Reviving the ‘Successful Surge’ Myth
From the Archive: Over the past several years whenever American neocons say they should lead the way on national security, they invoke the successful surge myth, claiming that President George W. Bushs Iraq escalation in 2007 won the war and that President Obama pulled defeat from the jaws of victory, a fiction that Robert Parry dissected in 2014.
By Robert Parry (Originally published on June 19, 2014)
A beloved myth of Official Washington especially among Republicans, neocons and other supporters of the Iraq War is the fable of the successful surge, how President George W. Bushs heroic escalation of 30,000 troops in 2007 supposedly won that war; it then follows that the current Iraq disaster must be President Barack Obamas fault.
The appeal of this myth should be obvious. Nearly every important person in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media endorsed the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and such well-placed and well-paid people do not like to admit that their judgment was so bad that they should be disqualified from holding any responsible position forever.
Further, since almost no one who promoted this criminal and bloody enterprise was held accountable after Mission Accomplished wasnt, these opinion leaders were still around in 2007 at the time of the surge and thus in a position to cite any positive trends as proof of success. Many are still around voicing their august opinions the likes of Sen. John McCain, former Vice President Dick Cheney and neocon theorist Robert Kagan so they still get to tell the rest of us how really great their judgment was.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/08/16/reviving-the-successful-surge-myth-2/
Enrique
(27,461 posts)and then Obama messed it up.
shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)These warmongering buttholes and the fawning corporate media who lap-dogged them all the way should be shamed and shunned and charged with crimes against humanity; and yet they remain. All that is required is for a population trained to bend the knee, to show due deference to those in power positions. Authoritarianism is a current that runs deep in our nation's DNA and it's way past time we put a stop to these lies. Sadly, it's probably too late, as a great number of Americans refuse to even consider that the surge wasn't successful and in fact led directly to the formation of Al Qaeda 3.0 or ISIS as some call them.
What in the hell did the people of Iraq ever do to the people of the United States?
66 dmhlt
(1,941 posts)By Its Own Standards, The Surge Failed
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/by-its-own-standards-the-surge-failed/