Surging to Disaster (Seems to be a common thought.)

Lawrence J. Korb and Max Bergmann at The American Prospect

Want to break the back of the U.S. military while failing to accomplish anything new in Iraq? Send in more troops.

In 1964, when Lyndon Johnson began escalating America's involvement in Vietnam, Undersecretary of State George Ball warned that "the party which seems to be losing will be tempted to keep raising the ante." In the summer of 1965, when the United States had less than 100,000 troops in Vietnam, Ball concluded that "humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives -- even after we have paid terrible costs." As Ball predicted, the United States eventually increased its troop levels to nearly 600,000 and suffered almost 60,000 deaths to no avail.

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