Is it really working?

The Boston Globe published an article, "The success of that surge" in it's Opinion page A9 yesterday, Thursday, July 31st. Written by Andy Zelleke of the Harvard Business School and Robert Dujarric of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan, the article questions what has been accomplished by the surge and what has not. Zelleke and Dujarric concede conditions are better now than before thousands more troops went into Iraq, however what these authors point out is tremendously significant. Relative calm has been restored in the country and fewer troops and Iraqis are being killed. Those are good and important things. By focusing on those good things, however, we are ignoring the big picture. The authors state that one of the original purposes of invading Iraq "was to break out of the impasse of the dual containment of Iraq and Iran pursued by the Clinton Administration. By establishing a pro-American government in Baghdad, the United States would gain leverage against Tehran." Considering the opportunities we have given Iran to take advantage of Saddam Hussein being outsted, coupled with ensuing chaos, Dujarric & Zelleke ask whether or not we have met this goal. They agree that from a military point of view the surge has worked. Things are calmer in Iraq now than they were before the surge began and al-Maliki is stronger. The resulting stability will also allow U.S. troops to leave without throwing Iraq into utter confusion and despair. However, Zelleke & Dujarric conclude that the U.S. has set up "a new Iraqi state far more permeable to Iranian influence than the one that it destroyed." The authors end by questioning if this is "the kind of 'success' the civilian strategists had in mind."