Surge protestors

Frank Gaffney:

Suddenly, "surge" is the talk of the town. Gone, for the moment at least, is "surrender" -- the leitmotif, if not the stated purpose, of Jim Baker's Iraq Study Group. Now, we are told, President Bush is preparing to put substantially more troops in Iraq at least temporarily, as part of a final push to prevail there.
This idea has a certain appeal, particularly to those of us who believe defeat is not an option. Advocates of more troops have long believed inadequate U.S. force levels in Iraq have made impossible a "clear and hold" strategy -- the only approach that has proven successful in dealing with insurgencies.
There are, however, several problems with this proposal. Obviously, we may not have the additional troops to send to Iraq. Military commanders have long been obliged to reckon with the consequences of predictably shortsighted decisions in the early- and mid-1990s that unduly shrunk our force structure in the interest of cashing in the "peace dividend."
As a direct result, what is left of our armed forces is sorely taxed by intensive and sustained combat operations in Iraq (and, increasingly, in Afghanistan). Army and Marine units are being cycled through the theater at a rate that is tough on the troops, their equipment, their families, the defense budget and, inevitably, on the all-volunteer force.
Under these circumstances, surging more troops into Iraq on even a short-term basis may be problematic, to say nothing of maintaining an extra 15,000-50,000 soldiers and Marines there for a couple of years time (various options said to be under consideration by the president). Then, there is the further question of whether it will have the desired effect.
Commanders in the field like the top officers in Central Command and Iraq, Gens. John Abizaid and George Casey, respectively, have consistently and publicly argued against further expanding the U.S. footprint in the theater. They believe it not only creates additional force-protection issues -- especially when U.S. personnel are assigned hazardous duties involved in securing and patrolling insurgent strongholds. They recognize an even larger military presence can further exacerbate the perception of many Iraqis that we are an occupying power, intensifying opposition to our efforts in country.
Assuming such logistical and strategic impediments can be satisfactorily addressed, if not easily overcome, there should be one further prerequisite to the idea of adding more forces into Iraq: Call it the "surge protector."
If we are to have a chance of avoiding actions that simply add to the costs -- in both casualties and national treasure -- associated with our deployments in Iraq, we need to ensure that our enemies will not interpret this as merely a desperate, but necessarily ephemeral, bid to defeat them. They would simply respond by redoubling their efforts, too, with a view to waiting us out and wearing us down.
In particular, all other things being equal, Islamofascist Iran will simply surge its own forces into the fight....
To mitigate this danger while greatly increasing the chances of success in Iraq, President Bush must include one other component in his new strategy: A disciplined, multifaceted and determined effort to help the Iranian people overthrow their repressive and unrepresentative government.
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Iran needs to feel the threat of coercive force. Right now it is acting like the rooster in the hen pen, because of our restraint. We have shown restraint because the Euros and the anti war pukes in this country have made a maximum political effort to stop us from exercising our overwhelming power. Everyone needs to understand that there are limits to our restraint. We have been too reluctant to state what those limits are with Iran and with North Korea. This has only compounded our problems in Iraq, which is what the anti war left and the Euro weenies wanted in the first place.