And We Would've Gotten Away With It Too, If It Wasn't For You Meddling Kids

With the Iraqi government continuing to crumble just in time for the Bush administration to begin a fresh round of time-buying next month (Maliki out, Allawi back in?), the new narrative from the noise machine is that the 'surge' is "working"... and anyone who disagrees is a defeatist jerk.

The NY Post (where else?) put this opinion piece by columnist Charles Hunt on page 2 of Friday's paper, as if it were a legitimate news piece. He states that "Democrats bristle when people call them 'Defeatocrats,' but they're certainly living up to that name," going on to explain how Hillary Clinton and John Edwards having changed their minds on Iraq in recent years makes them part of the "'lose at all costs' crowd." He concludes that "one thing is for sure. It's too late for all those young men and women who have already paid their last full measure."

Damn you war critics!!!! Why did you kill all of those troops?!!

In reality, though, things aren't as simple as Hunt believes. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum looks at the actual statistics from Iraq on the number of attacks, the size of insurgency, civilian and troop casualties, and other metrics. The #'s show that violence has gone up since the 'surge', while availability of resources has gone down. That does tend to happen when you escalate a war.

And a NY Times report reveals an increase of Iraqis leaving the country-

Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show...

...Though most displaced Iraqis say they would like to return, there is little prospect of their doing so...

And with our leaders floating the possibility of changing the Iraqi leadership that the 'surge' was meant to assist, it's hard to tell what all of this destruction was for now.

I'd like to believe that most people understand that while you might decrease violence somewhere by turning said area in a tightly-controlled military garrison town, that this is a stop-gap measure that is not sustainable indefinitely and must be replaced soon with internal political stability (of course, the White House has predicably moved the goalposts on this issue). But, as Hunt himself noted, the "great thing about a presidential campaign is that all the nuances... fall away." And so, for the defenders of this mess, all they will say is that we were winning, until 'the rug was pulled out from under' our troops by 'defeatists'.

The actual people in charge of this war and its policies bare no responsibility for anything.