Back                                                      The Surge: Will it work?

These are only the opinions of someone who has followed the war from the beginning and the history of the middle east ever since we pulled our embassy staff out of Afghanistan right after the Russians were defeated.

During the war in Afghanistan between the Afghan freedom fighters (Mujahideen) and the Soviet backed Afghan government we sided with the freedom fighters. We sent in small groups of highly trained Americans to instruct the rebels in mountain warfare and the use of the weapons we supplied them with. When they finally defeated the Soviet Union and rolled into Kabul we closed our embassy and exited the country. We feared the same people we had placed in power and with good reason. (They became al-Qu'ida.) We had trained and supplied the same people we are now fighting .

Are we doing it again? We are training the army and police forces of Iraq and supplying them with weapons. People, some of these same people we are training have already been implicated in death squads. The government itself owes it's very power to the likes of Muqktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, and is already negotiating with Iran. Plus we just learned that a member of the government was recently arrested for diverting our reconstruction money to the insurgency.

Now we are asked to insert 20,000 plus more front line troops, and the 15 or so thousand more that will be needed for support, into a civil war (or an insurrection or whatever you want to call what is going on in Iraq today). The question I have to ask is: Will it work? Let's look at the reasoning. I'm told that the troops are needed to back up the Iraqi Army while they clear the insurgents and foreign fighters out of Baghdad while the government writes its constitution and makes the concessions it has to in order to bring all the parties together as one. People, this same government has been safe in the "Green Zone" and negotiating ever since they were elected two years ago. They have made very little (If any) progress.. Do we all of the sudden expect them too?

If not, as I believe, then what would push them to make the concessions? How about what some very smart people have said. The threat of a pullout of our forces? The leaders have one thing in common. Their very lives depend on our troops being there. They don't have to worry about the radical fractions and the hate that some of their own people have for them. If we pull out the chances of their living to a ripe old age is almost non-existent. They, for their own safety would have to make the concessions that are needed in order to form a workable government.

We have had several surges over the past couple of years and every time the violence has increased. Over the past year the insurrection has gained momentum and more and more of our troops have died. Do we expect anything different by adding troops. More troops, more targets.

I have said from the very beginning of the war, that we made a mistake by going into Iraq in the first place. We have only empowered Iran (Our # 1 enemy in the region.) created more terrorists and diminished our prestige in the rest of the world. Foreign terrorists have come to Iraq to train under fire. We, under the leadership of George Bush and the Neocons have fallen into a lose, lose situation.

Did we learn nothing from the fall of the Soviet Union? Their economy was crushed by a long war in Afghanistan and now we are going down the same road in Iraq. We are funding the war by borrowing from some of our most powerful enemies. China is using the money they earn from the interest they gain on the loans they give us to increase their military. Our military is being stretched to its limits, leaving us hard pressed to handle an emergency, if one should occur. The severely wounded returning from battle will stretch our finances far into the future.

I have mentioned several times on my site about the way we have neglected Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq and now I just heard we had to divert some of the troops that were to go to Iraq to Afghanistan because of a projected offensive by the Taliban in the spring. The poppy fields are flourishing, with the profits from the drug trade going to terrorist groups. See what I wrote about Afghanistan a few years ago.   Afghanistan

Should we continue to follow the lemmings over the cliff?  I'll let you decide.

Updates:

4/07/07: March was one of the deadliest months of the war. The Surge started Feb.14th and is going good, or so I'm told by the White House and Fox News but I'm hearing that our troops are complaining that they have to clear the buildings while the Iraqi troops wait outside; Car and truck bombs are going off almost everyday, Tankers full of Chlorine gas have been exploded in Ramadi (An area that was supposed to be cleared of insurgents months ago.) There is now fighting in almost all of Anbar Province. People we are again playing "Whack the mole". We clear Baghdad and the moles end up somewhere else.

Yesterday I heard that the Pentagon is calling up more National Guard troops even though our military is the weakest it has been since Viet Nam.

Almost a year later and "Hay, it's working!"

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