What is the Surge Doing?

[babylonsister]

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,137017,00.html

What is the Surge Doing?
Winslow Wheeler | May 25, 2007

snip//

The surge has increased the frequency of Soldier deployments; it requires them to serve 15 months in Iraq on each deployment, rather than 12, and it reduced to 12 months the period they can expect to be at home with their families to recuperate. Most importantly, for both soldiers and Marines, the surge exacerbates their already prolonged exposure to combat. It is not just a question of operations being more intense; a fundamental aspect of the surge is to locate Soldiers and Marines outside their base camps and garrisons into forward locations, in the middle of towns and cities, in civilian neighborhoods.

The Soldiers and Marines are being asked to mingle on a 24-hour per-day basis among the very same civilians we now know have been on the receiving end of widespread abusive behavior from Soldiers and Marines previously stressed out by the mismanagement of how we deploy them.

The surge plan is to take those factors that alienate our Soldiers and Marines from Iraqi civilians, make those factors worse, thereby increasing the likely alienation from those civilians, and then telling the Soldiers and Marines to live among those civilians 24 hours a day and to protect them.

It is a prescription for disaster: more stress, more abuse, more alienation, more sympathy and support for the enemy, more combat, more stress, and so it goes on and on.

Petraeus told us he was writing a memo to his Soldiers and Marines, exhorting them to interact with Iraqi civilians in a positive manner. He is not altering how, when or where our troops are being deployed, either inside Iraq or to and from it. Making their circumstances worse, Petraeus now tells our troops to simply "suck it up."

Our Soldiers and Marines are in an utterly impossible situation: Their leadership creates circumstances that cause their alienation from the Iraqi civilian population and then forces them to live among those same alienated people.

The ill-logic of this war -- started for reasons no one now accepts -- continues to astound. It is impossible for our Soldiers and Marines to endure it without great cost to themselves or the civilians who surround them, almost certainly both. Having failed to alleviate the circumstances of their stress but aggravating them, many political figures in the Pentagon and Congress will surely declare themselves shocked and repelled by the unavoidable results. The next step is the inevitable punishment of the perpetrators, but only the ones they will prefer to identify lower on the totem pole than themselves. The leadership of this war will prance on, pointing the finger of blame at someone else when the inescapable failure becomes unmistakable.

[Demeter]

1. The Surge Is a Riding Lawn Mower Set on Destroy.

Only it's destroying two generations: one US, the other Iraqi.

[speedoo]

2. This is so disturbing.

Not at all surprising, but it's still disturbing.

The full article is certainly worth reading and passing on.

Thanks for posting.

[speedoo]

3. K&R. This is must read.

It's a devastating argument.

[babylonsister]

4. And did you notice where the article originated? military.com, so the

troops are able to read it, too, AFAIK.