Fighting September's PR Blitz

By Creature

Someone in the Bush administration's Iraq Guided Tour Department forgot to issue Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) her rose colored glasses. Schakowsky, just back from Iraq, said she believed, overall, that the "surge is a failure." This statement is in sharp contrast to the media meme building, predictably so, that the surge is a success. Schakowsky explains:

"I believe overall the surge is a failure. Why's that? Because the purpose was to reduce violence to create a safer environment, to create the space for political reconciliation. And Iraq is as far from that as it's ever been. … It’s clear to me we cannot win someone else’s religious civil war."

As General Petraeus gears-up the PR push for Bush's endless war, it's a 9-10 year timeline he's looking at, Schakowsky calls a spade a spade:

It concerns me that they’re building up enthusiastically in much the same way that we led up to the vote and then the war in October 2002 and then March of 2003. It does worry me that some the media is buying in. […]

What I feel is going on right now is that there’s a major PR effort going on to convince the Congress and the media and the public that just enough progress has been made to justify staying. A little more, and then maybe a little more, and a little more — perhaps to where Petraeus has said 9 or 10 years have elapsed. Calling for patience is not at this point going to work with the American people, and I’m hoping…are just too smart to be fooled again.

I will add that it's not the American people we need to worry about, their Bush blank check was cashed and bounced years ago, I worry about the Representatives' colleagues in Congress and the media. They are, after all, serious people, and seeing as how it was the serious people that got us into this Iraq mess, they are the last ones who will do anything to get us out.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)