Setting the Record Straight on the Surge

CNN’s Anderson Cooper is in Iraq, reporting live from there this week as the Iraq debate here at home intensifies. I want to highlight this exchange from yesterday’s show:

COOPER: Michael Ware, Petraeus said that as many as 30,000 troops could leave by the beginning of next summer. It was sort of presented as though that was an operational decision.

In truth, it is really an operational necessity. The U.S. can’t maintain these current troop levels, without putting even more strain on the — on our already strained troops. Is that correct?

WARE: Yes, that is correct, Anderson. In fact, I’m struck by the way people are regarding General Petraeus’ discussion of — of those troop levels until July of next year. People are acting like he has just announced some sort of phased withdrawal. Well, no, not at all. That was the timeline for the so-called surge in the beginning.

Indeed, it wasn’t a surge. It was a one-year escalation of U.S. forces. And the clock was due to run out on that escalation in the summer of next year anyway. So, that is not a revelation at all.

While the “withdrawal” of a few thousand troops is being heralded in the media as a sign of progress in Iraq, the suggested drawdown of U.S. forces is nothing more than a necessity and a consequence of a strained military.

At his August 1st confirmation hearing, President Bush’s nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, confirmed the necessary scaling back of the surge:

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, President Bush’s nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate panel yesterday that the war in Iraq is taking a heavy toll on the U.S. military, warning that American forces are “not unbreakable” and stressing the need to “plan for an eventual drawdown” of troops. [...]

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), noting Mullen’s commitment to capping tours of duty in Iraq at no more than 15 months, asked if the Pentagon faces a de facto timetable for ending the buildup by April “because we simply will not be able to put manpower on the ground unless we extend rotations.”

Mullen replied, “Yes, sir, that’s fair.”

The “surge” was time-limited from the very beginning. The clock was running from day one for the President, who promised us that the surge would provide the security necessary to create “breathing space” for the Iraqi government.

Yet as Ambassador Crocker testified today, the Iraqi government is “dysfunctional.” Where the surge sought to create “breathing space,” the Iraqi government continues to be suffocated by sectarian tensions, corruption, incompetence and mismanagement.

In short, the clock has run out on the surge, and by any measure, the surge has failed.