Surging - Lives depend on it

I have been procrastinating on starting up. The following piece was written in early January 2007.


SURGING - LIVES DEPEND ON IT

Viscerally, President Bush’s plan to surge troops into Iraq, to gain control of that confused bubbling caldron of religiously fueled hate, feels good. However, if recent history from the time we invaded until now has any educational value, it scares me to death.
Unfortunately, the time to have planted significantly more troops into Iraq was day one and the window remained open into the summer of 2003. "Shock and awe" prior to our invasion left an imprint of a flighty fruit fly. Until that point the people who have become the insurgents in Iraq, from within as well as outside that country, did not yet have confidence in how successful they could be and how much of a paper tiger we, and the meager coalition of the willing, actually were. They quickly learned.
The surge, which will come in as a slow dribble of 20,000 plus additional troops, does not strike me as something that is going to bring our view of rationality to bear on the Shiite and Sunni camps. At best it could work to tamp down the explosive situation in points of focus, however, it is likely that the adversaries will just wait us out. At worst, the insurgents will simply have significantly more targets and our casualties will climb.
The concept that the president has outlined and the conditions that he is demanding from the Iraq government could be labeled rational and efficient. Unfortunately, as Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, recently pointed out, if you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line you are not qualified to serve in, or expanding the point, make decisions about Iraq or the rest of the Middle East. He also pointed out the paradox of dealing with Middle Eastern leaders is that where as our politicians tell the truth in private and lie in public, in the Middle East it is the reverse. In short, whatever assurances the leaders in Iraq gave our people in private are not to be relied upon.
So, what to do?
Senator John McCain, who has called for a surge for a long time, has also stated that he will only be satisfied if the surge is large enough and can be sustained long enough. Good points. But he to, in addition to being imprecise as to how many is enough and how long we can sustain the surge, also falls short.
Unless we dramatically change the rules of engagement for our troops, no matter how many we add, the whole thing is a shaky. The president spoke of a change in our rules of engagement in his address but did not elaborate. Further, the$10 billion, ostensibly from the Iraqi’s, for jobs, will mean nothing. The nasty folks will take the jobs and pay during the day and lay IED’s to kill our troops during the night. Killing our troops has become sport for them. Our troops do not belong in the background, to have an effect they will have to up front and personal 24/7.


The real fear about Iraq, that nobody can deny, is that if we do leave precipitously the whole area will first implode and then, explode, wrecking our "friends" while rewarding Iran. It is truly worth worrying about. An ascendancy of Iranian backed Shia led fanatics across the Middle East will be the worlds very worst nightmare.
If we can not face up to that bleak reality we have no place or chance in Iraq. If Iraq is now arguably the lynch pin for the stabilization and protection of the entire Middle East, to insure the availability of the regions petroleum supply for the world economy, 20,000 additional troops over six months is light. Indeed, we better come up with an entirely different and broader plan for the region in case our latest gambit fails.
A broader comprehensive and long term plan must be a realistic balanced initiative that brings about sacrifices from our entire population to move us off the dime on energy dependence. The plan must have a reasonable means to bolster the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Emirates, Lebanon, etc., and do not forget Israel, who is the number one target of all of the extremists. This will require a far larger military expansion than Mr. Bush is asking for.
All of this will cost big money, calling on all to sacrifice cash to properly pay for it, makes sense. Doing nothing is suicidal.