Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The 'Surge' a Pyrrhic victory

I won't bore you with the fact that I predicted going to war with Iraq would achieve nothing in making us safer - I'm still trying to figure out what it hoped to accomplish.

If the goal was to get rid of Saddam we won the war a long time ago. If the idea was to get rid of the nuclear threat of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, then the war was unwinnable from its wrongly-conceived start. If the idea was to get oil from Iraq at a cheap price we may never know the outcome, but so far it's not working out to well. I do know a lot of lives were lost and an enormous amount of money that could have made life easier for many Americans was wasted.

Now let us look at the "Surge." If we give those in favor of this surge credit for for what the surge has accomplished, Iraq is now safer for American soldiers who did not have to be there. As recent suicide bomb blasts show it's still not too safe to be an Iraqi and it's difficult to see Iraq becoming a tourist destination any time soon. At the same time have we not made it more difficult for our troops in Afghanistan by having so many surge troops occupied in Iraq? Assuming the surge has made Iraq safer, did it not do so at the cost of worsened problems in Afghanistan? That;s of course assuming we really accomplished anything in Iraq and not merely put off the problem until we leave.

1 comment:

hariet said...

I am in complete agreement with your analysis of the surge. What a sad farce it is. And one thousand young men died as well as so many wounded.
Something is not right with the public's thinking process. Perhaps it all boils down to the level of education most Americans are getting. Europeans seem more aware.
The media is really pushing this hoax. I hope the CIA and FBI aren't reading this blog.