Iraq: Escalating Failure

	GOOD NEWS The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced yesterday it “would review its investments to determine whether its holdings were socially responsible.” STATE WATCH SOUTH DAKOTA: “South Dakota will provide girls ages 11-18 with a free vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer.” MICHIGAN: “A Michigan public school district is under pressure to provide a constitutionally suspect and factually flawed Bible course to its high school students.” IOWA: Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is “suing Gov.-elect Chet Culver for allegedly violating the state’s official English law.” BLOG WATCH THINK PROGRESS: Fox News anchor calls Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) a “hostile enemy right here on the home front.” WARREN REPORTS: A glimpse of life making $7.25/hour. THE ONE BLOG: Final hours to tell Congress to replace nearly a billion dollars for the fight against extreme poverty. MEDIA MATTERS: Broadcast networks ignore Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) televised response to Bush’s address calling for redeployment. DAILY GRILL “The military’s new strategy for Iraq envisions creating ‘gated communities’ in Baghdad — sealing off discrete areas and forcibly removing insurgents, then stationing American units in the neighborhood to keep the peace and working to create jobs for residents.” — Los Angeles Times, 1/11/07 VERSUS “The gated communities plan has been tried — with mixed success — in other wars. In Vietnam, the enclaves were called ‘strategic hamlets’ and were a spectacular failure.” — Los Angeles Times, 1/11/07 ARCHIVES Progress Report STUDENTS Politics with an Attitude: Everyone from Barack Obama to Stephen Colbert talks to Campus Progress. Right-wingers seem scared of us. Find out why here.

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney
Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin

IRAQ	Escalating Failure
UNDER THE RADAR	Go Beyond The Headlines
THINK FAST	Coffee and Donuts Not Included
For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org.
Sign up | Contact us | Permalinks/Archive | Mobile | RSS | Print

IRAQ
Escalating Failure

Last night, President Bush disregarded the opposition of U.S. military commanders, lawmakers of both parties, the Iraq Study Group (ISG), and the American public and announced to the nation that he plans to increase America’s presence in Iraq by approximately 21,500 troops, with no timetable for when troop levels would be drawn back down. The right wing tried to present this “surge” as the “last chance for success” in Iraq. But as the Associated Press noted, Bush’s escalation announcement is simply the “latest repackaging of a program that’s been wrapped and rewrapped many times.” When Bush sent increased U.S. forces into Baghdad in June 2006, the security situation actually deteriorated further and violence increased. One Bush administration official admitted that the escalation plan is “more of a political decision than a military one” and military commanders have made clear to the President that U.S. forces are already overstretched. As Bush noted in June 28, 2005, sending more troops to Iraq will “undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead” and “suggest that we intend to stay forever.” Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has introduced legislation demanding accountability from the President, and the Center for American Progress has released a memo recommending “an amendment on the supplemental funding bill that states that if the administration wants to increase the number of troops in Iraq above 150,000, it must provide a plan for their purpose and require an up or down vote on exceeding that number.” American Progress also has a strategic redeployment plan detailing “a responsible exit from Iraq as part of a balanced global strategy to make Americans safer.”

REPACKAGING FAILURE: Even before Bush spoke to the nation last night, the escalation plan was underway. Ninety advance troops from the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Baghdad yesterday and an “additional battalion of roughly 800 troops from the same division are expected to arrive in Baghdad Thursday.” The troop increase will cost $5.6 billion, in addition to $1.2 billion to finance a rebuilding and jobs program. The American troop presence in Iraq will swell to approximately 153,000 soldiers. But the AP reported that the 21,500 additional troops “will include only one major combat unit that was not otherwise scheduled to go. The rest of the boost will come from sending a few brigades earlier than planned and extending the tours of others.” Bush last night presented this plan as a “new strategy” that will “help us succeed in the fight against terror.” But in reality, “Bush’s overall strategy seems likely to remain wholly unchanged: To keep U.S. troops in Iraq as long as it takes for the Iraqi government to start functioning effectively. That means using American bodies and firepower, pretty much indefinitely, to prop up a country racked by civil war and chafing under occupation. That means the American death count ticks on, with no end in sight,” writes the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin. One senior Army official acknowledged that there will be “more violence than usual because of the surge.”

IGNORING THE PUBLIC, MILITARY, AND EXPERTS: It is clear that Bush did not listen to the American public when figuring out the way forward in Iraq. A recent CBS poll found that just 18 percent of the American public supports an escalation of involvement in Iraq. He also didn’t heed the advice of his military commanders. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were unanimously opposed to the escalation. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who publicly declared in December that he does not support escalation, “is caustic in private about the proposed ‘surge,’” columnist Robert Novak reported. Military commanders also told the President that they had just 9,000 soldiers and Marines available to go to Iraq. Bush also ignored advice from America’s “allies abroad.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair made clear that he will not send more U.K. troops to Iraq, but will instead “stick to its own strategy of gradually handing over to the Iraqi army.” The ISG also did not recommend an escalation in troops in its recent report, and group member Leon Panetta told Newsweek that increasing troops will send the “wrong message to the Iraqis.”

IGNORING CONGRESS: The President also claimed that his decision came after he “consulted members of Congress from both parties.” But according to a tally by The Progress Report, many more lawmakers oppose the escalation than support it. (Help us fill in this list. Call your members of Congress, ask their position, then email their response us.) After a meeting last week between Bush and 30 Republican senators, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) observed, “I think I was the only senator who acted like he would be supportive. I was surprised that no one said it but me.” Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), said on the Senate floor, “I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote Bush a letter telling him that escalation “is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake.” Even traditional Bush administration ally Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) — who is currently in Baghdad — yesterday said that he does “not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer.”

WHY IT WON’T WORK — TROOP STRAINS: Not only did the military admit to the President that it does not have enough troops to support the escalation, but it does not have enough armor. Yesterday, the Baltimore Sun reported that the thousands of troops Bush ordered to Iraq “will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said.” A report in early 2006 found that the Army had become a “thin green line,” stretched to a “breaking point.” Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a leading proponent of Bush’s plan, admitted, “Is it going to be a strain on the military? Absolutely. Casualties are going to go up.” More than 3,000 U.S. troops have been killed in the Iraq war.

WHY IT WON’T WORK — POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS: With military commanders largely opposed to escalation, one Bush administration official acknowledged to NBC News “that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one.” The Washington Post reported yesterday that after the ISG came out, how “to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme” and “some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton.”

WHY IT WON’T WORK — PAST FAILURES: AP noted that “there’s clearly a been-there, done-that feel to Bush’s new plan. It’s an old story: The U.S. before has temporarily raised troop levels, taken steps to encourage democracy, spent money on education and public works and set benchmarks for the Iraqi government.” These past approaches have also failed. In June 2006, Bush announced a major effort to secure Baghdad, stating at a news conference that over 7,000 U.S.-led coalition troops would be moved into the city. But since that time, violence in Baghdad has drastically increased. Approximately 106 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq in December, making it the deadliest month in 2006. Then-Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. William B. Caldwell admitted that the “big push” was a big failure, as did Bush, who conceded that “our operations to secure Baghdad have encountered greater resistance. … I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq. I’m not satisfied, either.” Another part of the new U.S. strategy will create “gated communities” in Baghdad by “sealing off discrete areas and forcibly removing insurgents, then stationing American units in the neighborhood to keep the peace and working to create jobs for residents.” But this approach, too, was tried during the Vietnam War and was a “spectacular failure.” “It didn’t work,” said Conrad Crane, one of the authors of the military’s counterinsurgency manual. “They ended up locking up the insurgents with the population in these new hamlets. … It actually helped the Viet Cong with recruiting.”