Why the Surge is Working ... for Osama

Finally, after we've been waiting with bated breath for three months for General Petraeus' report (he's supposed to tell us if the surge worked or not), we will soon find out if we are supposed to continue the Iraq War or if a withdrawal is in order. What? Does anyone really believe that Bush will do anything but continue the Iraq War regardless of what Petraeus or anyone else says? And does anyone really believe the Democrats will do anything other than go along with him? Bush has built his Presidency and his legacy around this war. He may not be able to win it in the time remaining to him, but, at least, he doesn't want to lose it. He'll leave that to the next occupant of the White House. Then he'll proceed to build his library where right under "George W Bush, President of the United States" in large letters will be the motto (in slightly smaller letters), "He Stayed the Course in the War Against Terrorism." So you think he'll go down as the worst President of the United States? Don't bet on it. His spinmeisters will be better funded than yours, and the spinning won't stop once he's out of the White House and some sober minded historians logically dissect his Presidency. No, his historians will go on spinning ad infinitum and in perpetuity. Don't think the spin and the propaganda will stop January 1, 2008.

In "Why the Surge is Not Working," by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, he says:

Ignore for a moment that many in the media are misrepresenting the actual casualties–US and Iraqi–in Iraq. The real goal of the surge was to create enough security so that the political process could move forward and the sectarian rift be bridged. So how is that going? Not well. Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times are front and center in doing what good journalists do. They report the facts. The Newsweek piece, Baghdad’s New Owners, confirms my earlier prediction that we would see a decline in civilian casualties in Baghdad because of the “success” of the ethnic cleansing. As you drive the Sunnis out of their neighborhoods there are fewer Sunnis to kill. Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow write: Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually “has increased the IDPs to some extent.” Also worth your time is Tina Susman’s piece in today’s Los Angeles Times. The so-called success in Al Anbar does nothing to address the fundamental issue of reconciling Shias and Sunnis. In fact, the arming of the Sunnis and their willingness to cooperate in protecting their home turf is simply self-preservation. The Sunni tribes recognize that they will be fighting the Shias and must be armed and ready to do so. According to Susman: Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved. The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration and Iraq’s Ministry for Displacement and Migration. Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions. Last month, as many as 400 people were killed in a bombing in a village near the Syrian border, the worst bombing since the war began in March 2003. In July, 150 people were reported killed in a village about 100 miles north of Baghdad.

Simply put, there has been no political progress in Iraq, and the country has been drifting towards Joe Biden's solution: a Shiite province  in the south, a Sunni Al Anbar and a Kurdish province in the north, hardly a unified Iraq. Sure, the Sunnis in Al Anbar decided to kick Al Quaeda out because they got tired of the civilian casualties they were causing. So the Sunnis in Al Anbar allied themselves with the US. This is General Petraeus' "progress." Iraq is still a disaster with a huge refugee crisis. There are large numbers of both internal and external displaced persons as Iraqis move to Syria and Jordan to escape the violence. Sunnis are concentrating in Al Anbar and Shiites are concentrating in the south. Kurds are staying put in the north where they have practically formed a separate de facto Kurdish state already.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) report struck a pessimistic note as it said only 3 of the 18 benchmarks that the Iraqi government was supposed to accomplish on accouint of the surge had been met. So many Sunnis have dropped out of or have boycotted the Shiite dominated Iraq central government that it no longer has any pretense of representing Iraqis as a whole. And then the US has redefined what a civilian casualty is or isn't. Reportedly, if an Iraqi is shot in the front of the head, that does not represent sectarian violence whereas if he's shot in the back of the head it does. By twiddling with the statistics, the US can make any kind of a case it wants including that sectarian violence is decreasing. That doesn't square with most independent accounts. The Washington Post reports in an article entitled "[GAO] Report Finds Little Progress on Iraq Goals":

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved." "Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

But whether or not Bush continues to fight the war in Iraq (my bet is he will ride it out until the end of his administration because the Democrats won't stand up against him), it is clear that al Quaeda is achieving it's goal of bankrupting the US. So Bush's vanity in not wanting to lose a war (as if there's anything to be won or lost except oil) is the driving force that is playing right into Osama bin Laden's hand. Bin Laden's latest video, which was derided, pooh-poohed and barely quoted from by US media, contains a message which does not represent the ramblings of a madman or a megalomaniac but instead a shrewd assessment of the geopolitics of the Iraq war. It outlines in stark terms the fact that for every dollar al Quaeda has spent in its struggle against the US, the US has spent a million in its fight against al Quaeda. The most important point to understand (and this is irrespective of bin Laden's comments) is that this war, like any war, is really won or lost not on the battlefield but in terms of economics. And in those terms the US invasion of Iraq is a total disaster.

Bin Laden cuts to the chase:

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing and nothing is too great for Allah. That being said, those who say that al Qaeda has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that al Qaeda is the sole factor in achieving these spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results. And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States even if the intentions differ. And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (when they pointed out that) for example, al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America in the incident and its aftermath lost-according to the lowest estimate-more than 500 billion dollars, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars [spent by the US] by the permission of Allah besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan with Allah's permission. It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind will be convinced.

Bush' egotistical pursuit of winning the Iraq war is playing right into bin Laden's hands!

Comments

[Eugene]

New Osama video seems yet another forgery. Everyone needs Osama alive:
terrorists as symbolic leader and the US Administration - to avoid
scaling down the war on terror.
Obadiah Shoher rightly notes (
http://www.samsonblinded.org/news/osama-commemorates-911-1114 ) that
new Osama talks like a leftist university professor. I like Shoher's
analysis. No way a terrorist leader like Osama would use a speechwriter. Osama is famous
for his rhetoric.
Also, in the tape Osama both threatens America with attack (by
"proving" Americans polytheists) and offers (yet another time)
long-term coaching in Islam.
But his dyed beard makes me cautious. Islam's mujahedeen dye their
beards before battle.