Still Liking "The Surge"...Anybody?

The New York Times tells us today that the biggest problem with trying to determine if goals are being met in Iraq is that there is no system in place to determine whether or not goals are being met in Iraq.

I swear that’s what the article says; as noted here…

There are bright spots in the effort to put together a functioning nation, (Special Inspector General Stuart W.) Bowen (Jr.) found: economic growth in the Kurdish north; tribal reconciliation in the western desert province of Anbar; and patchy progress in the development of local governments. Beyond that, some of the provinces are showing increasing ability to create plans, write contracts and carry out construction projects to rebuild Iraq’s physical infrastructure, the report says.

A central finding of the report, Mr. Bowen said in his testimony, was that even with 32 of the teams, called provincial reconstruction teams, or P.R.T.’s, now deployed around the country at a cost of $1.9 billion as of August, the program still has not developed concrete methods to measure the effects of the teams on progress in the country.

The situation is so preposterous that I don’t even think Stanley Kubrick could turn it into a good, trenchant farce (and it’s not funny in any way when people are getting killed and maimed, of course).

And Bowen actually deserves credit for telling the truth here; he has a penchant for that apparently, which is highly unusual for Bushco (actually resulting in a partisan witchhunt congressional investigation led by House Repug Tom Davis of Virginia, as noted here, with Davis viewing Bowen as a possible political rival).

This all goes to the question, though, of whether or not the surge is working (and Ezra Klein has some pretty damning poll numbers on that one here).

If the goal is to create a climate for Iraq to govern itself in some fashion, providing and managing services for its people, then it sounds like the surge has failed. But if the goal is to minimize our losses, then some progress is arguable. However, that’s no reason to fight a war, assuming the people allegedly managing it still understand what the hell we’re supposed to be achieving over there anyway.

Update: And by the way, speaking of the pit of Mesopotamia, CARE worker Margaret Hassan was kidnapped three years ago today. She is noteworthy for, among other reasons, her warning that the Iraq war would cause a humanitarian crisis.

As a reward, she was killed, presumed beheaded by insurgent terrorist sociopaths (hopefully that language is acceptable to Rudy! – too frackin’ bad if it isn’t). Her body has yet to be found.