EdgeLeft: The "Surge" We Need

An occasional column by David McReynolds

2007 March 18 Sunday

Before I sleep tonight I must put aside the bills to pay, the chaos of my small lower east side studio apartment, and take some brief time dealing with page 16 of the New York Sunday Times of March 18.

Most of that page is taken up with charts and graphs. They reveal a chilling truth, one which almost all of us have known, but which the Administration has been denying, as it, on the one hand, tells us the "surge" is showing signs of success, and on the other hand, asking for still more troops.

Bush and his supporters are right about one thing - many of us hope for the failure of the "surge" because we hope for the failure of the entire dreadful US project in Iraq. We opposed it before it began, and we have fought against it every step of the way. It was a project based on imperial ambition, rooted in the desire to control the oil of that region, with no regard for international law, for the people of Iraq, or for our own troops. We have paid a terrible price already, in the slow bleeding of our image around the world, in the draining of funds needed here for housing, medical care, and education. We have become a nation known for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, not for the Statue of Liberty or the Bill of Rights. The nation of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, has become a nation led by thugs.

So yes, we were not hoping for the success of the "surge", not hoping that the vast new Embassy being built would survive, not hoping that the Green Zone would remain secure. We hoped for the defeat of the US military, even as we did not agree with the hideous culture of violence of the Sunni and Shiite forces which have killed more Iraqi civilians than American troops.

Put another way, we were on the side of the troops in our army, on the side of the civilians in Iraq, and against the current US government, whose leader has the support of less than a third of the American people.

But whichever side you are on, the charts, as we end four years of conflict, tell the story.

As of this past November the United Nations estimates that one and a half million Iraqis have fled Iraq for Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran,or Syria. For the most part, these are the educated Iraqi middle class which makes it possible for the society to function - doctors, teachers, professionals. In addition it is estimated that more than that number are "internally displaced" - fleeing their homes in one part of Iraq for shelter elsewhere in the country.

American military deaths were 580 in 2003, 938 in 2004, 793 in 2005, and 885 last year. So things were not only much worse in 2006 than in 2003, when Bush told us the war was over, they are much worse in 2006 than the year before.

Terrorist bombings in 2003 are few in number, mostly in Baghdad. But the same maps show that in each year, 2004, 2005, and 2006, the areas of terrorist bombings have increased to such an extent that what seemed in 2003 like mere pin pricks on the map, looked last year like expanding ink blots engulfing the country.

Much more serious, the number of attacks on civilians, Iraqi security forces, and the occupation army saw a steady increase from March of 2005 to the last date for which we have data. In short, the US has been losing steadily for the last two years. We approach a point of no-return, where the Embassy staff will need to be lifted out of the Green Zone by helicopter.

Sectarian violence and killing increased sharply in the past year.

The violence, the deterioration of the situation, has no relationship to the great triumphs of which Bush has boasted - the interim government, the elections, the new constitution, the new government. There is no hopeful equation between these vaunted political achievements and the horrors on the ground. The war has been lost.

The "surge" is a waste of young lives - ours and theirs. It isn't even a risky gamble. It is a bet lost.

The mass demonstrations in Washington DC today - and across the country - and particularly the arrest of over 200 religious folks taking part in civil disobedience in front of the White House, means that the nation is not willing to accept the difficulty Congress has in finding a way to end the war. There is no more patience, there is no more time. There is a "surge" needed, alright, but it is a "surge" in opposition, in sit-ins at Congressional offices, a jamming of the machinery of the government until at last our troops are brought home from their dreadful tasks, and the bleeding nation of Iraq can try to begin to sort itself out. That will be a long, haunting task - but not one to which the US government can make any contribution, beyond the earliest possible and most complete withdrawal, leaving Bush's vast Baghdad Embassy unbuilt, as it leaves his reputation in ruins, and as some of us begin to demand an international tribunal for those responsible for the destruction of a nation.

(David McReynolds was a long time staff member at War Resisters League, and past Chair of the War Resisters International. He was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000).
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