{"id":2275,"date":"2008-01-14T12:41:34","date_gmt":"2008-01-14T17:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/is_the_surge_wo\/"},"modified":"2008-01-14T12:41:34","modified_gmt":"2008-01-14T17:41:34","slug":"is_the_surge_wo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2008\/01\/is_the_surge_wo\/","title":{"rendered":"Is The Surge Working?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The one-year anniversary of the announcement of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007\">surge in Iraq<\/a> has renewed the debate on whether or not the military escalation is &#8220;working.&#8221;  On one hand, war supporters claim it is a success because violence is down from its peak in 2006.    On the other hand, war opponents declare it has failed because Iraq has not made significant progress toward political stability.  In the middle, you&#8217;ve got the news media who doesn&#8217;t offer much insight into to what is happening in Iraq beyond reporting American casualties.<br \/>\nSo, what do we make of the conflicting claims?  I have a simple rule to assess military success:<br \/>\nThe American military will have accomplished its ultimate objective when it can<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>substantially leave Iraq (less than 30,000 troops remaining), without<\/li>\n<li>the country descending into violence or chaos<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Until that happens, all we are doing is adjusting the occupation strategy.<br \/>\nFrom all appearances, we are still years away from the surge bringing about &#8220;success&#8221; in Iraq.<br \/>\nUPDATE:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/01\/15\/world\/middleeast\/15military.html?ex=1358053200&#038;en=0cd0c8ad0eee50d3&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland&#038;emc=rss&#038;pagewanted=all\">Here we go<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq&#8217;s borders from external threat until at least 2018.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nPentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir&#8217;s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The surge is working so well we&#8217;re going to have to be in Iraq even longer than was projected a year ago!  A minimum of 10 more years of success awaits us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2008\/01\/is_the_surge_wo\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Is The Surge Working?\"><p>The one-year anniversary of the announcement of the surge in Iraq has renewed the debate on whether or not the military escalation is &#8220;working.&#8221; On one hand, war supporters claim it is a success because violence is down from its peak in 2006. On the other hand, war opponents declare it has failed because Iraq [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}