CNN Bulletin:

Custer attacks at Little Big Horn.

General Crook says; "The attack is working my friends."

Did any thinking person expect the "surge" to work? Nope, but just wait for the "tide"! That one will work for sure. It involves taking the outgoing members of the military and returning them to the shores of Iraq. After all, they are still alive, so where's the beef?

When the "tide" fails, we can try the "storm". Details still in the works.

The President of Iran says that The Surge is working well for his country. He just returned from a very nice visit to Baghdad. He just travelled there, dressed in a sports jacket, in an open procession, and was welcomed warmly. He wishes to thank those American Leaders who have to sneak in to Iraq unannounced, for security reasons, for having improved things greatly for Iranian interests in Iraq.

The President of Iran urges America to keep up the good work!!!!

#1- Wasn't it Anbar Province where the Bush gang boasts that the sheiks got tired of the violence of al Qaeda and banded together to throw them out?

#2- And doesn't the Bush gang warn us if we leave Iraq, al Qaeda will take over and use it as a base for spreading terrorism?

If # 1 is true, then #2 cannot follow, can it?

ok,ok;

We Surge and violence drops, attacks and deaths are both down, its 1 + 1 = 2. The Surge is working.

For the last 6 weeks violence, attacks and deaths
have risen. If 1 + 1 = 2, then 2 + 2 = 4. The Surge stopped working!

Back in the day in Southeast Asia, we had terms like "incremental escalation" and "mission creep" to describe our government's constantly shifting (i.e., "goalpost moving") rationales and plans for doing something wrong (like a colonial military occupation) the "right" way. We also had a popular TV cartoon show featuring a flying squirrel named Rocky who would forever admonish his dipshit sidekick, Bullwinkel Moose, not to keep fruitlessly trying to pull a rabbit out of his magic tophat. Said the exasperated Rocky again and again: "That trick NEVER works!" Replied the undeterred Moose before every next failure: "This time for sure!"

My thanks to all here who have expressed similar, unsuspended disbelief at the hurricane of unadulterated bullshit blowing out of our currently moribund "government" (and at least TWO of the "country loving" candidates for President who wish to succeed in perpetuating it). I long ago lost hope that rational political discourse might break out in my native land, so I took to writing poetry as therapy for my alienation. Apropos of the present topic, let me just share:

http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2008/03/escalating-sacrifice.html

and

http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2007/04/this-time-for-sure.html

If the links don't work, I'll just have to find some other way to pull that damn rabbit out of my magic hat again.

I appreciate the good intentions behind Jonathan Taplin's words:

"Even the very small draw-down of troops from Baghdad has led to a rise in American and Iraqi deaths. Now General Petraeus has concluded he can't draw down anymore troops."

However, good intentions (and their road-paving to you-know-where qualities) aside, I must point out the time-dishonored logical fallacy that undermines the proposition and unfortunately leads to false inferences that in effect help rationalize the so-called "surge" (i.e., latest "mission creep" in Iraq) that has indeed failed from its inception.

The Latin name for this fallacy: namely, "post hoc ergo propter hoc," means "after, therefore, because of ..." In other words, the rooster crowed and then the sun came up, so therefore the sun came up BECAUSE the rooster crowed. In fact, both Jonathan Taplin and General Petraeus (although for different reasons) fall for (or encourage) the fallacy by claiming that events in Iraq which occur AFTER changes in American troop levels, either up or down, have a causal relationship. Not so. Neither necessarily nor sufficiently so.

Events of true significance in Iraq happen because Iraqis and their immediate neighbors want them to happen or cause them to happen. For the inept and bewildered Americans -- mostly military -- in Iraq, these desires and capabilities remain either unknown or dangerously misperceived. Only the persistent, unrepentant arrogance of America and its battered military could possibly suppose that we control events in Iraq -- after five years of disastrous and counter-productive meddling that provides every evidence to the contrary.

I think that Jonathan Taplin makes this logical mistake innocently; although I have to suppose that General Petraeus has his own political and career reasons for encouraging Americans to believe that he somehow has a handle on what happens in Iraq, either presently or in any future to come. Petraeus has had three tours in Iraq and he has yet to ever FINISH anything. Petraeus agreed to implement the so-called "surge" -- a creeping mission dreamed up by neoconservative Fred Kagan of the infamous American Enterprise Institute -- for the one and only purpose of assisting Deputy Dubya Bush in stalling for time until another American President arrives to accept both the burden and the blame for Dubya's historic blunder. It should therefore come as no surprise that any and every change in Iraqi circumstances ALWAYS leads to the same false conclusion that America must stay in Iraq until both Bush and Petraeus have moved onwards (if not upwards) to "other priorities," in Five-Deferment-Dick Cheney's notorious phrase.

As an antidote to our government's persistent logical bullshit, I recommend keeping in mind what I like to call "The Omnipotent Sparrow Theory." This fallacious hypothesis maintains (with a straight face) that "not a single sparrow falls to earth, anywhere, but the the American military either CAUSES it to fall or else (through inaction) ALLOWS it to fall." General Petraeus' comments on events in Iraq, frankly, stink of Omnipotent Sparrow theorizing. I realize that Petraeus has uttered the obligatory disclaimer that "no military solution" exists for the Amrican military in Iraq; but then, if he really believed that, he would have long since led the American military out of the foreign country for which he and his military have no solution to offer. So, I recommend holding the nose and ignoring Petraeus' disclaimers as self-serving, career-ticket-punching nonsense. If he knew what to do, he would have done it already and led the "victory" parade home.

We Americans who demand that this madness cease -- forthwith -- must argue incessantly that the American military has NO BUSINESS in Iraq -- at ANY force level -- and therefore that it remains IRRELEVANT what changes America makes in the force levels that we have no business maintaining in Iraq. We went through all this "troop level yo-yo" business during our Vietnam (the First) debacle. Then, as now, our disreptuable and discredied government kept using the vague promise of troop level "changes" (implying, perhaps, decreases) as a bait-and-switch gambit to try and demoralize growing anti-war sentiment among the disgusted and betrayed American people.

The first rule and the second rule and the only rule to follow here, fellow Crimestoppers, has a simple-slogan formulation from back in the day when the obvious became inescapable: "We lost the day we started and we win the day we stop." Enough with the dialectical distractions (i.e., question-begging, non-sequiturs, straw-men, shifting the burden of proof, arguing from ignorance, etc.) Stop accepting bullshit with a smile and a request for more, please. We need to give Petraeus another Peter Principle promotion (or "percussive sublimation") upwards to a new level of incompetence and order the troops out of Iraq for their own, and America's, good. Just Stop and Win -- NOW. Time's up.

lol. Yeah, in no way did this administration coin the term. :rolleyes:

Another lame post from ellen the troll.

Taplin, great post overall.

"The Realpolitik part of my nature says..."

I wouldn't define it so narrowly.

Pretty much any FP rationale/ideology comes to the same conclusion, that there's no sense in waging perpetual wars, save one: the sort of imperialism favored by neo-cons.

Iraq is FUBARed and there's no indication this administration or the neo-cons wish it any other way. In many ways it benefits their goals which are at odds with that of most Americans:

1) A destabilized Iraq is a problem to all it's neighbors, and the region, and potentially the US as it increases anti-Americanism. However, to rt wingers in Israel and the US, this serves to herd the populace towards extremism which favors them politically. Also, as neo-cons children don't serve in the military, and as they live in gated communities and have tremendous security, physical and economic, they bear no cost and reap all the benefits of instability in Iraq.

2) It's given an excuse to inflate oil prices which obviously benefits wealthy oil interests enormously. Production costs have remained flat, by profits have increased by an order of magnitude. Oil interests have made more profits since the beginning of the Iraq war then they would have made otherwise in decades.

3) Despite the overall chaos in Iraq, it can be said that the neo-cons control Iraq oil, at least to the extent they can deny it to others and their presence in Iraq denies anyone else the oppurtunity to attempt to restore stability. So, China, India, and the EU are essentially denied access to oil as a result. Which takes us back to inflated oil prices and the vast profits being made in the oil industry.

4) American taxpayers are paying for the war. The profits of the war are accruing to wealthy interests entirely in Big Business. The oil industry, military contracting, and so on. From that perspective, the war is a defacto redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the hyper wealthy.

Jonathan - your analysis that "the surge is not really working" because, "even the very small draw-down of troops from Baghdad has led to a rise in American and Iraqi deaths" constitutes an absurdly narrow exercise.

The surge is not really working because the number of Iraqis killed, maimed and orphaned as a result of the US-led invasion and occupation continues to increase.

The surge is not really working because the number of US troops killed and wounded in Iraq continues to increase.

The surge is not really working because some 5 million Iraqis remain displaced.

The surge is not really working because the cost of the Iraq occupation is skyrocketing into trillions of dollars.

The surge is not really working because the number of global terrorist incidents is increasing, not decreasing.

The surge is not really working because it hasn't located Saddam's WMDs or Bin Laden partnership --the reasons we invaded 5 years ago.

The surge is not really working because our military is still over-extended.

The surge is not really working because by nearly every objective standard, the Iraqi people are worse-off than they were before the invasion.

The surge is not really working because America's credibility is in tatters for having invaded Iraq in the first place.

No amount of surging can un-shit the bed --its purpose is to cover-up the mess until the shitters are out of office.