Data Says the Surge Doesn't Work

Kevin Drumm put up some numbers from the Brookings Institution comparing this year and last year to see if the surge is working. Unsurprisingly, in almost every objective, measurable way, things are worse now than they were in the summer of 2006.

Still, when Petraeus (who the washingtonpost.com calls "overrated") delivers his report on September 11, it seems likely that it will be tailored to say that we're making progress that isn't necessarily political or security-based. What's infuriating is that conservatives will just try to convince the moderates that we just need more time to allow the surge to "work."

If this is the rate that the surge is going at, things could be even worse next year.

Cross-posted at campusprogress.org/blog.

They'll Spin You Right 'Round

The latest Republican fallacy that's circulating, and amplified by our trusty GOP frontrunner candidate, Rudy Giuliani, is that the mistake Bush was making is that we just didn't send enough troops in the first place. In an interview with Larry King yesterday, he said:

... the United States, which has had 120,000 to 160,000 troops at a time in Iraq, should have gone in with “maybe 100,000 to 130,000 more.”

I'm shocked at how Republicans are pretending this sounds logical. It's as if they are saying to themselves, Well, clearly the American military can never, ever lose at anything, so therefore we must not have blasted them with enough firepower in the first place. Sadly, they seem to forget that the international animosity toward Americans is actually fueled by our troop presence. The fact that we keep slowly filtering in or retaining more troops and it only seems to coincide with bloodier violence should signal that this theory doesn't work.

Furthermore, having 100,000 to 130,000 more troops would have meant a police state for the Iraqis. It seems that we just thought by sending in troops and overthrowing the government, we thought a functioning democracy would magically appear. An important question to ask GOP candidates who claim we came in with too few troops, is what kind of presence they envision for those thousands of troops.

My guess is, an alternative scenario with more troops would look just as ugly.