Fighting the Urge to Surge

Written by: Alan Goldston on Dec 22, 2006 11:04 AM EST

“Surge” is the latest iteration of an old and discredited idea, that a strategic blunder can be made right by increasing the investment of time and treasure and blood. 

In 1965, Tom Paxton wrote:

Successive choruses increased that number to sixty and then a hundred thousand. (Read the full lyrics or listen to the song here: http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/Audio/lbj-paxton.html

At the height of its involvement, the United States had over a half million service personnel at one time in Vietnam. As of today, 58,253 of their names appear on the Wall.    

In 1967, Pete Seeger sang on national television a lyric he had written several years earlier, which told allegorically of an army unit on training maneuvers in Louisiana in 1942, being pushed to ford a river of unknown depth by a cocksure and fatally ignorant officer, despite the cautionary questions of the more experienced sergeant.  Only after the captain had drowned was the sergeant able to save his men.    Listen to it here:  http://madmustard.com/2006/09/waist-deep-in-the-big-muddy/ 

The chorus had an acidic edge: 

“We were waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool says to push on.” 

I read Fred Kaplan’s December 20, 2006 post on Slate (The Urge to Surge, the latest bad idea from Iraq.  http://www.slate.com/id/2155904), which methodically debunks the neo-con argument for increasing American troops in Iraq.  As I read, I couldn’t help thinking back four decades to That Other War of false premises and ideologically blinkered thinking.  Please read it yourself; if you agree, maybe it would help to forward a copy to each of our Senators and Congressmen, with your message urging that they stand fast against the Administration’s efforts to continue this war.   

As I write this, one of my son’s friends, a young Marine back from his first tour in Iraq, awaits orders to return, and my niece, a National Guardsman, is wondering when her unit will be sent over there.  My holiday wish for them is that our Congress stand up to this Administration, and put an end to American military involvement in the Iraqi civil war. 

Alan Goldston, Chair

Democracy for Westchester

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