Most foreign policy experts wrong about the surge

Reuters/NY Times:

More than half of top U.S. foreign policy experts oppose President George W. Bush's troop increase as a strategy for stabilizing Baghdad, saying the plan has harmed U.S. national security, according to a new survey.

As Congress and the White House await the September release of a key progress report on Iraq, 53 percent of the experts polled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress said they now oppose Bush's troop build-up.

That is a 22 percentage point jump since the strategy was announced early this year.

The survey of 108 experts, including Republicans and Democrats, showed opposition to the so-called "surge" across the political spectrum, with about two-thirds of conservatives saying it has been ineffective or made things worse in Iraq.

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This is pretty clear evidence that these so called experts no nothing about counterinsurgency warfare, nor are they knowledgeable about the consequences of the surge on the ground in Iraq. My guess is their opposition is political and not based on any knowledge of the use of force since their conclusions certainly do not exhibit any such knowledge. It si a good thing for the US and Iraq that the Bush administration got better advice from the military than it did for foreign policy "experts."