One year ago today, the president delivered a lengthy White House address on what was labeled the “surge” policy. It was delivered at a time when Bush had lost most of the country and a growing number of lawmakers, and when the nation learned that the president was sending more troops to Iraq, it was not well received. It looks no better in hindsight.
“[O]ver time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad’s residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace — and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible. […]
“To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.”
And lest anyone think that Bush didn’t take these Iraqi promises seriously, he vowed that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”
Exactly one year later, the results aren’t encouraging. The violence is slightly less devastating, but the promises about political reconciliation have been proven false. The surge policy was created to produce specific results, none of which came to fruition.
Bush, Lieberman, McCain, and the rest of the establishment that supports the administration’s policy have a response to all of this: ignore reality, label the policy a “success,” and hope no one looks to close at the promises or the results.
There’s an enormous amount of important news about the war in the media today, so I thought it best, particularly in light of the one year anniversary of the surge, to highlight some of the key developments:
* War supporters have a new catchphrase: “There’s a new catchphrase in town: ‘Iraqi solutions.’ And it means that while the Iraqis might have failed to accomplish just about all the goals the U.S. set, that’s OK, and you gotta just roll with it and let the Iraqis do their thing.”
* Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle Eastern Affairs Mark Kimmitt said 2008 will be “far more difficult” than 2007 for the U.S. strategy because “it depends far more on the Iraqis themselves to show progress on key legislation, on their economy, and reconciliation.” Kimmitt added that there is only a mild chance that “surge” security gains will last — “maybe it’s 50-50, if we play our cards right.”
* Philip Carter: “If your media diet for the last two weeks consisted exclusively of watching network news shows and reading the front pages of the major newspapers, you might have missed the fact that America is still at war. Although nearly every poll places Iraq at the top of voters’ minds, and nearly every presidential candidate makes references to Iraq on the campaign trail, the war no longer dominates the daily headlines or the American consciousness.
Recent dispatches from Iraq should change that.”
* McCain and Lieberman are quite pleased with themselves, boasting in a joint WSJ op-ed today that they were right about everything. As usual, they’re wrong.
* WHO: “The World Health Organization on Wednesday waded into the controversial subject of Iraqi civilian deaths, publishing a study that estimated that the number of deaths from the start of the war through June 2006 was at least twice as high as the oft-cited Iraq Body Count…. The World Health Organization said its study, based on interviews with families, indicated with a 95 percent degree of statistical certainty that between 104,000 and 223,000 civilians had died. It based its estimate of 151,000 deaths on that range.”
All for a war that should have never been launched, and which will continue indefinitely under a McCain administration.