Is anyone else sick to death of hearing about how the "Surge™" has been a stellar success?

When the guns fall silent, the safest bet is to assume that the other guy is reloading.

Why does that simple truth seem to so thoroughly elude those who support the so-called Surge™?

Google "surge is working" and look what pops up - 1,910,000 hits in .32 seconds. The Surge™ got underway on February 14, 2007 - and less than two weeks later, the keyboard commandos with the waning erections were already talking up the success of the scheme and their own flagging Johnsons. Patrick Ruffini at Townhall.com was the first in line to slaver, a mere ten days after the first boots hit the ground. It took less than a month for fatassed chickenhawk Robert Kagan to smirk from the pages of the Washington Post that, yeah, people criticized Bush for not having a plan B, but (witty and erudite as he is) he found an unimpeachable response to the critics: Did the critics have a backup plan in case it did? (Kagan has apparently mastered the playground retort of "I know you are, but what am I?") A week later, Gordon Cucullu was penning mash notes to David Petraeus and the AEI architects of the scheme from the pages of the nutty-as-squirrel-poop New York Post.

Except...

None of these paeans to the success of an unsustainable troop buildup took a careful assessment of the situation. For one thing, very few of those who touted the success considered the impact of Muqtada al Sadr ordering his militia, the Jaish al Mahdi, to stand down for six months. Another tactic that has been touted as brilliant since it's inception was that of arming and paying off Sunni militants, many of whom had been insurgents, to form into neighborhood protectorates to oppose the foreign jihadists that have taken up arms in Iraq to train in real-time against American forces.

What an unholy, fucked up mess these idiots have created.

It was a given that desperate measures were going to have to be taken during the brief time the surge window was open. Too bad that they took the drastic steps that they did instead of the ones proposed by Dr. Steven Metz. Instead, they stubbornly pursued a path that many pointed out severe problems with from the outset.

And now, a lot of those warnings that were issued by people like me who have consistently opposed the United States occupation of Iraq are coming true - just read this one paragraph from a post at Abu Aardvark, and follow the links, and see what I mean:

What with this and the Anbar Salvation Council threatening to take up arms against the elected council and refusing to fly the new Iraqi flag and dismissing the entire Parliament as illegitimate and Awakenings leaders declaring that no Iraqi police are allowed in their territory and clashing with them when they do and blaming Shi'ite militias (and not al-Qaeda) for the wave of attacks against them and fighting over territory and threatening to quit if they aren't paid, it really is hard to see why anybody would think that there might be anything troublesome about the relationship between the Awakenings and the Iraqi "state". Nothing to see here but great big gobs of victory folks, please move along.

On Friday, hundreds of members of the newly armed Sunni militias in Baquba donned traditional keffiyeh headdresses and took to the streets demanding that the police chief, who has been accused of operating with a Shiite death squad, be fired. They shut down two neighborhoods in the capital of Diyala province. Shops were ordered closed, and people were ordered to stay inside. The police ordered a curfew be instituted.

And on Sunday, explosions and gunfire wreaked havoc and killed approximately 50 people in attacks that targeted Iraqi Security Forces and American-backed ad hoc militias. The attacks unleashed as Secretary of Defense headed to Iraq for an unannounced get together with Iraqi leaders and members of the US General staff, including David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno.


Just hours before Gates landed in Baghdad, a massive suicide car bomb exploded on the periphery of a local market in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad. That blast alone killed 23 and injured at least 45. The blast frought down part of the market structures, and additional victims might still be trapped in the rubble said a police spokesman.

Another car bomb detonated near Ramadi, killing three. Two more car bombs were reported in Mosul. In all of the attacks, Iraqi soldiers and security personnel were specifically targeted, and in one of the explosions, four Iraqi soldiers were killed.

West of Mosul, at least 21 people were killed as insurgents battled members of one of the US backed Sunni militias. Five "Awakening council" members were killed and 10 insurgents perished in the fighting.

And John McCain has staked his entire presidential bid on convincing us that four more years of staying the course and experiencing more of this "success" is just what the country needs.

Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State