Surge?
I say Po-tay-to, you say po-tah-to… and I will be correct in my pronunciation, and you will be wrong.
The plan is being called SURGE AND ACCELERATE: take control over violence in Baghdad, then speed up the handover of territory to Iraqi forces. […] Administration officials tell NBC News it will involve sending some 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.
You say “surge and accelerate”, I say “Escalation”.
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off!
In 2004, that was roughly John Kerry’s stated position on Iraq. Which always seemed liable to change if he could get away with a certain shift in public opinion. “Surge”. The term hadn’t been concocted yet, but now that it is being used in political discourse, all I can suggest is that one ought to mentally cross out the word “surge” and replace it with “escalate”. As in:
SURGE!!!! ESCALATE!!!!
Congratulations to the Iraq Study Group, I suppose. I’m sure the surge escalation strategy was right there, amongst the menu items that made up their report.