To Surge or Not to Surge (Politics Writing Sample)

We won't know what President Bush is going to propose as his new plan for Iraq until he finally announces it this Wednesday evening. Until then, we're being entertained by his habit of tossing out possible ideas to see how the public is likely to react to them. What we've been hearing all week is a debate over the possibility that Bush is likely to recommend a "surge" of from 10,000 - 40,000 additional troops be sent to Iraq, primarily to Baghdad, the number depending on who's doing the speculating. Bush is determined not to "lose" the "war." We must "win" the "war on terror," only "victory" will be acceptable, and it's better to fight "them" there than to fight "them" here. We accept all of this without question, as though it is somehow Gospel truth, given knowledge, without considering for a minute whether we have the slightest idea what he is talking about.

These are terms we have never defined, and yet we've now killed tens of thousands of Iraqis over them, and lost over 3,000 of our own troops. Attacking Afghanistan made sense in terms of a "war on terror," because we knew that Osama bin Laden had caused the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and he was in Afghanistan. The Taliban, in charge of the country at that time, refused to turn him over to us. However, we did not capture him then and still haven't. Instead, we attacked Iraq and disposed of Saddam Hussein, who is now dead and buried. This in spite of the fact that Iraq pretty clearly not only had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack on us, plus plenty of evidence that Iraq and bin Laden were unlikely to be political allies in any way. This has always reminded me of the old joke about the man who drops his keys on the porch while he's trying to unlock his door, but searches for them under the street light because there's more light there.

We've just had an election in which the Democrats won control of Congress, presumably because the public is fed up with the way things have been going in Iraq, which has become a seemingly endless conflict. Before the election, Bush was determined to "stay the course" in Iraq. If this administration actually had a "course" nobody seemed to have the slightest idea what it was. Why can't the Iraqi government take over management of Iraq at this point? What's going on that we seem to have to endlessly train an Iraqi army and police force? Iraq had a formidable army before we dispersed it. What's happened to the well-trained troops who were in it? Are they now members of the various militia groups we occasionally hear about? Where does the endless supply of ammunition, bomb making materials and weapons that are used to attack our troops come from? Why didn't we secure them when we took over the country? Why do we seem to be constantly retaking and then leaving the same cities and the same sections of Baghdad? Are we, or are we not, attempting to intervene in a civil war there? On which side of the fighting is the actual government of Iraq? There are so many unanswered questions that seem to simply remain mysteries. Instead of discussing these things, we debate platitudes tossed to us by the Rove propaganda machine.

The latest of these is this term "surge." Just one simple, very poetic word. What's a surge? What would a surge of troops actually be? Why use this word, instead of saying what's really meant; escalating the war, sending in more troops? I don't doubt for a minute that this word has been as carefully chosen as previous words and phrases such as: Stay the course. Cut and run. War against terrorism. And so on. Fill in other examples if you want more. None of these carefully chosen words and phrases actually make any sense. What they accomplish is  to set up false choices, dichotomies which we then debate as though they actually mean something and that prevents us from considering the real issues. Stay the course. Exactly what course, or plan of action? Cut and run. Nobody ever proposed actually doing that and it would be impossible to do in any case, as though we could move out all of our troops within a week or so and leave Iraq in chaos. Using the word surge is exactly the same kind of thing. It implies moving in an undefined number of additional troops for an undefined period of time, although the word surge itself implies some kind of rapid action. Move those troops in to accomplish exactly what? We have not been told about any particular strategy or goal they'd be expected to accomplish so this sounds peculiarly like a new version of stay the course. The possible arguments are really circular. Stay what course, accomplish what goals, risking the lives of how many troops? At the same time as this orchestrated debate about a surge, Bush has been changing personnel, both military and political, moving people from one position to another. All of these changes will have to be approved by Congress, which will likely be a cause for extensive and divisive debate. Bipartisanship? Cooperation? Not in this lifetime.

Without any answers as to what goal this might be expected to accomplish, debate is meaningless. And yet the debate has raged as though it could possibly mean something. To surge or not to surge? I must have heard that word repeated well over a thousand times this week, no matter how I tried to avoid it. I have heard reports that the Democrats have been split into three groups over this, as though even before we really know whether the president intends to send a surge of new troops into Iraq, we're supposed to assume Bush's antagonists are being destroyed by the debate. And what about us, the public, who just voted for change? Aren't we being told to forget that, because our opinion doesn't matter?

It's obscene to use a military situation as a political solution, which is what the Bush administration is doing. He's throwing down the gauntlet, reasserting his power as Commander-in-Chief to override whatever Congress and the public might desire. It's a pure power play. Does this mean that nobody pays any attention to public opinion? Do our opinions really not matter? Not on your life. Our opinion, and the goal of controlling what we think and believe, is the reason for the constant search for just the right word to sway that opinion, carefully chosen, easily grasped words with plenty of emotional punch like surge and stay the course. Plus, of course, the use of demonizing words like cut and run to describe the false alternative to staying the course, used to revile anyone who questions what's going on. Millions of dollars are spent figuring out exactly how to manipulate our opinions, and millions more to discover exactly how effective those efforts have been. That's what all those endless, nearly daily polls are for.