Mission Accomplished: Surge

Republicans have been crowing recently about the “progress” we’ve been making in Iraq as a result of the surge. At his final State of the Union Address (thank God), the president said that the policy has “achieved results few of us could have imagined” and that people like John McCain said that Iraq has been “utterly transformed” because of the surge. Now, I have heard a lot of lies and disingenuous drivel about Iraq from Republicans over the last several years (WMDs, Mission Accomplished, etc.), but this surge-making-“progress” argument is reaching a startlingly new level of bullshit.

I am sure Republicans will now claim that anti-war people like me are living in a state of denial, especially since numbers show a reduction in violence and casualties in Baghdad. According to the military, violent deaths in Iraq are down approximately 50 percent, to 800 deaths per month, from a few months ago, when Iraq was averaging 1,600 deaths.

However, these violent death counts underrepresent the true number of casualties caused by violence in Iraq, because they don’t include the deaths resulting from Iraq’s crumbling infrastructure, which has deteriorated from the fighting.

Even with the surge-making “progress,” more than 60 percent of Iraqis still lack access to adequate water supplies, while hundreds of thousands are suffering from malnutrition. However, not only are Iraqis dying from a lack of food and water as a result of all the violence, but Iraqis are also dying from shortages of medicine, poor medical care, and disease outbreaks from poor sanitation. None of these Iraqis are included in the violence casualty counts, even though violence is what continues to degrade their quality of life.

However, even if we assume these violent death statistics are an accurate portrayal of the “progress” in Iraq, we cannot attribute this reduction in hostilities directly to the surge. August 2007 saw a ceasefire called by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and considering his high-ranking status amongst the Shiite militia groups in Iraq, the decision certainly contributed to the drop-off in violence. This view of Sadr’s influence is even shared by General David Petraeus, who told the Christian Science Monitor that the ceasefire had a noticeable impact on some of Baghdad’s most violent areas.

As if the fact that a radical Shiite cleric like Sadr has as much power in Iraq as our military wasn’t bad enough, there is also the disturbing trend of whom the U.S. is arming to help reduce the violence in Iraq.

According to the New York Times, for the past several months, the U.S. has been arming and supporting Sunni militia groups to fight extremist Sunnis in Iraq (such as al-Qaida). The problem with these Sunni militia groups, collectively known as the Awakening, is that many of them are comprised of the same insurgents who fought against Americans earlier in the war, so there is very little keeping them from switching their allegiances again. This fragile situation can be summed up by First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army’s Third Infantry Division when he states, “We’re paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?”

Furthermore, despite their opposition to al-Qaida, the New York Times reports that most Awakening members feel even more alienated from Iraq’s Shiite central government led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has openly stated that he plans to forcefully disarm the Sunni militias once they finish eliminating al-Qaida from Iraq.

The ongoing religious hostility between Sunni militias and the Shiite central government in Iraq is also contributing to Iraq’s political disunity. So far, Iraq’s government has yet to pass major laws that would redistribute oil revenue throughout the country, return low-level Baathist’s to power, or even hold elections for local positions.

As far as I am concerned, this political gridlock is the death nail for any talk of “progress” the surge has brought to Iraq, because, according to the Bush administration, the whole point of the surge was to give the Iraqi government time and “breathing space” to reach political reconciliation. Consequently, without any uniform Iraqi government policy in place, any hopes of a stable Iraq disappear as they will continue to argue and fight. This sentiment is shared by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who recently said that “tactical security gains may not endure without economic rebuilding and better governance.”

Ultimately, to boisterously claim that the surge has worked is once again premature and false. Sadly, by any measures or metrics, there are very few signs of “progress” in Iraq. By digging even a bit below the surface, we can see that the hypocritical tactics the U.S. employed (arming our former enemies) while relying on the whims of radical Shiite clerics and tolerating Iraqi political gridlock, weakens Iraq only further.

Patrick Molnar is a business junior and a Mustang Daily liberal columnist.