According to McCain, the Democrats were wrong, the surge is working, and we have turned the corner toward victory in Iraq. In other words, McCain is adopting the Bush administration's meme. Perhaps McCain believes these claims. If so, the most charitable explanation is that McCain is delusional. Given that the Iraq occupation has lasted for five years with "No End in Sight," the time is long overdue for the mainstream media to provide the public with a reality check about the war. It ain't pretty. More below the fold.
The Current Situation:
Imagine a time in Iraq when insurgent groups launched over 700 attacks each month, killing nearly 1,000 Iraqis over 25 Americans. Thank goodness for the surge, right? The problem is, these death tolls are the approximate monthly averages after the surge took effect. The press regularly points out that there has been a dramatic reduction in violence (which is true), but why almost no mention of current casualty figures? With the current level of violence, which is on the up-tick, there is little chance of re-building Iraq's decimated infrastructure that was "shocked and awed" back to the Stone Age. The occasional anecdote trotted out by administration mouthpieces does not change this fundamental truth.
The press has also been remiss in reporting on the growing refugee crisis. According to the U.N., nearly 5 million Iraqis, one-fifth of the population, have been displaced from their neighborhoods because of the ongoing violence. Over 2 million have left the country, with well over 1 million Iraqis located in Syria alone. Inside and outside the country Iraqis lack food, medicine, shelter, electricity, and the opportunity for employment. The situation is dire--but the humanitarian crisis has been ignored by the American press. The undeniable truth is that conditions for Iraqis (which were already bad)are far worse than before the invasion.
The absence of meaningful progress has radicalized Iraqis and other anti-American groups. Indeed, the Iraq War has not only diverted resources from the center of the war on terror, but it has also made it far more difficult to win over "hearts and minds" within Iraq and around the world. Thanks to Bush's war, and the bungled execution of it, there are now more terrorists, more terrorist attacks, and more American killed by terrorists (mostly in Iraq) than at any time since 9/11. Given this stark reality, the fact that there has been no successful terrorist attack inside the U.S. for the past several years is of little solace.
The "Surge" has Failed
The purpose of the surge was to allow time for a political resolution. There has been almost no progress on this front. In fact, just yesterday a planned "reconciliation conference" was boycotted by most Sunni groups. This is unfortunate, as even the most ardent supporters of the war concede there is no military solution. The clock is ticking as the current troop levels cannot be maintained. The surge will end, not because it has been successful, but because our soldiers' rotations cannot be further extended. If a civil war breaks out (again), the U.S. will be powerless to stop it. According to insurgency experts in America's war colleges, the same experts ignored by Rumsfeld, the troop level required to quell an insurgency in a country the size of Iraq is around 400,000. Parenthetically, a senior military adviser has said a massive increase in troop levels would be needed to get control of Afghanistan. This would require a draft; a proposal that would be (and should be) dead on arrival in Congress.
There has been a temporary reduction of violence in Iraq and the "surge" may have played a role, but not to the extent suggested by the administration and mainstream media. Proponents of the surge have engaged in a post hoc ergo propter hoc (afterwards, therefore because) argument. There are at least three additional factors that account for the reduction in violence: First, there are less people around to kill. Formerly upscale neighborhoods have been abandoned and looted, and there has been a cleansing (through displacement or death) of mixed neighborhoods. Other areas have been barricaded--creating mini Green Zones. Second, Maqtada Al Sadr, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq (with a large militia) has told his followers to stand down. If Al Sadr ends the cease fire, it would become abundantly clear that the Bush Administration has overstated the impact of the surge. Finally, there has been a "Sunni Awakening" against Al Qaeda. This has been especially true in Anbar province--but the rise of these Sunni moderates, at least initially, had nothing to do with the surge. The U.S. is now paying (bribing?) and arming Sunni groups that just a few months earlier were killing American soldiers. If the Sunnis and Shiites are unable to reconcile, then the U.S. will have provided the firepower for the next phase of the civil war.
Managing the Message
The Bush Administration has been masterful at political spin. Recognizing that fear-mongering polls better than the war, the administration has intentionally conflated Iraq with the war on terror. For example, Bush (and now McCain) insist that Al Qaeda is in Iraq and we must stay there until it is defeated. Al Qaeda was not, is not, and never will be the major problem in Iraq. According to a September 2007 study from the Congressional Research Service, Al Qaeda is responsible for only 2% of the violence in Iraq (contradicting inflated Pentagon estimates of between 10% and 15%). Al Qaeda in Iraq is a small fringe group of radical Sunnis. The Shia majority opposes Al Qaeda as do nearly all Sunnis (which explains the "Sunni Awakening"). Billions of dollars have been spent in the past 5 years to train the Iraqi police and military. If these forces are still incapable of handling Al Qaeda in Iraq, then McCain is probably correct that the quagmire will last another 100 years. There are other extremist groups in Iraq, but it seems convenient for the administration to blame every terrorist attack on Al Qaeda. This is a grossly misleading use of the fear card. If there was no "Al Qaeda in Iraq" the fundamental problems would remain.
The administration's contention that a U.S. presence in Iraq is required to prevent the country from becoming a "staging ground" for Al Qaeda to launch attacks in America is utter nonsense. There is not one shred of evidence that Al Qaeda is planning operations in America from Iraq. Even the name "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is misleading. The group known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is actually named, "Tanzim Qaidat Al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn." While the group has expressed allegiance to Al Qaeda, it is not likely within the operational control of Osama Bin Laden and his minions. In other words, this is not the same group responsible for 9/11. The administration intentionally suggests otherwise. Has Bin Laden franchised his operation--are there "McQaeda" groups throughout the world? There probably are terrorist sleeper cells still in existence--but there has yet to be any evidence that these groups originated in Iraq.
The Bush Administration has also been adept at sanitizing the war. When the war started, even with imbedded journalists, video images showed the shock and awe of American bombing. There was almost no coverage showing the consequences of those bombs. The press served as a willing conduit for the Bush propaganda machine. The tearing down of Saddam’s statue was a staged event that had less people in attendance than a typical Mike Gravel campaign rally. And yet, the media presented it as "spontaneous euphoria." Bush’s flight onto an aircraft carrier with the administration supplied "Mission Accomplished" banner was pure theater, including having the ship sail back out to sea so the San Diego skyline would not be visible in the background. The Bush PR spin machine even had the foresight to bring a plastic turkey to Iraq for one of Bush’s surprise Thanksgiving photo ops with the troops. The Bush spin masters have successfully controlled the "visual images" of the war.
Words matter, but governments have learned that visual images have a more lasting and persuasive impact. The photographs of Abu Ghraib abuses (that the administration tried to conceal) prove this point. However, with the exception of Abu Ghraib, it is difficult to find visual images of the horrors of the American occupation on U.S. media outlets: Not the carnage from suicide bombings, the deaths caused by our bombs, the refugee crisis, or the horrific injuries to our own troops and Iraqi citizens. The Bush Administration will not even allow the press to photograph coffins being off-loaded at Andrews Air Force Base. Support for the war is at around 35%; but the administration knows that if the public knew the full truth—and was aware of the consequences through graphic reporting—that the intensity of the anti-war movement would increase dramatically. (This is a lesson learned in Viet Nam, when the horrific images of war on television helped turn the public against the war.)
Perhaps the most troubling part of the debate about Iraq is the absence of discussion about Iraqi casualties. Estimates vary widely, but they range from nearly 50,000 to hundreds of thousands. Iraqi casualties should be part of the calculus in determining whether the war has been or ever could be considered successful. Remarkably, the death of Iraqi citizens has been in large part ignored. This should be a major issue. Whether through gross negligence or intentional manipulation of intelligence, the U.S. is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings. This should shock the collective conscious of the country—and yet it is treated as a little "oopsy."
What the World Thinks About Us
The Bush Administration has adopted a "Do as I say, not as I do" approach to foreign policy. Bush’s record reads like a resume for a fascist despot: A war based on misinformation, suspension of habeas corpus, torture (leading to the death of several detainees), rendition, secrecy, manipulation of the press (e.g., Judith Miller), politicizing governmental agencies such as the GAO and Justice Department, domestic spying, pork barrel governmental contracts for supporters, pardoning a crony, illegal domestic spying, re-writing scientific reports from government scientists, stonewalling investigations of corruption and incompetence, ignoring Constitutional restraints on executive power, flagrant violations of international treaties and conventions, and interfering with the electoral process in foreign countries.
Even our allies are horrified. Support for American foreign policy around the world is at an all time low. There are many tools used in diplomacy, not the least of which is "moral authority." There is not much of this authority left. Under Bush, the U.S. has used tactics it repeatedly condemns. The world sees this hypocrisy, but the Republican spin is that we should only look forward. This is wrong. If the U.S. is to regain its "moral authority," it will be necessary to acknowledge our transgressions and hold those responsible accountable. Don’t hold your breath.
The Future
There is no "victory" at hand in Iraq, and no option likely to lead to a satisfactory resolution. The level of violence remains unacceptable, the prospects for peace are grim, and the war is bankrupting the U.S. (a condition exacerbated by Bush's act of economic hedonism--paying for the war with tax cuts). This grim reality has been under-reported by the mainstream media. Three-quarters of the public are not even aware that nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed in the conflict. Many reporters have admitted that they blew it in not challenging the administration's claims leading up to the war. And yet, many of these same reporters are not bothering to challenge the administration's contentions regarding the surge. The time is long overdue for the press to report accurately and critically on the War.
(As a post script, any objective analysis of Iraq must be pessimistic. Current troop levels cannot stop a civil war, the public would not tolerate a massive troop increase (which would not work anyway) and the military lacks the resources for another escalation. The only alternative is a diplomatic surge (combined with an orderly removal of American troops out of harm's way). To the credit of General Patreus, he has embraced competing factions neighborhood by neighborhood, region by region. Getting these groups to agree upon security and badly needed public works projects, throwing out the war profiteers wherever possible in favor of local and regional businesses, re-settling displaced Iraqis with massive assistance, using NGO's for humanitarian relief, and paying Iraqis good wages may help. Even with these actions, the prospects are grim.)