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“Because I Told Them It Had To”

Published by marco on

That, in a nutshell, sums up the last 6 years in America under the Bush Agenda. Faith-based and fancy-free. The title of this article cites Bush’s response to Nancy Pelosi when she asked him why he thought that “this time it’s going to work” (meaning an infusion of troops), as documented in The Pentagon’s not-so-little secret by Sidney Blumenthal (Salon).

Accusations that Bush’s approach[1] to the world is simplistic and detached from reality are mean-spirited. It is anything but simplistic; the sheer artfulness and complexity of his fantasy world is well-nigh a joy to behold—at least, for those of us privileged enough to observe it safely removed from any of the many battlefronts he has seen fit to open during his tenure.

He wants so desperately for this so-called surge—don’t dare call it an escalation—to “work”. The final verb is in quotes because it’s absolutely unknown what he means by this—it’s anyone’s guess which part of the clusterf%#k that is Iraq is meant to be repaired by the magical healing powers of 21,000 additional troops. Is it the full-on civil war we fomented with our ham-handed invasion and absolutely assinine approach to colonial rule? Is it that Iraqi oil will start flowing at pre-war—nay, pre-sanction—levels and pay for everything? Will the Iraqis—pathetic, squabbling lot of children that they are—stand up, so that we may finally, wearily, stand down? Or perhaps he still sees those flowers arcing through the dry, desert air to land at the feet of goofily grinning, American troops.

Why is this even called a surge, in fact? An escalation is, as pointed out innumerable times by the media, a misnomer, but for less-obvious reasons. At almost four years into this war, there are over 3,000 dead and almost 30,000 wounded. These are all soldiers that have had to leave Iraq, no longer able to render service to whatever cause it was they were fighting that day: against Saddam, so that we don’t have to fight them here, for Iraqi democracy or against Al-Qaida, the Baathists, insurgents, Sunnis, wahabis, or any other flavor of mad-eyed, ululating Arab. The troops that are there are on their second, third or even fourth tours of duty. The surge is actually composed of 21,000 troops who have had their stay there extended. To quote André the Giant in the Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

In fact, troop levels 18 months ago were at over 150,000 and will be surged to less than that, if Bush’s plan goes through. Which, despite the perorations of the Congress, it will. Even binding resolutions are like so much tissue paper to an executive that hasn’t had a rear-view mirror for over half a decade now. Bush has publicly stated that those troops are moving in on his orders, whether the Congress wants it or not. Just turn down the volume on C–Span and accept it as a done deal.

What, exactly does Bush expect this surge to achieve? The troop influx will be entirely distributed throughout the capital city of Baghdad, in an effort to “stabilize” the situation there. Again with the quotes, but it’s important to identify the words that have no meaning. We become so accustomed to hearing these words that we are quick to nod knowingly, but a stabilized Baghdad has not been defined. Does it mean that there are only x car bombing or murders per day instead of y? Pelosi mentioned in the article that this approach has already failed twice—most recently in the fall of last year when thousands of troops were pulled from the increasingly out-of-control Anbar province back to Baghdad. Out-of-control means of course out of US control. The Sunnis have pretty much a lock there, so Anbar (one of the largest and most populous in Iraq) has, for all intents and purposes, been given up for good.

As with almost everything else in this failed crusade, rather than working as intended[2], it had the opposite effect: violence increased by around 25% in the first month of this mini-surge. In what came as a complete surprise to Bush, the attacks seemed to be concentrated where there were American soldiers. Having learned that, his course was clear: throw more cannon fodder at the terrorists in an effort to tire them out. And thus, the surge was born.

It’s good that Bush has such a strong focus and belief in his gut instincts. It keeps him from being distracted by other people’s opinions or inconvenient logisitical hiccups like reality. More troops = big win. It’s as simple as that. A good majority of America (70% at last count) has stopped believing in winning[3] or even accomplishing anything. The Iraqis don’t believe it: they’re leaving the country in droves (an exodus whose final cost—in both money and misery—can only be guessed at for now). Even many of our pathetic representatives in the Congress and Senate aren’t feeling the effects even though most are still desperately downing the Kool Aid. Some, including Senator Russell Feingold and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, have put forth proposals to cut off funding entirely, as the only way to stop the war.[4] Bush’s entire military knows for a fact that it’s not true.

The military knows it because they see what is actually happening in Iraq, a story brought to us by the few journalists who actually venture out of the Green Zone or any of the enormous FOBs (Forward Operating Bases) housing the tens of thousands of soldiers stationed there. Read the blogs from the soldiers themselves on various sites and you’ll read first-hand what it is that they’re doing. Mostly, a big, fat nothing. Most don’t venture out of the bases. The few that do have taken to tearing, at high speed, through their assigned route, performing almost no patrolling duties whatsoever. They fear for their lives and spend most of their energy—and our money—trying to keep as many of themselves alive as possible. This is understandable. But they are not accomplishing anything, much less inching toward any notion of “winning”. Already, a good majority of the troops in Iraq are either idling or looking out for their own asses; how is it that adding 21,000 more will make any difference? From Waiter, There’s a Surge in My Soup by Matt Taibbi (AlterNet):

“The Iraq war has gone so wrong that it is no longer an occupation, no longer even a security mission. It’s just a huge mass of isolated soldiers running in place in a walled-off FOB archipelago, trying not to get shot or blown up and occasionally firing back at an enemy over the wall they can’t see. It’s lunacy.”

“Winning” is, for the Iraqi people, defined by a stabilized government free from foreign influence. Those properly trained by the media machinery just thought of Iran and Syria without thinking of the US, but it’s that influence that pisses off the Iraqis the most. That would be a big, first step in repairing the nightmare into which Iraq has been submerged after four years of American beneficience. And all because we are still convinced that military might is a substitute for diplomacy; that it is possible to take over a country as large and complex as Iraq; that the Middle East is incrutable and its inhabitants exceptionally suicidal and homicidal; that they’ll let us have their oil for free because everybody knows we’re the good guys.

But the main reason is because there’s money to be made in war. Lots of it. Just laying around. The US has so much damned money for military spending[5] that they can just lose immense amounts of it, as documented in Billions and Billions of Dollars Just Disappear in Iraq by Joseph L. Galloway (Common Dreams). During the early years of the war, Paul Bremer flew in “363 tons of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills”—$12 Billion—and gave it away. Some of the receipts are completely missing, some have a one-word description, some have no description at all. They might as well all just say Halliburton on them, letting that name play stand-in for all of the other corrupt companies at the trough of corporate welfare that Bush calls free-market capitalism.

You remember Bremer, don’t you? Bush gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his successes in Iraq.


[1] Bush is used throughout as shorthand for the Bush administration and off its lovable, oddball personnel (yeah, I’m looking at you, Cheney).
[2] Which, as mentioned a few times already, is a fuzzy, fuzzy concept. In this case, the result was demonstrably 180º in contrast to any possible goal the administration could have had.
[3] Whatever that means. Pick your poison. See above.
[4] Others are willing to give Bush all of the money he asks for and try to prevent him from funding the surge with it aftewards. Yeah, that’s proved to be a banner strategy in the past. Bush responds real well to that kind of coercion.
[5] Bush just requested even more for next year … but that’s a whole other article.