September, we were told last May and June and July, was supposed to be the magical month. The only hints that the power of the month might be waning came during August, which was uncomfortably and suspiciously close to September yet held no magic of its own. Before that hottest part of summer, though, it was all but assured; the reason we need take no action to end the war in June is because, come September, all would be different.

In September, we were told, the patience of the self-promoted war pundits and experts will have waned. Finally fearful of gutting the last thin remainder of their own credibility, and out of nothing more noble than a sense of self-preservation, no longer will they tolerate phony facts and fudged statistics. The surge will be given a chance to work, and if it has not worked, the "serious" experts will abandon it. The surge was the final Friedman Unit, the time of reckoning, when we either were serious about winning the war, or proved it to be an impossible task. We owe the President this deference, went the mantra. This was not the plan of the Joint Chiefs, or the Iraq Study Group, but of those that demanded the war in the first place and who had made a last-ditch effort to keep the ball in play with a plan of their own, conveyed to the President, conveyed to the General, conveyed to the nation. Surely, we can trust those strategists and pundits with the continued lives of our sons and daughters: when, after all, have they ever been wrong?


In April we were being told how well the surge was working; by June we were being told it had not even started yet, and that we were foolish and unserious for expecting it to have worked. By August all concerned could agree the surge was indeed surging; by September we were being told that we were foolish to presume we could see results. Nonetheless the September results are good, except those that were bad, and the difference between bad and good is overrated anyway.


No five o'clock follies, here: we as a nation are above such things. We would, by September, have grown more sophisticated than that. Nobody would believe carefully constructed casualty statistics from the military that differed wildly from those of all other sources, or press pushes from men in bright uniforms, or glowing pronouncements from behind a White House podium. Vietnam was a simpler time of stupider men; we in the new millennium are above such thin ruses.

Posted by Hunter on The Daily Kos