Note to the fawning and fraudulent American Media, now endlessly repeating some buzzword called "The Surge" as if it has great redemptive significance for the failure of the George W. Bush presidency and the catastrophe of the decision to go to war.
It does not.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975.
If Fox News and talk radio had existed then, the mainstream media would be spending breathless hours wondering if Gerald Ford was going to apologize to the resigned Richard M. Nixon for Nixon's brilliant "surge" in 1968 that sent 50,000 additional American troops to Vietnam.
But back in 1975 we had a media grounded in things like:
- Facts
- Research
- Cause and Effect
- Opportunity Cost
- The fact that dead American soldiers are not a statistic to be ignored
The "Surge" as it's called, was not George W. Bush heroically going against democrats, it was George W. Bush rejecting the combined bipartisan Iraq Study Group report because George W. Bush likes to "think with his gut."
The "Surge" was a foolish decision then and did NOTHING to help turn the tide of the war.
The "Surge" was supposed to last six months. The "Surge" was an attempt to send 30,000 more troops for a very limited time to control violence in one region of Iraq.
Those soldiers, send in in the "Surge" stayed in Iraq for over three years.
How is this a "success?"
By any measure of a war -- dead soldiers, economic cost, result of the war on the population, length of time, recession at home, this war was an utter catastrophe for the people of Iraq and the people of the United States.
For our shameful media, so willing to ignore all the lies in the runup to war, so afraid to question the heroic warrior President in 2002 and 2003 after 9/11, to now refuse to do an honest accounting of just how much this war cost us, how many jobs were lost by spending a trillion dollars in Iraq rather than on roads, schools and American jobs, is a national disgrace.
"The Surge" was no more successful than was Nixon's "secret strategy" to end the Vietnam War.
In 1975, Americans swore we would never again make such a terrible mistake.
We did.
Only this time, it was enabled by the American Media.