UMRBLOG ISSUES THE PRESIDENT A "SURGE WARRANT"

It was my considered opinion, that the invasion of a sovereign foreign country was bad policy, resource allocation and of questionable utility. With every day that has gone by, it has become clear that our leaders had absolutely no concept of how to handle the period of occupation.

Moreover, it has always been obvious that they had no defined, measurable goals which, when achieved, would be a "victory."

Even at that, of the removal of the top-level bureaucrats and the dismantling of the Iraqi army showed a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity. It will probably never be clear in my lifetime why an ambitious diplomat essentially superseded reconstruction expert General Garner.

All of this woeful performance in the occupation of Iraq simply served to confirm my initial impression of that this seemingly imperialistic adventure was wrong on any number of levels. Given this background, it would be a fair guess that I would adamantly oppose President Bush's proposed "Surge". Much to my own surprise, I find myself in tepid agreement with His Flightsuitness on his proposal to insert approximately 21,000 additional troops into the occupation areas and have them function essentially as an "anti-gang unit".

Make no mistake; I still believe that the original invasion was a grievous error. The whole neocon concept of installing a representative government into the center of a land mass that we generally refer to as Arabia was borderline demented. The value of the targets was vastly overrated. The value of the infrastructure that we destroyed in the adventure was vastly underrated. No value was placed upon artifacts we had no plan to preserve. The value of the public service bureaus and the lower grades in the army resources to reconstitute the country was disregarded. In other words the whole undertaking was lame. In a land war, ground is taken to be liberated on behalf of someone who will occupy it and care for it, to be temporarily held for strategic fighting purposes or to be occupied for colonial purposes. We took ground for no purpose other than to change a regime with no considered thought about the identity and trustworthiness of those who would occupy it.

All of that aside, we are there now. Nothing can change that. We have broken up the Iraqi civil service system, its defense system and the only peacekeeping mechanism it had. Iraq, with any form of government, has historic enemies. The grudge between Iran and Iraq is not going away anytime soon. The need for basic civil infrastructure in Iraq is not going to disappear. Now that we have broken this country, we need to leave it at least as functional or before. As Colin Powell so correctly said, the first rule of post-modern society regarding invading another sovereign is "You broke it, you fix it. " we cannot fix it, which means we it cannot leave this engagement honorably, if there's not sufficient security for American and Iraqi engineers, construction professionals and technocrats to safely rebuild. To put the same thing another way, we have, as a consequence of our stupendous bad judgment, placed ourselves under an obligation to create sufficient security in Iraq to repair its broken to defense system, civil infrastructure, justice system and governance. We have adequately demonstrated we cannot do that with the troop levels and assignments currently in place.

Having placed us and our fine military in this position, the President was presented with essentially three oversimplified options " go big, go long or go home ". To his credit, he worked on refining these simplistic categories. In essence be decided upon " go big " modified by what I will call " go short " and " go specific ". He proposes to insert proactive troops into problem areas, take ground for the purpose of pacification and gradually let the Iraqi army maintain each area's pacification.

Certainly, he is not tell us precisely how "Short " this adventure will be and is understandably shaky on the details of how this risky undertaking is going to be handed off to risk-averse Iraqis. It is a fair criticism to suggest that, in coming to this decision, he sought meaningful counsel only from people he believed would agree with him.

It seems to me that all the objections to his plan have fallen to one of four categories: First are the moral objections from people who are more or less pacifists; Second are the people who believe the original incursion was a bad idea and believe any additional troops is throwing " good after bad "; Third are the people who correctly state that this is administration has not been correct about much in the way of foreign or military policy and justifiably ask " why should we believe you now? "; finally, come the people who simply believe that there is no credible and certainly no compelling evidence that this strategic modification will prove successful.

For the categorical pacifists and conscientious objectors, I have no satisfactory answer. There will never be one. We elect the commander-in-chief. Any time he or she elects to use military force the pacifists' moral objection is implicated. Those of us who happen to agree with the president on this phase are simply left to respect the pacifists' high moral principles and respectfully disagree.

To the people who argue " good effort on top of bad ", I say that argument minimizes the stakes. On September 12, 2001 the entire civilized world was our friend. We have done much since then fritter away the good feelings, which came our way back then. There are, for whatever reason, still governments and still people in this world who hold us in the relatively high regard. If we leave things in their current status, that is, we busted up this country beyond measure and then left it in a heap, we lose almost all of the remaining respect there is for us in the world. For those interested in World War Two history it will be the diametric opposite of the Marshall Plan.

I quickly concede that it would be useful if our administration would set measurable benchmarks assess when progress is actually made. There is nothing more maddening than to hear the President and his minions talk vaguely about " victory" as if it were simply a happy state of mind immediately to follow the insertion of just a few more troops. At the end of the day, we can find the President's intentional vagueness and sembling description of the outcome he desires repugnant and still agree with his conclusion that we have undertaken, by our actions, an obligation under multinational law to honorably repair what we have broken by initiating this adventure.

Great respect should be attended to those who argue " Why should we believe you now?” They make an excellent point. They are not factually wrong. Still, the president is our commander- in-chief under the constitution that we all embrace. That position and the information that flows into deserve some deference. Additionally, the practical question is "Can we exclude or eliminate the possibility that this plan might lead to some success in restoring the country? " Responsible people of all political persuasions with the training and access to knowledge to make that judgment have stated that this limited buildup has a chance to achieve some success in pacifying particularly difficult, insurgent neighborhoods and regions. Beyond that, when listening to the few specifics that have been made available, the proactive nature and a change of Rules of Engagement suggest a more adaptive warfare which could assist existing troops in clearing and perhaps maintaining dangerous pockets. "Yes" to all who say it is hateful that we are in this mess to begin with. We understand and sympathize with all who say this exercise is not worth one additional American life or limb. Still, however ill conceived the original attack may have been, we are in this, is a military operation and must be staffed by military personnel. It is possible, if not plausible, that the additional troops with an aggressive, proactive mission might reduce the origination points for the explosive devices which are harming so many of our personnel. In other words it cannot be excluded that the surge might actually reduce gross casualties. Of course we'll never know because it will be impossible to determine what casualties would have been taken without the surge.

The same arguments apply to the "No credible evidence" crowd. In the final analysis, this is the province of expert witnesses. If there were a majority of independent generals, admirals and warfare experts stating that this concept has no chance, such a view would be entitled to great weight. As we begin 2007, however, that is not the case. One can shop for about any view of this plan and find plausible and accomplished military men to for support that view.

To some extent anyone of my generation would be colored by our country's Vietnam experience. That influence is there. Still, when I look at the proposal and the reasoning and the incredible morass in which we find ourselves, I cannot say I disagree with the president on this one issue. Whether or not the original decision to invade Iraq was wise, moral, just or even legal is left for people at other times and in other places to decide. The question before the country, right now, in real time, is "How best to see to the balance of our military mission?" The President's plan is not fatuous.

In 1975 we saw what "Phased redeployment " looked like. It is hard to do practically, honorably and geopolitically. The commander-in-chief is entitled to an opportunity to identify a way, which promises to lead to a better, safer and more constructive outcome.

Decent people can reasonably disagree about this. Certainly the president has earned a jaundiced view of anything he says about military and foreign policy. The President insists on harming his own credibility by invoking "the war on terror" to justify his neoconservative adventure. He should be taken more effectively to task about not assigning metric goals that would equal "Victory." We can't and shouldn't forget about the method or the outcome of the decision-making which led us into this costly and foolish adventure. It was a stacked deck of questionable, if not dishonest, premises. The fact is that we are there. Given that unfortunate fact, the President's plan is the only one we have heard which holds out the possibility of meeting at least our baseline legal obligations to the world community and our promises to the Iraqi people.
J.C. Watts' father once said, "A black man voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders!" I kind of feel like that chicken as I type these words. This blog supports the President's "Surge" plan and hopes it is successful.