From the ArcaMax Publishing, Arianna Huffington Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/ariannahuffington/s-375355-396364
John McCain, aided and abetted by his loving protectors in the media,
is running a victory lap on Iraq. To hear them tell it, the surge has
"worked" -- indeed, it has been a huge success -- and this, like a
last second Hail Mary pass, has vindicated the entire disastrous Iraq
misadventure.
Buoyed by a reduction in violence in Iraq, war supporters are crawling
out from the shadows and beating their chests.
"I am proud of the decision of this administration to overthrow Saddam
Hussein," Condi Rice told Judy Woodruff last week. This echoed the
comments of her boss, who crowed at a GOP awards dinner at the end of
June: "The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision at
the time, and it is the right decision today." Bush even felt
emboldened to dust off a blast from the past and claim: "Democracy is
taking root where a tyrant once ruled."
And the media -- and even a number of Democrats -- are swallowing this
triumphalist nonsense whole, and washing it down with a pitcher of
revisionist Kool-Aid. The result: a collective case of political
amnesia. Everyone seems more than happy to forget what the president's
own stated goal for the surge was: to create "the breathing space (the
Iraqi government) needs to make progress in other critical areas."
But here we are, 18 months later, and McCain and the GOP are being
allowed to change the goal. And, surprise, surprise, the retroactive
goal they've chosen is remarkably similar to the current situation in
Iraq: Violence is down while the "progress in other critical areas" is
sorely lagging.
So, even though Bush originally claimed that "a successful strategy
for Iraq goes beyond military operations," the surge is now being
judged exclusively on the success of "military operations." And since
that's what the surge is all about, the surge is working. And since
the surge is working, maybe we need to rethink this whole idea of
ending the war, right?
Using Bush-McCain logic, since the surge has succeeded in reducing
violence, there is no need for us to leave. Indeed, we can stay
forever.
But here's the thing: While McCain and the Republicans may have been
able to win the PR war among the American media, there is still that
nagging problem of the lack of reconciliation among the warring
factions in Iraq.
Last month's GAO report offered chapter and verse on all the ways the
Iraqis have failed to reach the benchmarks that were the actual goals
of the surge.
And a ceremony held in Baghdad this weekend spoke volumes about the
actual state of affairs in Iraq. The event, organized by an expert in
conflict resolution, was held to announce the signing of a non-binding
agreement reached by representatives from a wide range of Iraq's
sectarian and ethnic factions, and hammered out during a series of
secret meetings in Helsinki over the last year.
Although Iraq's Minister of Reconciliation said the agreement "has the
potential to bring Iraqi political parties together in common cause in
a way no endeavor has," coverage of the event leaves a distinctly
different impression.
According to the
"They can hug each other, and kiss each other, but they still don't
agree," Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group told the
Boston Globe.
"You still have a dominant Shiite power structure that doesn't want to
cede any power," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the
Congressional Research Service. "Then you have Sunnis who are
committed to overturn their humiliations. The fundamental dynamics
have not changed."
The Globe suggested the most important aspect of the agreement was the
fact that it was "announced at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, marking
the first time that participants in the effort have felt safe enough
to gather inside their own country," then pointed out that the level
of security required to attend the ceremony -- "including walls around
segregated neighborhoods and eight checkpoints to enter the Green
Zone" -- serves as "a grim reminder of how far Iraq has to go."
No surprise then that, according to the Times, experts think real
reconciliation in Iraq could take decades.
And this is the good news out of Iraq.
As we continue on the long, hard slog until Election Day , John
McCain and his supporters are going to claim again and again that the
surge has worked. And it looks like the media are going to let that
patently false assertion go unchecked. Which is pretty much how the
war got started in the first place. So it is up to Obama, the
Democrats and all of us to insist on holding the advocates of the
surge to its original goal.
And while we are at it, we should also hold them to the original
justification for the war itself.
Despite the revisionist rewrites, we didn't go to war because we were
committed to demonstrating that America could unleash violence in Iraq
and then, five years later, curb it through the use of reinforcements.
We went to war because we were told Iraq posed a grave and imminent
threat to our national security and, secondarily, as a means of
fomenting democracy throughout the Middle East.
Of course, the "imminent threat" turned out to be nonexistent, and our
presence in Iraq has strengthened the hand of every bad actor in the
region: al-Qaida is safe and adding recruits, Hamas has come to power
in Palestine, Hezbollah has reasserted itself in Lebanon, and Iran has
become the strongest player in Iraq. Meanwhile, the reduction in
casualties in Iraq is starting to be offset by increased casualties in
Afghanistan -- once again showing the fatal ignorance of stealing from
Peter to stop-loss Paul and keep him in Iraq.
So, tell me again: How is the surge working?
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Arianna Huffington's e-mail address is arianna@huffingtonpost.com.