afghanistan now that the war in Iraq has been won. The suggestion — which has, by now, been internalized in mainstream discourse — that the surge of American troops into Baghdad has been a success is dubious on two grounds.
First, there are factual difficulties. A September 2008 report by researchers at UCLA found that “violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning.” They concluded, therefore, that ”the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved.” That is, the surge occurred after the tinderbox that it was intended to eliminate had mostly been defused. Furthermore, according to a recent wire story, the apparent stability in Baghdad results from “fear,” which “keeps the peace.”
Second, there are moral considerations. Approximately five million Iraqis, or 20% of the Iraqi population, have been displaced from their homes; Human Rights Watch reports that “no structure exists to meet [their] humanitarian needs.” According to recent statistics, 88% of Iraqis do not have access to electricity; 70% do not have access to clean water (a new report found that 36% of Baghdad’s drinking water is unsafe); and 43% live on less than a dollar a day. One in five Iraqi women suffers physical violence, and one in three Iraqi children is hungry. It strains credulity to suggest that victory has been achieved in Iraq even though the country’s social services apparatus is dysfunctional, most Iraqis cannot access basic provisions, and the rule of fear substitutes for the rule of law. Because the surge “is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state,” concluded a respected analyst, “the recent short-term gains [in stability] have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.”
