[I finally realized the level at which this metaphor is appropriate: it was always a "surge over the finish line," i.e., the election cycle. After which they could collapse politically happy.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html
Sunday, January 20, 2008; B01
The Washington Post
Surge to Nowhere
By Andrew J. Bacevich
<snip>
A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that
the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in
Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S.
response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation
meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households
now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer
than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned
to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer
ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace
that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000
AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets
intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government
Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials
repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling
inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi
ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services,
then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.
Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly
abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in
Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an
initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction
in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops
-- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the
political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.
Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni
tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the
civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque
in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile
connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the
deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that
dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry
Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It
looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"
In short, the surge has done nothing to overturn former secretary of
state Colin Powell's now-famous "Pottery Barn" rule: Iraq is
irretrievably broken, and we own it. To say that any amount of "kicking
ass" will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma
remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no
end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of
failure.
In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has
ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was
one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI
military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable
candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the
Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete
withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks
of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to
contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving
it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out
of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a
masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William
Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat
out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in
recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain
caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.
<end excerpt>
Full at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html
Michael