At the first sign of trouble, quit.

Last Thursday, Delaware Watch was asking; How's the Surge Going?

In typically snide fashion Dana is using his vast military experience and counterinsurgency knowledge to beat up on poor hapless David Petraeus.

"The truth of the matter is that the surge has never been working. The temporary lack of hostilities within Iraq has only created the appearance of success. But the real reason for the lack of hostilities has been that the various Shia factions found it in their political best interests to cease their hostilities and they had little, if anything, to do with addition of 33,000 more US troops in Iraq.

Now that the political situation has changed and hostilities have re-emerged, the facade of the surge's success has been removed"

So after about 11 minutes of shooting Dana wails and moans that all is lost and see I told you so. Or not.

Sadr orders followers to cease fire. Why would that be?

Back to Dana:

Part of the surge strategy was to strengthen the government, a government that seems to be increasingly unpopular"

Increasingly unpopular? I wonder what does Sadr himself have to say? Let's ask him:

"Based on responsibility towards Iraq and to stem Iraqi bloodshed and to preserve the country's unity and integrity as a prelude to its independence, I call on the people to be up to their responsibility and awareness in order to maintain Iraq's stability," according to a statement issued by Sadr and sent to Voices of Iraq.

I guess it's popularity is somewhat open to question.

The US supports the Iraq government's assault and a big part of the surge's credibility hangs precariously on its success:

Given that Sadr has surrendered after a day or two of his guys getting their asses handed to them I'd say the precariousness of the credibility of the surge is a wee bit overstated.

Did you really believe that crap at the beginning of the surge about significant draw downs of the troops? Really?

The man said to wait until April 8th before making any decisions. Let's see what they say in a week. It's possible that the drawdown may not be happening but troop strength is a function of events on the ground.

This eruption of violence, which even effects the Green Zone, shows that neither the US forces nor the Iraqi government control Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr still calls many of the shots in Iraq, which signals a failure for one of General Petraeus' main objectives in his surge strategy:

Actually most of the shots Sadr has been calling have ended up with lots of dead Sadr supporters which is why he's begging for mercy after a few days of shooting.

Up next Dana goes way too far out on his THE US MILITARY IS A FAILURE AT EVERTHING branch. He quotes the bastion of fair reporting Antiwar.com. The assertion that we could not take on the Mahdi army is not grounded in any sort of quote from Petraeus just something that Gareth Porter dreamed up. Who is Mr. Porter anyway? Oh, he's that guy who was denying the Vietnamese communists were slaughtering people en masse after the US left. After he was done with that Walter Duranty bit of fantasy he upped the ante by denying the Khimer Rouge were similarly slaughtering anyone but rather just moving them around. I guess I should just take his word on present events as factual.

Dana has a different take:

Did you notice that? The US forced could not take the risk of taking on the entire Mahdi army. The meaning couldn't be more obvious. There are too many of them. We would lose too many US soldiers and might even lose the war as a consequence. They are far more popular and have more popular support in Iraq than us. Those are facts that grownup observers of this war have known for some time.

We actually have video of what happens when the US and Iraq forces take on the Mahdi Army:



See all those infrared lasers on those weapons? How many Mahdi guys do you think have those? See those nightvision scopes on the soldiers? How many Mahdi guys have those? See those nifty armored vehicles, ditto. What about what we don't see the AC-130 gunships? The Predators? The Kiowa's and Blackhawks? Yes, I hear you say but we're outsiders! Interlopers! That's why the Iraqis themselves are moving to the forefront.

A path to making the Iraqi people like us or support any government that permits us to stay within Iraq's borders will never materialize. The Iraqi people don't like or trust us. They associate us with death, torture, economic deprivation, and the death of their children. Yes, their children.

We have been responsible for the death of multiple hundreds of thousands of their children for over a decade and it has not stopped:

No, they don't. They know that the foreign fighters (i.e. Al Qaeda) are the murderers and killers. The Sunnis have taken to fighting them too. Sadr wants a piece of the political pie and he's not getting what he thinks he deserves. He thought he'd stir the pot by starting a shooting war and very quickly found himself on the wrong end of that shooting.

I wouldn't like a nation that caused my child to die as a result of economic sanctions or an invasion and occupation however high-sounding their motives. It would not be worth the death of my child for a nation on the other side of the planet to attack my nation and occupy it because it wanted to make my country a "beacon of democracy" to nations in my region.

I wouldn't either and thankfully that's not what happened. To frame that way would be simplistic and erroneous. (Where's that nuance liberals are so fond of?) I wouldn't want to live in a country run by a psychopath and his two homicidal maniac sons who lived in luxury and splendor while children starved and went without medicine.

Grownup people recognize these truths and facts without difficulty. They are not beset by the patriotic fantasies that every nation we invade is grateful to us. Grownups know when they are not wanted. They have a good sense of what is possible and what is not.

Some Iraqis probably love us. Some probably hate us. Lots are likely somewhere in between. Iraq is sovereign. They could ask us to leave tomorrow and we'd have to yet they do not. Perhaps they are the ones who have a sense of what is possible and what is not.