The Surge

When Prez B*sh addressed the nation last night, I chose not to listen. As I've mentioned before, the mere sound of his voice raises my blood pressure. However, I've learned I can tolerate reading his speech after the fact.

In brief, the president's primary tactic is increased troop strength. Based on estimates leaked prior to the speech, this increase qualifies as "too little, too late". The president correctly notes that previous efforts to secure sectors of Iraq have failed because of unsuccessful attempts to hold those sectors. As one commander put it last year, our military has been playing "whack a mole" with the "insurgents".

There's a particular element of this tactic that seems especially odd to me: the fact that the targets are being announced. Baghdad has been mentioned as a probable target for at least the past two weeks. Last night, the president confirmed Baghdad as a target, and also mentioned Anbar Province.

Now, the president seems to think these two targets are obvious. But is it wise to announce them so broadly so far in advance? The president has been reluctant to set a firm withdrawal date or even a timeline for withdrawal, based on the logic that the enemy would use this knowledge to their advantage. I would think the same logic applies to the question of military targets.

The president claims to have listened to opinions from a broad range of people, including generals on the ground in Iraq, and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. The plan he has put forward suggests he may have listened, but chose to ignore most of their recommendations. The one item he restated from the Iraq Study Group is the obvious conclusion that this is no magic bullet that will resolve the situation.

The magic bullet would be a time machine. With a time machine, we could choose not to invade Iraq in the first place. The invasion was clearly a flat-footed miscalculation from the get-go.

If invasion were inevitable for whatever reason, then perhaps the time machine would allow us to conduct the invasion better. More troops, for example. Securing basic necessities in major cities for example.

Unfortunately, those opportunities are past us. And the person who made the faulty decisions which have lead us to this point is still the Decider. Past experience suggests these new decisions will be as successful as the Decider's past decisions.

This "surge" – or whatever term is preferred by the president and his minions – seems to me to be analogous to transfusing blood into a dying patient. Or rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.