[...] Kerry has some very strange views of the history in Iraq. Check out this bit about the Anbar Awakening. The things he claims haven’t happened – actually have, and even people who have been [...]

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McCain isn’t backing down from his claim the surge started when he said it did, countering Dem attacks. “McCain said Army Col. Sean MacFarland started carrying out elements of a new counterinsurgency strategy as early as December 2006. At issue are McCain’s comments in a Tuesday interview with CBS. The Arizona senator disputed Democrat Barack Obama’s contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the dispatch of thousands more U.S. combat troops to Iraq to produce the improved security situation there. McCain called that a ‘false depiction.’”

Why is that a ‘false depiction?

You state:

The decision to commit a troop surge didn’t simply happen in a vacuum.

Ok. But what does that exactly mean? Are you saying other core military elements combined with the surge and improved the situation in Iraq, to the point where

The payoff was commensurate with that risk; the awakening survived and thrived, the surge helped it spread beyond the confines of Ramadi, and there are thousands of Americans and Iraqis alive today because of the decisions made then and there.

If that is what you are saying then I have a few comments:

First, the replication of implementing Smith and MacFarland’s (S&M) model, in Iraq accelerated the Awakening in Anbar. S&M state “[t]actical victory became a strategic turning point when farsighted senior leaders, both Iraqi and American, replicated the Ramadi model throughout Anbar province, in Baghdad, and other parts of the country, dramatically changing the Iraq security situation in the process.”

Here above is the closest one gets to the surge, where S&M give credit to farsighted senior leaders adopting their model.

Second, as S&M’s essay (published in Spr. 08) never even mentions the ‘surge’, nor ‘troop increases’, nor even alludes to more forces, they specifically focus on their tactical model’s operational implementation in a Iraq strategy; they pivot exclusively on the model, not numbers. Their article is only interested in their tested strategy duplication to make Anbar safer. (One can imagine they could not count on an troop increase in Anbar, in late 06 –or even early and middle of 07– as most if not all, increases, would be in Baghdad. — So they had to accent ‘courting local leaders’ over military might, and were mindful of that hard reality. This may explain why their essay is so exclusively bond and interested on form over function, in ‘how’ over ‘how many’.)

The story of their risky COIN model eventually does find a ‘tipping point’ for AQI in late Sept., where MacFarland states “in the next 46 days i think we’ll be that much closer to imparting _irreversible momentum_ to the work we’ve already done.” By January of 07, we come to the end of their story. M&F are in a meeting for a ‘reconstruction projects conference’ with local Shieks, as their model has cleared parts of Ramadi good enough to start such reconstruction plans and projects. Progress has been maintained and this “have tipped.”

Third, and this is a more complicated matter, we read from above:

The payoff was commensurate with that risk; the awakening survived and thrived, the surge helped it spread beyond the confines of Ramadi, and there are thousands of Americans and Iraqis alive today because of the decisions made then and there.

Yes, the surge, probably did help. But how much, was it really necessary for Anbar, was it required? Obama argues, it’s not clear at all the surge in Anbar was the key ingredient; it may have been supplemental, but not essential.

While it is reasonable to assume it would not have ‘thrived,’ as quickly with the surge, that does mean we know the Awakening would have ‘survived.’ Therefore, one gets the good sense that it had a very healthy spirit and was spreading quite quickly. One even finds this in S&M’s ‘Anbar Awakens.’

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MarApr08/Smith_AnbarEngMarApr08.pdf

It is obvious to the reader that it would have ‘survived’, and perhaps even ‘thrived’, without the intensity of a troop increase. If this is true, it is empty conjecture on McCain’s part to state Obama’s understanding of Anbar is a ‘false depiction’ of historical events.

Finally, let’s not forget what we are investigating here. We are examining whether McCain’s statement is accurate. McCain also said:

“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.”

Looking for origins, we know the Anbar Awakening began before the surge; Wordsmith above quotes Greyhawk regarding which was first by saying:

…the awakening survived and thrived, the surge helped it spread beyond the confines of Ramadi,…

Yet the next day, to avoid his own timeline trouble, McCain stated the terminology of the ‘surge’ is, while, historical, also “semantics” and “[a] surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components. … I’m not sure people understand that `surge’ is part of a counterinsurgency.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iE2JCSH5p9r2GBkQWS9TWAMzmuvQD923PTMG3

Here McCain’s intended meaning of the surge still precedes the Anbar Awakening by broadening the meaning of the term, by being the Anbar Awakening! …”the surge began the Anbar Awakening” in virtue of it being a COIN; hence, it ‘begat’ the Awakening, from it’s semantic loins, the surge awakened the ‘Awakening.’ He’s not saying the surge augmented the Anbar Awakening, like Greyhawk, he’s saying the surge put it into motion and being, as it was _form_ and _function_ in one monism, one in substance and design: COIN is surge and surge is Coin, as God is and is not all things (paradoxically)!

At this point the semantics of the surge is “A surge is really a COIN made up of a number of components.” …plus a large, immediate troop increase– unless it is tied down to a specific historical epoch which otherwise may set a limit to the semantical latitude of its ability to be “made up of a number of [undefined] components”. (The Surge is Hegelian Geist, as it is all and everywhere, perhaps may be his meaning.)

In the end, after having misplaced the location of the genealogy the surge McCain is forced, required, to resort to a leveling process of the word –so near and dear to his campaign-heart: ‘surge’; it now has been reduced to the point of near meaninglessness, as the ‘form’ of the surge has become trumped chronologically and ontologically by the ‘function’ and history of the Anbar Awakening and his own malignment of the usage of his cherished word: ie: The ‘surge’ is all.

Hence, McCain, not Obama, is retelling a ‘depiction falsely’ of the events in Iraq.

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Let me see if I understand the position of Leftist Socialist Democraps.

Thsy insisted then as they do now, that America abandon Iraq, so that Iraq would “shoulder the burden themselves.”

However, “shouldering the burden themselves” (and it’s attendant initial failures despite American backup) was what Rumsfeld was having them do, and it was what he was so bitterly criticized for.

The basic plan of the Dems., but with Americans there to help when they couldn’t succeed, was unacceptable to the them, BECAUSE it was failing. But somehow removing the American support would magically make a weaker version of the same plan succeed, according to the irrational Democrats.

Rumsfeld, who’s plan was merely an improved version of the Democrat plan, was fired. Changes were made in the American leadership, and The Surge was instituted. Success soon followed.

And now the Dems are saying that The Surge had nothing to do with the success?!

If we had done as they asked, the failure would have been spectacular. Al Qaeda would have won, along with Iran; and America would be far worse off than with Saddam.

So, the bottom line is that the Democrats haven’t a clue what they are talking about, and/or they are pathological liars, as are the trolls here who support them.

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Amen Scrapiron!

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Post all the ‘stay out’ construction zone signs you want and you’ll still have to drop a pallet of bricks on the head of the Lame Stream Media nuts before they realize there really is construction going on.

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I look forward to the time when all America awakens to the fact that the MSM is not our friend, their agenda is obvious to those who read and study. Power to pull this country apart at it’s constitutional seams, is what they are attempting. One world government under the United Nations is a nightmare not a dream,but that’s what they want no matter the number of casualties.

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