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thedrifter
03-03-09, 03:09 PM
Op Ed: A Surge or Not a Surge?

Mar 1 at 3:03pm by David Tate


Members of USMC 3/8's Police Mentoring Team on patrol in Musa Qala, Helmand Province. Feb. 2009. All photos by David Tate.

Ok… I can’t take it anymore. Surge this, surge that. Whatever. Ever since the surge of 2007, as the Battle of Baghdad was raging, the media has had a penchant for this word and it is making me dizzy.

Let us get this straight because history needs to know what is, and what isn’t, a military surge. God knows, the media is back with this darling of a word and I’m going to get them to make this right.

surge |sərj|noun - a sudden powerful forward or upward movement, esp. by a crowd or by a natural force such as the waves or tide : flooding caused by tidal surges.• a sudden large increase, typically a brief one that happens during an otherwise stable or quiescent period.

Simple as that: ”A sudden large increase, typically a brief one that happens during an otherwise stable or quiescent period.”

Groundhog’s Day

The fact is, in regards to military surges, there have been three large scale surges, in either Afghanistan or Iraq, since either war began. What we face today in Afghanistan 2009, is actually an escalation and it needs to be recognized as such.

escalate |ˈeskəˌlāt|verb [ intrans. ]increase rapidly : the price of tickets escalated | [as adj. ] ( escalating) the escalating cost of health care.• become or cause to become more intense or serious : [ intrans. ] the disturbance escalated into a full-scale riot | [ trans. ] we do not want to escalate the war.

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http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/content/2009/03/01/op-ed-a-surge-or-not-a-surge/

Ellie