Surge too late?

Predictable I suppose that an "analysis" would appear this AM with the title "Did Iraq 'surge' come too late?". As seems typical of the media attitude toward the Iraq war, there is a fixation with tactics at the expense of the big picture. Which is --

Our government used a bunch of lies, half-truths, and nationalist hysteria over 9/11 to cook up a case for invading a sovereign country. Virtually everything that was claimed about the reasons for going to war, the ease with which the war would be run, and the benefits both to America and to Iraq were wrong. We were not welcomed with open arms by anyone except looters. We did not march through the country with no opposition. We did not have enough troops to subdue the population. We did not find weapons of mass destruction.

On the other hand, nearly everything that people opposed to the war predicted has happened: The war did quickly turn into urban house-to-house combat . We did not have adequate troops to secure anything or any place, thanks to the arrogance and pig-headed blindness of Don Rumsfeld. Antiquities were looted. The country's infrastructure was ruined (schools, healthcare, water supply, sewers, electricity, you name it). Tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans have died. And just by the way, we have not been able to use Iraq oil revenue to finance the war; far from it - the war is leaching the present and future out of the US national budget and has cost (what a surprise) much more than predicted by our government's salesmen.

Many Americans do not seem to understand that the above facts point to the reasons why this enterpise was and is doomed. This is because many Americans are not inclined to put themselves in other people's shoes. The simple exercise of imagining ourselves as the invaded rather than the invaders seems not to have occurred to the mainstream media, for example. Try this exercise yourself and then try to guess how much cooperation you'd be giving to the invaders.

Was the surge too late? The only thing "too late" was not to have started the war. Now that we have done, we, the Iraqis, their neighbors, and our national future are stuck with the consequences and the aftermath of that inexcusable decision. You can surge today, surge tomorrow, or surge last year; we are where we are not wanted -- and with good reason. We will never win in Iraq because there is nothing to win and no one there who wants us to win. If we sent enough troops to subdue the entire country (an unimaginabley large number of troops) we would then have an armed occupation - we might have more security, but certainly no less hatred of us.

So why does our government keep asking for more time and more money in order to "finish the job"? For a "surge." Because they started the war and now don't know what to do. And, based on their unblemished record of dishonesty and incompetence, we the American people can expect more of the same until we put on the brakes and demand an unconditional withdrawal.

After that, we can impeach our government and put the prime movers in this vile mess on trial for war crimes.