Max Boot’s rather un-Bootish* review of Robert Gates’ memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, gives me an opportunity to take another whack at Bob, who in some ways was not that bad a SecDef. I mean, he didn’t bomb Syria or Iran. Nice guy!
Still, there are things from Bob’s memoir that rub me the wrong way, among them, this little anecdote:
Gates called this kind of talk “surprising” and “dismaying,” part of his act as the last honest man in Washington, but my complaint runs a bit deeper than that. First of all, we can wonder if Obama in fact “conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political,” or if he simply spoke an manner evasive enough for Bob to “conclude” that the president agreed with Bob’s preconceptions. More importantly, there is the whole question of the “surge” itself and whether it “worked.”
First of all, the “surge” was not a surge. It was a troop increase. When the supposed time for withdrawal arrived, the Bush Administration unsurprisingly argued that the surge was working so “well” that it had to be continued. Hey, we’ve got a good thing going! Let’s not jinx it by, you know, keeping to the terms of our original agreement!
Secondly, the surge did not work, because it did not achieve the Bush Administration’s goal for the Iraqi invasion. It did not turn Iraq into a stable, prosperous, pro-American and even pro-Israeli state. It did not supply the world market with millions of gallons of “reasonably priced” oil via U.S. firms, which would have allowed the U.S. to loosen the stranglehold the Saudis currently maintain on the world market. Nor did the surge allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases in Iraq, allowing us to dominate the Middle East. Instead, Bush was forced to sign an agreement effectively setting a termination date for the U.S. presence in Iraq.
What the surge did do—and this was important enough—was to allow the U.S. to walk out of Iraq instead of being kicked out. The level of violence fell sharply and allowed the Bush Administration to save face and achieve a graceful exit. And since all that 99 percent of Americans wanted was to get the hell out of Iraq anyway, that was more than enough. But as for achieving the Administration’s goals—as for justifying that vast expenditure of blood and treasure—no, the Iraq surge didn’t work at all. And neither did the Afghan.
