US surge has failed - Iraqi poll

As Petraeus steps up to read his White House written script proclaiming that the "surge" is working, it's worth asking whether the Iraqis themselves, the people that Bush and Co. occasionally pretend to be "liberating", feel that "surge" is a good or bad thing as far as they are concerned. After all, unlike visiting politicians on a five day jaunt through the Green Zone, the Iraqis actually live through this day after day and are surely in a unique position to gauge the success or failure of any "surge".

About 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the US military "surge" of the past six months, an opinion poll suggests.

The survey by the BBC, ABC News and NHK of more than 2,000 people across Iraq also suggests that nearly 60% see attacks on US-led forces as justified.

This rises to 93% among Sunni Muslims compared to 50% for Shia.

So the Iraqis, the actual people living in this nightmare day after day, feel that security has deteriorated during Petraeus's glorious "surge".

Nor is this the first time that Petraeus is guilty of being overly optimistic about how things are going in Iraq. For years, Petraeus has been giving positive readings of how things are going, none of which have ever turned out to have any basis in fact.

Just weeks before the 2004 Presidential election Petraeus was at it again in an Op-Ed in The Washington Post in which he stated:

Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up. . . .

Iraq's security forces are, however, developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition -- and now NATO -- support, this trend will continue.

Now it would be churlish to note that this statement occurred just weeks before Bush was re-elected and that his statement probably helped - and certainly didn't hinder - Bush's re-election chances. Now, once again, Petraeus is on hand to deliver the kind of report that Bush needs delivered for political expediency. And, no doubt, we will be asked to ignore the fact that he has been guilty of false optimism in Iraq in the past and take what he is saying this time as the truth.

No-one, apart from the most shrill Republican partisans, is slurping from this dog bowl:

Tom Lantos, the Democratic chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said Americans had lost trust in the president's rationale for the mission in Iraq. "The fact remains gentleman that the administration has sent you here today to convince the members of two committees of Congress that victory is at hand," he told the two men. "With all due respect to you, I say I don't buy it.

Indeed, there are very few people outside of the Pentagon who buy this crock of shit. The general's own counter-insurgency manual states repeatedly that a counter insurgency has to work on several fronts at once and it must especially work on the hearts and minds of the people who supported the insurgency.

As the survey by the BBC, ABC News and NHK shows, this is not taking place. The hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is not being won over by this "surge", where 70% of people think that security has deteriorated during this most recent period.

Nor is the reduction in violence in certain areas down to the deployment of an extra 30,000 US troops:

In reality, the turnaround in Anbar was achieved not by the deployment of 30,000 extra troops but by the decision of the Sunni tribal chiefs to turn against an al-Qaida umbrella organisation called the Islamic State of Iraq. Anbar might be held up as showing the power of US forces to fashion peace in Iraq, but it could just as well demonstrate its opposite: the power of local Sunni forces, the same ones that supported Saddam, to turn on and turn off the violence. Once US forces leave, re-armed Sunni militias could equally resume their offensive against the Shia-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki.

So Petraeus has done what was asked of him, he has sat up and barked like a dog. His report will change nothing of any consequence. Bush will continue in his quest to pass this failure on to his successor, and Petraeus has helped him to do that.

The figures that Petraeus quoted have been disputed by both the Iraq government and the UN, but that was not the audience he was appealing to.

He was appealing to the most rabid of Bush's supporters, the frothing at the mouth one in four who continue to see victory as just over the next hill. It's not important whether or not we believe him, his job was to give Bush supporters another flag that they can wave to buy even more time for this catastrophe to be passed to another administration.

Patrick Cockburn sums it up well in Today's Independent:

Unfortunately, the propaganda effort by the White House may have a more malign impact than most propaganda exercises. It claims that victory is possible where failure has already occurred.

The Iraq war is lost. And every life sacrificed from this moment on is a waste. I honestly don't believe that even Bush continues to think that victory is possible. He's dumb, but he's not THAT dumb.

What we are witnessing is a supreme exercise in cynicism. We are witnessing a proud, arrogant and intellectually challenged man refusing to face up to the fact that he has failed abysmally in his war of choice.

Petraeus has done what was asked of him. History will eventually judge him. And when history does so, he will stand alongside General Westmoreland, making claims that were patently false at the time that he was making them.

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Tags: Petraeus, Iraq war, report, Westmoreland, Vietnam