Did the Surge Work?

[Stravo]

For all the harsh criticism and outright derision we have heaped on Bush and his attrocity of an administration let us examine a call he made in the Iraq war that actually seems to have worked.

When Bush first announced his intention to send in reinforcements to secure the Baghdad area and make it safe for average Iraqis so they could actually try to form a government without fear of being blown up many in the media, general public and on this board were horrified and outraged at the prospect.

Predictions of many more American deaths and a general calamity in Iraq soon followed.

But one must admit in light of the last few months and the distinct lack of stories like "Suicide bomber kills 50 in Market" that came out of Iraq almost every day and by extension the relative silence that has followed on the news regarding Iraq can it be said that despite a firestorm of criticism and derision that George Bush actually made one good call in Iraq and exercised real leadership by making a call in contra to popular opinion?

I'm not arguing that the Surge's ultimate goal of helping Iraqis form a working government is working, just the immediate goal of securing the country or at least the capital. Has it worked?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

A number of security objectives seem to have been met. That qualifies the Surge as a working-ish strategy. Not that it will save the war, mind you, however, it worked- a little bit. Further, al-Qaeda has been effectively castrated this past year by U.S.-Sunni initiatives and the al-Anbar province has become notably safer.

Then again, if they had just sent a surge of people to occupy Iraq at the start...

[Raxmei]

Possibly. 2008 will show whether we've been able to build a self-sufficient government in Iraq in time for the drawdown. I think everyone predicted at least temporary success.

[Darth Wong]

Now that Baghdad has been successfully ethnically cleansed (2/3 to 3/4 of the Sunni population has either fled or been wiped out), the ethnic cleansing violence is down. Oh yeah, the Surge worked.

Go Surge.

[Uraniun235]

I recently read a news article on this. The Bush administration claims the surge has succeeded "beyond anyone's expectations". The goals laid down for the surge by the administration included certain legislation being passed by the Iraqi legislature (failed) and Iraqi forces assuming many of the roles currently being performed by US military forces by November 2007 (also failed).

Either Bush lied, or "forgot" what his own goals were, or he and his advisers never expected their goals to be met and their expectations were sufficiently low that the current 'success' is really beyond their expectations.

In any case, if we go by the goals originally laid out by the administration as a justification for the surge, the surge has been a failure.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The only reason for that legislation was to make things fairer in Iraq economically. If we want to simply leave with a stable nation behind us, it's unnecessary, because there are numerous functional states in which one group oppresses another. All we need to do is get their army trained by November of 2008, assuming the immediate pullout orders are issued in January of 2009 (which leads to a final date for the last US troops to leave Iraq in early December of 2009 at the earliest, probably be a bit rushed for symbolic reasons).

Now, of course, one may ask what the point of the war was if its sole result was to kill a lot of people and break a lot of things before leaving the country under a Shia oligarchy instead of a Sunni dictatorship.

[Mr Bean]

It should be noted that one of the major Shi'ite players, agreed to a six month stand-done just before the surge started, and violence dropped by 20% right off the bat.

Also, checking Iraq death count, there's still 200 people a month dieing in violent attacks, it's simply not even DAY now, but once a week...
Way to go surge, now you have to only be worried about being blown up once a week rather than every day, but FYI gun deaths are still every day, so keep your head down.

Way to go surge.

[SirNitram]

The stated strategy was to give the Parliment 'breathing room' to advance reconciliation. Let's take a look at the De-Baathification Law passed this weekend.

Link

The measure, known as the Justice and Accountability Law, is meant to open government jobs to former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein — the bureaucrats, engineers, city workers, teachers, soldiers and police officers who made the government work until they were barred from office after the American invasion in 2003.

But the legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries.

...

The most extreme interpretations of the measure’s effects actually came from Shiite officials. Some of them hailed it because it would ban members of even the lowest party levels from the most important ministries: justice, interior, defense, finance and foreign.

That would seem to preclude the government from keeping its promise to offer military and police jobs to the thousands of Sunni Arabs who have joined the Awakening groups.

What a surprise. The sectarian breaks are still there, and shaped a bad law. Plus, with the Shi'ites in the majority and tending towards being armed, would any Baathist really go to a public committee and admit he was?

[Illuminatus Primus]

For all the harsh criticism and outright derision we have heaped on Bush and his attrocity of an administration let us examine a call he made in the Iraq war that actually seems to have worked.

When Bush first announced his intention to send in reinforcements to secure the Baghdad area and make it safe for average Iraqis so they could actually try to form a government without fear of being blown up many in the media, general public and on this board were horrified and outraged at the prospect.

Predictions of many more American deaths and a general calamity in Iraq soon followed.

But one must admit in light of the last few months and the distinct lack of stories like "Suicide bomber kills 50 in Market" that came out of Iraq almost every day and by extension the relative silence that has followed on the news regarding Iraq can it be said that despite a firestorm of criticism and derision that George Bush actually made one good call in Iraq and exercised real leadership by making a call in contra to popular opinion?

I'm not arguing that the Surge's ultimate goal of helping Iraqis form a working government is working, just the immediate goal of securing the country or at least the capital. Has it worked?

The issue was never to slow down the intensity of the violence. Its called a "surge" because it MUST be temporary. The military MUST begin withdrawing forces this year. The entire goal was with a lower intensity of violence, that there would be a meaningful political reconciliation so that when the troops that brought the peace inevitably left, the insurgents wouldn't just come out of their holes. The political solution has not occurred, which means all the essential causes of conflict remain and will persist. Probably violence will be up again as troops leave and it becomes obvious that the U.S. cannot stay.

There's also the issue that violence is down because the Shia have already successfully ethnically cleansed much of Baghdad.

[Guardsman Bass]

But one must admit in light of the last few months and the distinct lack of stories like "Suicide bomber kills 50 in Market" that came out of Iraq almost every day and by extension the relative silence that has followed on the news regarding Iraq can it be said that despite a firestorm of criticism and derision that George Bush actually made one good call in Iraq and exercised real leadership by making a call in contra to popular opinion?

To some extent, the Surge did work; violence is down. The problem is, to what degree did it work? A lot of the reduction of violence in certain heavily Sunni areas had to do with the arrisal of the Awakening movement in September 2006 (before the Surge went into effect), and the US's subsequent willingness to pay and arm them - which means that it was a factor that we only had limited control over (just like the deal with Al'Sadr's group).

On the other hand, you could argue that the Surge accelerated the Awakening movement by ensuring that Sunnis willing to jump ship to help the Americans had a better guarantee of American military support and money, but it's ambiguous. I think the fact that we payed and armed them to start fighting against the Al'Qaeda assholes was a bigger factor.

In any case, the fact that the Surge might reduce violence wasn't really surprising to me. I read the Iraq Study Group Report; in it, they come out against troop increases in Iraq because they think it would signal to the Iraqis that we're willing to do the work for them, but they also questioned an officer in the military, who said that an increase in troop numbers could reduce violence in a local area.

I'm not arguing that the Surge's ultimate goal of helping Iraqis form a working government is working, just the immediate goal of securing the country or at least the capital. Has it worked?

In terms of simply reducing violence, yes - but as I said, we don't know how much of the success is directly attributable to the Surge, and how much of it is due to successful ethnic cleansing in mixed areas, and initiatives among the Sunni population that might or might not have taken place as they have regardless of the Surge.

[Guardsman Bass]

The stated strategy was to give the Parliment 'breathing room' to advance reconciliation. Let's take a look at the De-Baathification Law passed this weekend.

Link

The measure, known as the Justice and Accountability Law, is meant to open government jobs to former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein — the bureaucrats, engineers, city workers, teachers, soldiers and police officers who made the government work until they were barred from office after the American invasion in 2003.

But the legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries.

...

The most extreme interpretations of the measure’s effects actually came from Shiite officials. Some of them hailed it because it would ban members of even the lowest party levels from the most important ministries: justice, interior, defense, finance and foreign.

That would seem to preclude the government from keeping its promise to offer military and police jobs to the thousands of Sunni Arabs who have joined the Awakening groups.

What a surprise. The sectarian breaks are still there, and shaped a bad law. Plus, with the Shi'ites in the majority and tending towards being armed, would any Baathist really go to a public committee and admit he was?

I suppose on the bright side, it actually showed that they could pass a piece of legislation, bad or not. For quite a while, the Iraqi Parliament was basically a useless organ (and still probably is, for the most part).

[Knife]

The surge was a failure, IMO, simply due to it being four years plus too late. A 'surge' like strategy should have been used to secure bagdad when we invaded or shortly there after.

The fact that it took this long for such a simple concept of 'lots of guys are needed to secure big city' to be implemented means the whole war strategy from the begining was fucked up.

So in the long term the 'surge' didn't work because it wasn't used when it should have been, meaning the start.

[Surlethe]

(2/3 to 3/4 of the Sunni population has either fled or been wiped out)

Do you have a source for this?

[Darth Wong]

(2/3 to 3/4 of the Sunni population has either fled or been wiped out)

Do you have a source for this?

I read a MacLean's article comparing the ethnic ratio of Baghdad today to the ethnic ratio of Baghdad before the ethnic cleansing began, but it was a paper article. I'm sure you could look it up on the web somewhere, though.

[Vympel]

To paraphrase Bill Maher - the surge is "working" to reduce violence to the same extent that the police reduce domestic violence in a household by showing up at the scene of a disturbance and milling around for a few hours.

[Lusankya]

The surge was a failure, IMO, simply due to it being four years plus too late. A 'surge' like strategy should have been used to secure bagdad when we invaded or shortly there after.

The fact that it took this long for such a simple concept of 'lots of guys are needed to secure big city' to be implemented means the whole war strategy from the begining was fucked up.

So in the long term the 'surge' didn't work because it wasn't used when it should have been, meaning the start.

But... but... the Iraqi people were supposed to welcome their American liberators with open arms! How was Bush to know that wouldn't happen?

[PainRack]

But... but... the Iraqi people were supposed to welcome their American liberators with open arms! How was Bush to know that wouldn't happen?

lol....... I actually had debators on SB argue that the Americans couldn't be expected to know that looters will come out to loot after the invasion was over.

[Sam Or I]

Militarily, the Surge is working and doing what it is supposed to do. More troops (The Surge) was needed to support the new strategies put in place by Petraeus. In this effect, it worked. So far it seems as if the new strategy on the military level is working, by making local alliance, by willing to talk to sheiks about ceasefires, and aiming animoisity at Al-Qeada (no matter how big it is in Iraq or not, it is a great "common enemy.") TMore troops is just part of a larger strategy, it is not the whole strategy.

Politically, things have been very slow. I would say nonexistent, except in the past few days. In this regard the "Surge" has not done so well. With the return of the Sunnis to the government, things may change, they may not.

If violience stays down, slow progress still has a chance of being made.

Ethnic cleansing would not have affected the decrease in violience towards Coalition troop nearly as much as what has happened in Iraq.

[Edi]

Militarily, the Surge is working and doing what it is supposed to do. More troops (The Surge) was needed to support the new strategies put in place by Petraeus. In this effect, it worked. So far it seems as if the new strategy on the military level is working, by making local alliance, by willing to talk to sheiks about ceasefires, and aiming animoisity at Al-Qeada (no matter how big it is in Iraq or not, it is a great "common enemy.") TMore troops is just part of a larger strategy, it is not the whole strategy.

Politically, things have been very slow. I would say nonexistent, except in the past few days. In this regard the "Surge" has not done so well. With the return of the Sunnis to the government, things may change, they may not.

If violience stays down, slow progress still has a chance of being made.

Ethnic cleansing would not have affected the decrease in violience towards Coalition troop nearly as much as what has happened in Iraq.

Did you read anything that was said in this thread, you fucking moron? "Hurhur, surge worked because I don't know the first fucking thing about military operations and I think they did great durrrrrrr!" is all that your post amounts to.

[Darth Wong]

People who try to divorce "military success" from achievement of objectives were imbeciles when they tried to do it in Vietnam, and they're imbeciles when they try to do it in Iraq. When you launch a military operation in order to achieve certain objectives and you fail to achieve those objectives, then the military operation has been a failure.

The people who make this argument seem to believe that you can simply change the objectives after the fact in order to declare the operation a success.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

They keep shifting the goal posts just so to show the word "success" on a piece of paper. At the end of the day, you still have a hugely divided Iraq, and the threat of civil war has hardly diminished even one bit.

[Sam Or I]

Did you read anything that was said in this thread, you fucking moron? "Hurhur, surge worked because I don't know the first fucking thing about military operations and I think they did great durrrrrrr!" is all that your post amounts to.

And your post amounts to less.

To translate my point for you.

The Surge is more than boots on the ground. It is part of an overall counterinsurgency strategy.

[Mr Bean]

The Surge is more than boots on the ground. It is part of an overall counterinsurgency strategy.

We've done that a dozen times now. The Surge since you seem to have forgotten was a military operation aimed at achieving political objections.

That objective was to aid the Iraq political procedure by securing Baghdad for the Iraq's to come up with a stable long term form of government.
To the end that the insurgancey has been temporarily suppressed it is correct to assume that the surge has been partially successful. Violence has trended down, but people still die violently every other day, rather than every day. And even then, there have been half a dozen things reveled to be wrong with our counts(IE the whole if they were shot in the back of the head=criminals rather than sectarian violence)

But the ultimate objective, that of political re-unification, peace between Suni and Shi'ti, has been a complete and total failure. None of the objectives set forth by the Bush administration in regards to the Surge have been met, ergo, the Surge operation was a failure.

[Guardsman Bass]

The Surge is more than boots on the ground. It is part of an overall counterinsurgency strategy.

We've done that a dozen times now. The Surge since you seem to have forgotten was a military operation aimed at achieving political objections.

That objective was to aid the Iraq political procedure by securing Baghdad for the Iraq's to come up with a stable long term form of government.
To the end that the insurgancey has been temporarily suppressed it is correct to assume that the surge has been partially successful. Violence has trended down, but people still die violently every other day, rather than every day. And even then, there have been half a dozen things reveled to be wrong with our counts(IE the whole if they were shot in the back of the head=criminals rather than sectarian violence)

But the ultimate objective, that of political re-unification, peace between Suni and Shi'ti, has been a complete and total failure. None of the objectives set forth by the Bush administration in regards to the Surge have been met, ergo, the Surge operation was a failure.

Both Sam and I acknowledged that the Surge's political aims have overall failed, but that doesn't change the fact that violence in Iraq has gone down with the inclusion of a significant number of extra US military troops. It's not all simply a matter of ethnic cleansing, either; Anbar Province was an overwhelmingly Sunni province before the Surge occurred (hell, before the US even invaded). It remained a predominantly Sunni province after the Surge - but one which was a main target of the Surge's effort, and which show strong reductions in violence.

[Darth Wong]

What's all this celebration about Anbar? This is the same region which was a hotbed of violence against US troops a few years ago, and the people who we're so proud of there are the same people who were committing those attacks. This is just another example of the US switching from one set of allies to another: they waded into the country all shit-hot to free the Shiites from the yoke of Sunni oppression, and now they've changed their minds and decided that they're actually friends of the Sunnis against the dangerous Shiites, so they're going to befriend the same people who were planting IEDs to blow up US patrols in 2004. And when those people manage to assert firm control over their territory, the US gets to pat itself on the back for doing such a good job in this one province? While Baghdad has been successfully ethnically cleansed in the meantime? What a clusterfuck.