Giving The Surge A Chance
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
If anyone tells you that the surge in Iraq has been shown to fail, they either don't know or don't want you to remind them that the surge has only begun to be implemented. The full complement of forces were deployed only this past Friday, after all. To his credit, Secretary Gates is making this precise point:
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday that a troop surge in Iraq is only starting to have its full impact and that it is too soon to tell whether conditions will be ripe by September for decisions on US force levels.
The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said that the latest troop reinforcements to arrive in theatre had enabled the military to begin major operations against Al-Qaeda rear-bases outside the capital.
"While I indicated yesterday that I think we'll see some trends and be able to point in some directions by September, the full impact of the surge is really just beginning to be felt," Gates said.
Gates has held out the possibility of US troops reductions if the surge succeeds in calming a wave of sectarian violence in Baghdad by September, but he was more cautious Saturday during a brief unnannounced visit to Baghdad.
"I actually think it is premature to answer that question or make that judgement," he told reporters.
"I think we have to wait and see where we are in September to see what follows the report that the ambassador and the general turn in."
Read on . . .
Both the Secretary's caution and his insistence that the surge needs to be given the appropriate opportunity to succeed are well-taken. To be perfectly honest, I don't agree in the slightest with the supposition that by September--a mere three months from now--we will be able to know how effectively the surge is working and will continue to work. Indeed, I think that the Secretary's recent comments that we may need to treat Iraq the way we treat South Korea in terms of a longstanding American force commitment are closer to the mark, even if the South Korean analogy is not entirely appropriate. Perhaps an analogy to the continuing commitment to Kosovo may be better, but whatever one's analogy of choice, the reconstruction effort in Iraq will take time and investment in order to ensure that it succeeds.
And of course, there are plenty of people--sadly, many of them are in policymaking circles--who are determined to short-circuit the reconstruction effort. It is precisely this group of people who will argue that the surge has been given a chance and has failed. Either they are ignorant of the facts or they are deliberately misrepresenting those facts. In any event, as Secretary Gates's comments have made clear, their analysis is not to be trusted.