The 'surge' effect (part 2)

The tale of how the "surge" became the surge is similar to how the "war on terror" became the war on terror: the political language seeped into the mainstream as commonly accepted expressions. Once the media started using them, those political phrases dominated in the public arena. (Albeit, the 'war on terror' became much more commonly seen outside of quotes than 'surge', and its connotations and political effects have been stronger.) The term "surge" is more than just a neutral catch-phrase used by the White House and the media, though opposed by the Pentagon — probably on technical grounds. Rather, it is a variation of the Bush administration's newspeak and Iraq war spin.

Presently, the "surge" has gotten to a point where it isn't even within quotation marks in a news article, similar to what happened with the also politically-spun "war on terror". Unlike that "war", the surge has a less evident political bias in favor of the Bush administration. But still, says Gal Beckerman in a very informative Columbia Journalism Review article, words like 'surge' are worthy of labels of Orwellian proportions:

The Bush administration has aggressively refined the art of distilling any new initiative presented to the public into a single word or phrase that at once defines the idea while obscuring its various downsides. Orwell coined the everlasting expression for this: newspeak. The phrase “war on terror” is perhaps the administration’s crowning achievement in this realm.

With the post-9/11 "war on terror", the Bush administration created a public mentality of wartime and exploited those fears for its own political gain. The "war on terror" gained widespread usage and allowed the spin-doctors in the White House a great advantage: tilt the debate their way by using phrases like the one implying a global fight against an omnipresent terrorist enemy. In a war there are two sides, and if people didn't support Bush, so the logic went, then they must support the terrorists. The same thing applies to the "new way forward" and the "surge". If one doesn't support the plan, isn't one against progress? The "war on terror", of course, isn't a real war. But presenting it as one allowed the Bush White House more political power and popularity.

How is using the term "surge" any different from "troop increase" or even "escalation"? Surge implies a short-term effort that produces an effect, not connoting the dryness of 'troop increase'. A surge not only suggests an increase numerically. Surge sounds positive, and its definition implies upward movement, a rush of progress. A linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, George Lakoff, argued against the Bush administration's "framing" of the Iraq war debate for its own benefit: "The word "surge" indicates a short-term increase in force that has an effect and naturally goes back to its previous level. . . . To use the word "surge" is to subscribe to Bush's misleading frame." Furthermore, using "surge" in place of "troop increase" doesn't directly remind people of the fact that more men and women in uniform will have to be sent to a place where reports of deaths flow into the news stream daily. "Surge" also sounds a bit like "insurgent", linguist Deborah Tannen notes. The need to take one's mind off of the fact more soldiers will be sent to Iraq and remembering that the fight is against the insurgents and terrorists is a reminder the White House never ceases to vocalize, making "surge" the ideal word for its Iraq plan.

On the other hand, "surge" could actually imply a hike in the number of troops sent to Iraq, something Americans are hesitant about. A surge of progress, or a surge of American lives to be lost? The word at least carries a subliminal effect, which explains why few have questioned its use to represent such a unpopular policy. Some in the public may not even realize the political connotations "surge" and other political catch-phrases carry. "New way forward", on the other hand, is obvious in its connotation. "Stay the course" is a warning to those in the anti-war fringe to stick to the plan, or things will get much worse in Mesopotamia, not to mention the terrorists will win. Those "defeatists" who want the terrorists to win are accused by the White House and GOP of advocating "cut and run". By and large, the White House uses the propaganda-esque "new way forward", the media uses the spin-worthy "surge", and the Democrats use either "surge" or the slightly negative-sounding "escalation" to describe the increase of 21,500 US troops in Iraq.

See also: Part 1.

The 'surge' effect (part 3)

This is the final installment (for now) in the The 'surge' effect blog post series. This post focuses on the political effects of the term "surge". See also Part 1, which focuses on the origin of the "surge", and Part 2, which looks at the word's connotations.

In part, the press is to blame for the entrance of "surge" and "war on terror" into the mainstream. As the previously-mentioned CJR article says,

It’s the prerogative of any president and his spinners to play this kind of word game. But the press has a responsibility not to be taken in by it, to be able to separate out an explication of a thing from the sheen the administration places on it. The consequences are extreme. Look at the “war on terror.” The press, for the most part, absorbed this descriptive term and used it uncritically for the last five years. But, as Jacob Levenson wondered in the pages of CJR two years ago, “It’s reasonable to ask, for instance, that if the war on terror had been called the war on Islamic extremism, would the American public have supported the invasion of a country, like Iraq, with a secular government? Similarly, had it been called the war for global democracy, would the Patriot Act have become law? What if it hadn’t been called a war at all? Journalists, in other words, must resist employing political jargon — it tends to shortcut analysis in favor of mobilization.”
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[The] “surge” has become, in the last few weeks, part of the public discourse on Iraq (i.e., as one anonymous Republican strategist told the New York Times, “They’re going to cast it as a choice between withdrawal and surge”). The word has the benefit of seeming active, strong, and quick - a surge is a lightening strike, over and done, the opposite of, say, a quagmire. The other advantage is the other words that “surge” replaces, like “escalation,” with its Vietnam-era connotation."

Since that article's publication in November, "surge" has appeared less and less within quotes as it enters the mainstream, like "war on terror" did years ago — and it has made a difference in the Iraq debate in the United States.

In January 2007, progressive blog Think Progress compiled a list of news articles, mapping out the use of "surge" in the mainstream media. What began in November 2006 as a description for a "temporary" elevation in American forces in Iraq eventually defined a long-term Iraq war strategy. As the article noted, the media "has continued to use the term "surge" even though its definition has fundamentally changed." But does the spin of "troop increase" to "surge" really make a difference in the eyes of the public? A CBS News poll dated around the time that the "surge" buzz peaked showed that 45 percent of Americans were in favor of the "surge" (aka troop increase), and 48 percent opposed. The same survey said that a mere 18 percent of the public were in favor of increasing the number of US troops in Iraq. From those numbers we can infer that just a simple change in wording can result in a difference of 27 percentage points, thus the prevalent use of the term "surge" does work in the White House's favor.

In the closing of his essay "Politics and the English Language", George Orwell writes, “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” The Bush administration is using that political rhetoric to justify many of its policy decisions, especially when war is involved. Even though the "surge" isn't actually a surge, it will be continued to be used by the news media, political pundits, and some policy-makers, all to the benefit of the White House. Like "war on terror", "surge" is political language at its finest — for those who benefit from its use, that is. However, the labeling of the long-term battle against terrorism as a "war", associating that "war" with the one in Iraq, and the long-term troop escalation and operation in Iraq as a "surge" could all come back to bite the White House. The public might expect the "war" to end like any other and will be skeptical of open-ended plans (i.e., the fear instilled by declaring a war against terror will evaporate and impatience will replace it), and will want the "surge" to show fairly quick results. It is a surge, after all.

The 'surge' effect (part 1)

The 'surge' effect: how one word shaped the politically-charged national debate on Iraq in the United States.

How did "surge" become the de facto term for "troop increase"? Why is that semantic change politically significant? To answer those and other related questions, one must explore the origins and effects of the "surge" — a part of the "new way forward" for "success" in Iraq and the "war on terror". The use of the term "surge" in place of "troop increase" is a way for the George W. Bush administration and its political allies to give a more positive spin on what is really an increase in American troops deployed to a dreary arena of war — Iraq. The common use of "surge", and its entrance into the mainstream media (and even this blog), displays parallels to what happened with the phrase "war on terror" in the months after 9/11.

Finding the exact origin of "surge" is tougher than it sounds. It seems that the word first had prominent usage in mid-December 2006. In early January 2007, the phrase gained even more popularity. Speculation about President Bush announcing a plan for an increase of American troops in Iraq reached its peak around January 9th, and a day later the president finally announced his plan for a "new way forward" that had been months in the making. However, he did not once use the word "surge" in his Address to the Nation that day. The "surge option" as we know it was first discussed in a New York Times article by David Cloud on November 21st, two days after an article reported Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) hope for a "short-term surge" (he had been pushing for a similar strategy since August). Articles prior to that, notably Thomas Ricks' November 20th scoop, often spoke of a "short-term" troop increase to be recommended to the White House by military experts.

The godfather of the so-called surge option is neoconservative Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank close to the White House. When interviewed on On the Media about the allegation that the White House is taking advantage of the contradictory "surge", he said that his plan entitles a sustained surge of sorts, a long-term effort — not the kind of action people take the word to mean; he blames the media for being misleading and using the term "loosely". Was the "surge" an invention of the media, not a political tool of the White House? The answer is unclear, but what is known is that the Bush administration definitely took advantage of the word and its connotations.

Iraq situation: surging…

…in more ways than one — political, violence, and US troop levels (?).
UPDATED

See this post — on White House newspeak, public opinion on Iraq, and the "surge" — for more.

BBC News::

US President George W Bush is preparing to unveil his long-awaited strategy for the future of US involvement in Iraq.

Not as exciting or fresh as the iPhone, but important nonetheless. Ever since the Democrats’ win in the midterm elections last year, and since the new Congress’ swearing in almost a week ago, Bush has been stepping up the level of discussion on US policy in Iraq — prodded of course by the aforementioned political events and the former’s significance. In fact, as a Washington Post article points out, it’s a change in tactics, not strategy.

As Washington journalists debate whether to call President Bush's plan to send 20,000 more American troops into Iraq a "surge" or an "escalation," they are letting the White House get away with a much more momentous semantic scam.

The White House would have you believe that Bush tonight will be announcing a new strategy. But from all indications, all Bush will be talking about -- yet again -- is changing tactics.

No doubt the Democrats, still basking in their midterm glory and unaware that the honeymoon is [long] over, are very divided when (NYT) it comes to what to do with Iraq.

While Democrats find themselves unusually united in their resistance to a troop increase, party leaders are locked in an internal debate over how far to go in objecting to the administration’s Iraq strategy.

In the most aggressive of the new tactics, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, has said he will introduce legislation on Tuesday to require the president to gain new Congressional authority before sending more troops to Iraq. The bill is the first proposal in the Senate that would prohibit paying for an increase in American troops over their level on Jan. 1.

The new House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, has similarly suggested that Democrats consider blocking financing for a troop increase, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, vowed Monday “to take a look at it.”

The Democratic Party sailed to victory in midterm elections in the fall on a promise to change course in Iraq. Still, there is little consensus over how to proceed.

Some Democrats are urging an immediate withdrawal of troops and a drastic reduction in war spending. Others are calling for a gradual re-deployment of troops to move them out of Iraq. Still other Democrats are waiting for Mr. Bush to present his plan before criticizing it.

The expectations set by the elections, Democrats say, present a complicating challenge as they begin to govern.

Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said he believed that his party lost the White House in 2004 because of Iraq. “My concern now is that too many Democrats are going to want to play it safe on this issue and not take the strong stand that American people demand,” he said Monday.

The pressure from war critics on the Democratic left has been particularly intense. “The bottom line is that they were elected on a mandate to get the nation out of the mess in Iraq,” said Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org, a liberal political action committee.

By law, Congress can limit the nature of troop deployments, cap the size of military deployments and cut financing for existing or prospective deployments.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, vice chairman of the moderate New Democratic Coalition, said he feared that withholding financing — even for new troops being sent to Iraq — could have a detrimental effect on all forces.

Both John Dickerson and Jacob Weisberg of Slate say that the Dems will not stop the “surge”. Is it all political showboating? (Probably not from Kennedy, but who knows…)

My view is that withholding finances would not only be a bad Democratic policy view in the eyes of the American people and would give the White House and GOP an excuse to rally around their causes, but it would also bring the matter of Iraq down to such a low partisan, political mudslinging level. A gradual deployment, by all military strategy standards, would not be a smart move either — it would be inefficient and more damaging than a blitz-like “surge”.

CFR analysis:

President Bush is expected to call for a surge of twenty thousand troops, or five combat brigades, bringing the total number of U.S. forces in Iraq to roughly 160,000. The plan will likely focus on clearing Baghdad and Anbar province of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias with the help of Iraqi—and Kurdish peshmerga—forces and set benchmarks for the Iraqis to meet. A dramatic surge in reconstruction aid would also follow.

I do like the reconstruction bit. Check out the plan on Iraq withdrawal I enforce.

For more enlightenment on the “surge” and what it means, check out this FP article.

Who knows, maybe Bush's plan is just — and only just — recycled rhetoric.

I welcome the aspect of the Kennedy Plan that increases the righteous powers of Congress and puts a damper on the all-too-high (and escalating) powers of the president. Bush has already overreached on the "war on terror" and Iraq enough, its time to call him on it. However, keep in mind the Dems only have a slim majority in the Senate, and their 30-some seat majority in the House of Representatives is such a majority because many of the Democrats who beat Republicans were moderate-conservative Democrats beating moderate Republicans.

Bush's announcement finally comes! BBC News:

US President George W Bush has said he will send more than 20,000 extra troops to Iraq, as part of a new strategy for the future of US involvement.

In an address live on US TV, he said the deployment would help break the cycle of violence and hasten the day when US troops are able to come home.

The situation in Iraq was unacceptable, he said, adding that responsibility for mistakes rested with him.

However, US Democrats says they will oppose any "escalation" of the war.

technorati tags: bush, kennedy, pelosi, moveon, baghdad, iraq, news, surge, troop+surge, iraq+war, in+the+news, politics, democrats, congress, current

Iraq recap

Recap: Surging Iraq debate and a rebellious US Congress
The past couple days, my creative — or, gasp, political — juices have not been flowing as strongly. But the debate over Iraq clamors on, from Baghdad to Washington. A number of stories have featured Iraq as their primary topic, including:

A New York Times article on Bush's restatement of the connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. A sad defense for keeping troops there, which is the biggest Iraq-related issue facing America.

In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

Alarmism is Bush's primary tool to use against a rebellious Congress. The current administration seems to see Congress as a mere, bendable, and nonexclusive constitutional technicality; a branch of government that shouldn't have the power to match the executive and one that surely should not have a say in the war — unless its in favor of Bush's policies, of course. (Maybe the 'unitary executive' people also view the Constitution itself as a technicality... "just a piece of paper")

The president acknowledged that public opinion might be against him — he said that “sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don’t enable you to be loved” — but suggested that Congress was overstepping its constitutional role by trying to force a change of policy on him.

“I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” Mr. Bush said. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.”

So essentially Bush thinks of Congress what old-fashioned, sexist husbands think of their supposed-to-be-submissive wives.

Are the 18 benchmarks set by the Bush administration to review the progress in Iraq also shambolic? Yes, says Fred Kaplan of Slate. The progress report has finally been released; but everyone is talking about September as the real deadline for progress, and to see whether President Bush's troop 'surge' plan has succeeded as he insists it will. See here for a full scorecard based on the interim report.

What do the experts think of the options the US has in Iraq? An expert at CFR explains in this interview the 'middle-ground' options, i.e. the ones besides pulling out immediately and continuing with the 'surge' status quo.

Stephen Biddle, CFR’s top military analyst on Iraq, says none of the various “middle-ground” proposals on Iraq are feasible. He says the only analytically sound alternatives are to either pull out now, or to stick with a revamped “surge.” The U.S. policy of seeking cease-fire deals in places like Anbar is working, Biddle says, but adds that it only has a “ten-to-one” chance of succeeding.

The New York Times issued a damning-as-usual editorial against Bush's latest Iraq decision.

Here's an article by the Washington Post's Peter Baker on the red-hot debate still heating up in Washington on Iraq. More of that infamous gridlock on the way?

Wil Robinson over at International Political Will points out the lack of humanitarianism resonating from the political Iraq debate... from both sides of the aisle.

On the topic of Bush, and still sticking to Iraq, The Economist published a leader on the president's partial pardon of Scooter Libby (see post), among his other presidential mistakes.

The past week has been a terrible one for America's embattled president. First, on June 28th, his own Republicans scuppered his cherished—and, in the view of this newspaper, enlightened and brave—plan to reform the country's broken immigration system, decisively blocking it in the Senate. Then a group of prominent Republican senators joined forces with the Democrats to speak out against his policy of reinforcing Iraq. And on July 2nd George Bush brought fresh waves of vitriol down onto his own head, by annulling the 30-month prison sentence given in June to a top White House aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice.
...
Mr Bush's action serves to remind people of three of his weaknesses. One of them is his tendency towards cronyism, which led him to appoint a wholly unqualified friend to run the government's disaster-relief agency. The consequences were disastrously manifest during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Other examples include his failed attempt to appoint his own lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. A second flaw is the hold that Mr Cheney appears to have over the man who is nominally his boss. The past few days have seen a series of articles in the Washington Post detailing the extent to which Mr Cheney has talked Mr Bush into bypassing all normal channels of debate to take questionable decisions.

A third effect of the decision, and perhaps the most serious, is that it reinforces the perception that Mr Bush sees himself and his cronies as above the law. Sometimes he has made this explicit, attaching “signing statements” to hundreds of bills sent to him by Congress asserting his right to interpret those bills as he deems fit. Sometimes he has done so covertly, wire-tapping Americans with no authorisation or permitting the use of torture with consequences felt at Abu Ghraib and in secret CIA prisons in black holes like Uzbekistan.

Perhaps, in the end, Mr Bush's decision came down to a simple calculation that he has little left to lose. He is not seeking re-election, his approval ratings can barely go any lower, and any hopes for legacy-polishing bipartisan co-operation with Congress seem to have evaporated. So why should Mr Bush not please his few remaining friends and placate his vice-president by springing the loyal Mr Libby? It makes a kind of sense, but a deeply troubling one. What else, one wonders, might so isolated a president do before he goes?

And finally the major political story on Iraq — besides the White House's spin-job on time being needed for progress there. America's House of Representatives voted in favor of withdrawal from Iraq. The bill will likely either be defeated in the Senate — which has a slimmer Democratic majority but, unlike last time, has more anti-Iraq-war-leaning Republicans — or will face an impending presidential veto, like what happened in early May.

The United States House of Representatives has voted in favour of pulling most combat troops out of Iraq by April next year.

The new legislation calls for the Pentagon to begin withdrawing combat troops within four months.

The vote comes despite President George W Bush's threat to veto any timetable.

Both the House and the Senate must pass separate legislation and then reconcile their two versions for a measure to be passed to the president.

Correspondents say the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, is hoping to pressure the Senate to approve a similar timeline.

It is the third time this year the House has voted in favour of legislation to end US military involvement in Iraq.

One previous legislative push was vetoed by Mr Bush, while a second failed when the Senate voted twice against imposing a withdrawal timetable.