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Suicidal "Surge" Semantics...
Commanders Say Push in Baghdad Is Short of Goal - New York Times
| Three months after the
start of the operation, US and Iraqi troops control less
than a third of the city. www.nytimes.com/2007/06/ |
![MoveOn protests McCain/Lieberman troop surge [VIDEO]](http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/media_moveon.jpg){kind=small} 
|
MoveOn protests McCain/Lieberman troop surge [VIDEO] |
Bush and the Neocon's 'Surge' to Nowhere
Bush is still the Christian-crusader
President, still lodged inside a bubble universe filled with neocon advisors
-- and that means more troops in Iraq, even if the idea
Bush has all but dismissed the advice of his generals, including Centcom Commander John Abizaid, and George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, because they are "more fixated on withdrawal than victory." At a recent Pentagon session, according to General James T. Conway, the commandant of the U.S. Marines, Bush told the assembled brass: "What I want to hear from you now is how we are going to win, not how we are going to leave." As a result, Abizaid and Casey are, it appears, getting the same hurry-up-and-retire treatment that swept away other generals who questioned the wisdom on Iraq transmitted from Planet Neocon.
That's scary, if it means that Bush -- presumably on the advice of the Neocon-in-Chief, Vice President Dick Cheney -- has decided to launch a major push, Kagan-style, for victory in Iraq. Not that such an escalation has a chance of working, but there's no question that, in addition to bankrupting the United States, breaking the army and the Marines, and unleashing all-out political warfare at home, it would kill perhaps tens of thousands more Iraqis.
Personally, I'm not convinced that Bush could get away with
it politically. Not only is the public dead-set against escalating the war,
but there are hints that Congress might not stand for it, and the leadership
of the U.S. Armed Forces is opposed.
Over the past few days, a swarm of Republican senators has come out against
the surge, including at least three Republican senators up for reelection in
2008 in states that make them vulnerable: Gordon Smith of Oregon, whose
remarkable speech
calling the war "criminal" went far beyond the normal bland rhetoric of
discourse in the U.S. capital, along with John Sununu of New Hampshire and
Norm Coleman of Minnesota. In addition, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, less
vulnerable but still facing voters in 2008, has questioned the surge idea.
And a host of Republican moderates -- Chuck Hagel (NE), Dick Lugar (IN),
Susan Collins (ME) -- have lambasted it. (Hagel told
Robert Novak: "It's Alice in Wonderland. I'm absolutely opposed to the
idea of sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.") Even Sam Brownback,
one of the Senate godfathers of the neocon-backed Iraqi National Congress,
has expressed skepticism, saying: "We can't impose a military solution."
According to Novak, only 12 of the 49 Republican senators are now willing to
back Sen. John McCain's blood-curdling cries for sending in more troops.
Meanwhile, says Novak, the Democrats would not only criticize the idea of a
surge but, led by Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, might use their crucial power over the purse. "Biden," writes
Novak, "will lead the rest of the Democrats not only to oppose a surge but
to block it." Reports the Financial Times of London: "Democrats have
hinted that they could use their control over the budget process to make
life difficult for the Bush administration if it chooses to step up the
military presence in Iraq." A Kagan-style surge would require a vast new
commitment of funds, and with their ability to scrutinize, put conditions
on, and even strike out entire line items in the military budget and the
Pentagon's supplemental requests, the Democrats could find ways to stall or
halt the "surge," if not the war itself.
Robert Dreyfuss
is the author of
Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash
Fundamentalist Islam. His
website.
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