Surge Amnesia

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost [excerpt]
As we continue on the long, hard slog until Election Day, John McCain and
his supporters are going to claim again and again that the surge has worked.
And it looks like the media are going to let that patently false assertion go
unchecked. Which is pretty much how the war got started in the first place. So
it is up to Obama, the Democrats, and all of us, to insist on holding the
advocates of the surge to its original goal.
And while we are at it, we should also hold them to the original
justification for the war itself.
Despite the revisionist re-writes, we didn't go to war because we were
committed to demonstrating that America
could unleash violence in Iraq
and then, five years later, curb it through the use of reinforcements. We went
to war because we were told Iraq
posed a grave and imminent threat to our national security and, secondarily, as
a means of fomenting democracy throughout the Middle East.

Of course, the "imminent threat" turned out to be non-existent, and
our presence in Iraq has
strengthened the hand of every bad actor in the region: al Qaeda is safe and
adding recruits, Hamas has come to power in Palestine,
Hezbollah has reasserted itself in Lebanon,
and Iran has become the
strongest player in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the reduction in casualties in Iraq
is starting to be offset by increased
casualties in Afghanistan -- once again showing the fatal ignorance of
stealing from Peter to stop-loss Paul and keep him in Iraq.
So, tell me again: how is the surge working?