It is cold here in Seoul today. The kind of wet, sink to your bone cold that exists in a place where wet snow is frequent. It was sunny today, but its clear I did not bring enough of the right type of clothing. I should have packed my long johns.
I had a series of meetings today spread out across Yongsan. One was way down at the south end of the post. It went shorter than expected, and finding a taxi was a non starter I started walking back. Thanks be to the Lord above, a chaplain stopped and gave me ride. I guess I looked miserable enough that he felt I needed salvation. He’s probably right.
Speaking of salvation, I have been noting with interest the recent coverage of the war in Iraq. Everybody is supposed to be getting it now. The surge is working! Americans are winning! The light at the end of the tunnel is drawing closer. Those who continue to insist that we should get back to defending American interests, doing the right thing for Americans, and that if things are really getting better in Iraq, why can’t we start bringing American troops home and give them a break for all their hard work? Those people are ridiculed by by morons like Charles Krauthammer.
And that is what is most interesting to me. The answer to that last question continues to be a big resounding NO! So what does that really say about the “success” of the surge?
“Skippy, you just don’t get it-we are winning.”
Oh really? Tell me exactly what we have won Johnny?
A peaceful stable Iraq? Hardly. For all the talk of the “success” of the surge-Iraq is hardly a normal country. In the month of November lets look hard at the numbers.
US troops killed: 37. Less to be sure but hardly something like peace. If you look at the entire 5 years it represents the baseline, so to speak. Call me a pessimist, but I expect December and January will have about the same numbers.
I hope to hell I am wrong.
Iraqis killed: over 500.
Out of a population of 26 million, that number is hardly a good thing. That it is less than the 1000-1400 the country was averaging during 2007 is a good thing, but statistically it points to a return to a baseline. Iraq has been here before in 2005.
Lets not even discuss contractor fatalities shall we? The bottom line is that Iraq is still a dangerous place and averaging almost 2000 violent unnecessary deaths a month. That’s hardly a “normal” country.
Juan Cole probably has it summed up well:
What the recent publicity about the “success” of the troop surge has ignored is this: The Bush administration has downplayed the collapsing political situation in Iraq by directing the public’s attention to fluctuating numbers of civilians killed. While there have been some relative gains in security recently, even there the picture remains dubious. The Iraqi ministry of health, long known for cooking the books, says that a few hundred Iraqis were killed in political violence in November. However, independent observers such as Iraq Body Count cite a much higher number — some 1,100 civilians killed in Iraq in November. They reported that bombings and assassinations accounted for 63 persons on Saturday, the first day of December, alone. . . The current “good news” campaign from the Bush administration regarding the troop surge is only the latest in a long history of whitewashing the war since the 2003 invasion. First, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that there was massive looting following the fall of Baghdad. Then he denied that there was a rising guerrilla war. . . ‘
The real issue with the success of the surge is answering the question, “when are we leaving?”. People might applaud the Democratic efforts to strangle the budget if they knew the real answer-we are never leaving.
Monday, during a videoconference, Mr. Bush and Nuri al-Maliki separately signed a “declaration of principles” that calls for one more year of U.S. occupation of Iraq by U.N. mandate to be followed with a more permanent arrangement under sanction of a bilateral treaty.
That’s pretty amazing when you think about it particularly when you consider that the Iraqi parliament just 6 months ago said that a permanent US presence is not an option. In June of 2007, Iraq’s parliament passed a binding resolution that specifically guaranteed them an opportunity to block any further extensions of the U.N. mandate. Maliki did not veto the law. This “principles” deal he just signed on to with Bush will involve yet another end run around his parliament to extend the U.N. mandate, and then another one to establish a two-way treaty with the U.S.
And why did he do all this? Because his own army is not hacking the program. So his only guarantee is to have the US prop up his ineffective government for a longer-if Bush has his way for years and years and years.
At a cost though. At a cost of about 40 US lives a month. I just do not consider that a fair trade. No amount of Arab lives is worth the life of one single American.
So yea, I just don’t get it. And I don’t plan to any time soon. Progress or not, Iraq remains a mistake and a distraction to the US for a whole bunch of reasons.