Mainstream newspeople are itching to get Barack Obama to say he was wrong on the surge. They point to the decreased violence in Baghdad as proof the surge has worked.
We've been in Baghdad long enough to see repeating cycles of violence and peace. There are months at a time when its relatively peaceful followed by months of increased violence.
Why is now the right time to assess the success or failure of the surge?
Adding more troops to the area was the right thing to do from day one of the war (if you're going to war, you send in enough people to do it properly). But, it took the Bush Administration 3 years to do it, and by then...well, they'd already mucked things up so badly that more troops didn't seem to be the problem. The year of coalition rule didn't do anything to help the Iraqi people. Then, the administration didn't know how to deal with the sectarian divisions in the country. Remember when political pundits sat in comfy chairs in their TV studios discussing how the Iraqi government should constitute itself - the debate was a strong central government or semi-autonomous areas for the three factions?
Now that the Sunnis and Shi'ites have essentially segregated the city, no wonder the violence is down. To say the surge is the defining factor in the decreased violence is misleading and ignores the complexities of Iraqi society.
I'm offended by the press trying to simplify the story so they can get a candidate to say something they can then talk about for days and days. They refuse to see nuance and subtlety.
In the Slate Political Gabfest for Friday July 25, 2008 John Dickerson also expects Barack Obama to admit the surge is a success, or explain what facts or circumstances Obama saw on his recent foreign trip that lead him to believe his idea (start withdrawing troops) would have been better.
John Dickerson talked about the three things that happened since the surge began...a) Sadr cease fire, b) Sunni Awakening (late 2006 in Anbar and then moved to rest of country), and c) reduction in violence. Did the surge help those things? John Dickerson says nobody argues the surge has helped the Sunni Awakening. Reduction in violence? Yes, surge helped. Another benefit of the surge was that the Iraqi Army was supposed to be able to stand on its own, and since they helped attack the Sadr army and Sadr called a cease fire, that seems to have been helped by the surge.
Its fair to say the surge had some benefits, but we can't say it was the best choice because we don't know what the outcome of not surging would have been. Its irresponsible and misleading for the news media to demand an answer from Obama.
Not only do they ask an irrelevant question, the mdia has already decided what the answer should be, and when they don't get it, they imply Obama is an empty vessel.
John Dickerson continued by suggesting that if Obama's trip to Iraq was about finding facts then he should be able to see that the surge has worked or justify why his original idea was better, and if it wasn't about finding facts, then it was a "sham". He actually used that word.
Sigh.
People make choices in life - we start down a path and that's where we are. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't. And sometimes, even when you choose the right answer, it was just luck. Or, it wasn't even the right answer in the first place, but you've learned to make the best of it because there's nothing else you can do.
Another John Dickerson comment about Obama..."He's running as something different than George Bush, so he had a view a year and a half ago, which he now has said since he's been to Iraq, [not that?] that he saw nothing to change his view. It seems to me that we might expect from him since he's running against the Bush model, that new facts that he's seen that he might talk about how those new facts incorporate into the policy he had a year and a half ago before he had those new facts. We'd expect Bush to blow off the facts that confront or that contradict his view or at least not even talk about them. We wouldn't perhaps expect that from Obama, who's running."
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