Quote Originally Posted by Alsultani View Post
These are the people the surge is working to strengthen.
Are they? Or is the 'surge' (really silly term...) working to provide some stability to ALL Iraqis insofar as is possible? While those clowns try to game the process as is in their genes...

Being the ME, there will be no all encompassing stability; that area is going to change only slowly. My guess, having spent a couple of years there some time ago, is that lacking the invasion of Iraq (Afghanistan is not in the ME and occurrences there do not affect the ME...), it would have taken five generations for much change to be effected there. I believe the invasion and subsequent actions will speed that up to possibly as little as two generations. Will that be true and will the result have been worth it? I think so but only time will tell us for certain.
I guess my question is...how does the political reality I experienced, which I believe is representative, fit into a discussion about the efficacy of the surge?
I suggest they are two different things; the political reality is the ME, raw and as it has been for at least 800 years since Islam, once at the forefront of human knowledge, turned inward. The 'surge' -- it is really much more than that and encompasses a lot of things -- is opening a window for the ME to hop out and breathe some fresh air. We can't drag them outside, it's up to them; they can stay inside and stifle or come out that window. There will be internal and external pressures both ways. What will occur is in the hands of the fates.

The probability is that it will work but if it does not, at least we tried.