What Surge?

So.

President Bush, I am told, has announced a "surge" of American troops deploying into Iraq. Ostensibly, the idea is to flood the streets of Baghdad with enough security forces to overwhelm those who would attempt to undermine progress in Iraq. Democrats are tiptoeing around the subject, pandering opportunists like McCain and Malkin are celebrating, and most of the soldiers I know are, well, furious.

All I keep seeing is this catchword in the media. Surge. Surge. Surge. There's something vaguely homoerotic about it. It suggests a dramatic flow of resources into an area, while at the same time hinting at a sort of "last gasp" from an already crumbling military-industrial complex.

And crumbling it is.

What people don't get about this so-called "surge" is the actual execution of said maneuver. Send in 20,000 more troops, says President Bush. Sounds like a big number, and it's sure to get the war cheerleaders stateside hopping with excitment, right? But there are a couple of problems here: the soldiers being called up to fill the requirements for such a surge are either A) currently committed in-theater, or B) already en route to said theater. An actual mobilization of troops takes months to execute, between planning, shipping of equipment and actual deployment, so the great lie at work here is that the forces being committed to the theater weren't already going to be committed there anyway. The only thing being done right now is to extend a few units (to include members of a Minnesota guard element I know) while deploying a few others sooner. On top of this, even with a troop increase of 20,000, the number of boots on the ground in Iraq is still lower than it was even last December, during the most recent election. Bear in mind, General Shinseki, our former Chief of Staff, wanted 300,000 soldiers for an occupation, and he was ousted for his unwillingness to sell the lie. For all this talk of "surge" and "getting the job done right," the whole thing is just a gigantic fucking sham. It's window dressing. It's intended to keep a war-weary but docile American populace pacified enough to allow the money train to roll just a little longer for the men in power. It's a stall tactic so that our leader won't have to admit to outright failure for as long as he remains in office.

What the bloodless, soulless hawks don't want anyone to know is this: even if we wanted to pull more troops together right now, we couldn't. Retention rates at present (especially in my MOS) are dismal, with multiple deployments less than a year apart for the past four years and continuing into the foreseeable future. Instead of stop-loss orders being put into effect from 90 days before a deployment, those stop-loss plans are occurring up to 180 days before said movements. Six months after the last tour, soldiers I know were already locked in, unable to avoid the current rotation. Divorce rates are well above 50 percent in some specialties, and the post-deployment turnover levels in my line of work were over 75 percent from the last cycle. Our equipment is breaking down. In many cases, we no longer even ship our gear out of theater; we just sign it over to our replacement unit. The vehicle I was assigned back in Germany is in fact superior to what I've been dealt here in Iraq. We don't even have parts enough to replace or repair the equipment that DOES break down. We drive vehicles with damaged ballistic windows, because we can't get them repaired. THIS is why our military relies so much on contracted labor. This is why Ugandan security contractors--mercenaries--guard our posts and key facilities, rather than American soldiers. We barely have the funding for anything else.

No sane, rational mind can look at what is going on here, and believe honestly that a temporary boost of 20,000 soldiers is going to fix the mess that we've created. I'm lucky enough, not being infantry (thank my wife), that I actually spend more time inside the wire than out. That being said, I do go out, and I do see our handiwork, and I do see what goes on just over the fence.

And nothing I see here can be solved by what Bush--who won't even listen to his own generals--has planned.