But… but… but… the surge is WORKING! (Part leventy-zillion and five)

June 18, 2008 in Political Animals | 12 comments

When President George W. Bush announced the surge on January 10, 2007, he listed several specific goals to be accomplished. One of them was to be a new Iraqi law:

And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws…

So, how’s that working out?

Iraq law on Baathists not being implemented

When the Iraqi parliament passed a law in January aimed at rehiring former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, U.S. President George W. Bush praised it as a step towards national reconciliation.

The Accountability and Justice Law replaced the deBaathification Law, under which tens of thousands of former Baathists, mostly Sunni Arabs, were purged from government and security posts following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

But five months later, implementation of the law is bogged down by infighting between politicians, and the committee once tasked with hunting out Baathists in government has found itself in the odd position of overseeing the process of rehiring them or offering them state pensions.

The government has still not appointed a seven-member panel to replace the deBaathification Committee, whose enthusiastic purge of Baathists from government posts prompted minority Sunni Arabs to accuse them of conducting a witch-hunt.

The warpimps consistently ignore the fact that the goals of the surge was not simply to reduce terrorist attacks in Iraq. A more peaceful Iraq was supposed to lead to political reconciliation, but this has not happened. The “surge” is a failure. The blind, monomaniacal insistence that military force is the solution serves the best interests of neither the United States nor Iraq.

A new direction is desperately needed, and an honest and open national discussion of proposals such as the “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq” should begin at once. Of course, honest and open discussion is exactly what the warpimps will not — indeed, cannot — allow to happen…

(hat tip: Juan Cole)

  2. meatbrain on June 18, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    PW again demonstrates that it cannot conduct a rational discussion — or indeed, any sort of discussion at all.

  3. Protest Warrior on June 20, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    And neither can you shit heel

    You can’t even go to links and discuss it, you have to name call and blare your ignorant hatred of everyones views and opinions but your own.

    I dare you to go 2 weeks without calling someone a name on your blog, either in the headlines or comments.

    You couldnt do it.

  4. meatbrain on June 21, 2008 at 9:38 am

    Experience teaches that the denizens of StopTheACLU refuse to engage in rational discussions. Like PW, they are capable only of ad hominem attacks.

  5. Protest Warrior on June 21, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    Pot calling the kettle black meathead

  6. Orion on June 21, 2008 at 6:53 pm

    I’m kinda curious Meatbrain – do you really think that the surge isn’t working?

    It seems pretty screamingly obvious to me (and most of the rest of the world, including the vast majority of the media) that it HAS worked…Markets reopening across the country, expanding economy, increasing oil production, purchasing oil tankers, increased electrical production, banks re-opening, traffic jams on formerly no-go roads (e.g. Route Michigan in Ramadi), soldiers spending more time on sheep-feeding programs than on patrol, et. al…I would think by most any scale you can imagine the surge not only IS working, it has been a major success.

    I notice a lot more people spending time carping about various political goals that haven’t been reached yet than counting casualties…That’s gotta be a good sign.

    So, straight up, Meatbrain – Do you REALLY think that the surge is a failure?

    Orion
    (USAR – Aviation E-4 15UO10)

  7. meatbrain on June 21, 2008 at 8:41 pm

    I would think by most any scale you can imagine the surge not only IS working, it has been a major success.

    Unless, of course, one actually looks at the goals that were set for the surge by the US and Iraqi governments. Then, of course, one sees that the surge has indeed failed.

    Jeff “Orion” Burhans pooh-poohs the political goals in order to de-emphasize them — and he does that specifically because the political goals have not been met. But those goals were the raison d’être of the surge, and if they are not met, the surge must be counted a failure.

  8. Orion on June 22, 2008 at 1:56 am

    Okay…that answered that question…bowing Thank you for once again being your ‘true self’ and as predictable as always.

    Orion

  9. meatbrain on June 22, 2008 at 6:45 am

    Translation: Jeff “Orion” Burhans is incapable of discussing the surge — or is simply afraid to do so.

  10. Orion on June 23, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    No, I’m quite capable of discussing it, but I see no point.

    You have a religious belief that Iraq is lost and it’s patently obvious that nothing will dissuade you from that belief. You’re more than entitled to believe whatever you want, I’m always just a little surprised that in the face of such overwhelming evidence of progress that you see none. Please note the difference in definition between “progress” and “complete”...I know, I know. I’m hiding behind the dictionary again.

    To try to convince you otherwise would be as futile as attempting to convince the Pope that Buddhism is the one true faith.

    “There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.”

    Orion

    PS: Out of idle curiosity, do you see any progress in our post-war occupation of Germany, Italy, or Japan? Or are those lost too?

  11. meatbrain on June 24, 2008 at 7:19 am

    You have a religious belief that Iraq is lost and it’s patently obvious that nothing will dissuade you from that belief.

    Note that Jeff “Orion” Burhans cannot address my actual argument. Instead, he paints a fanciful caricature of what he pretends is my opinion, and dismisses that.

    It’s the hoary old straw man tactic again — much beloved of intellectual cowards of the Burhans variety.

  12. Orion on June 24, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    COOL! I’ve got my own VARIETY now! Woo-Hoo! I’ve ARRIVED baby!

    Orion