Why I say it's escalation, not a surge

And I say the hell with it.

[Previous U.S. commanders in Iraq] sought to accelerate both the training of Iraqi forces and American withdrawal. By 2008, the remaining 60,000 or so U.S. troops were supposed to be hunkering down in four giant “superbases,” where they would be relatively safe.

Under Petraeus’s plan, a U.S. military force of 160,000 or more is setting up hundreds of “mini-forts” all over Baghdad and the rest of the country, right in the middle of the action. The U.S. Army has also stopped pretending that Iraqis ... are in the lead ... And that means the future of Iraq depends on the long-term presence of U.S. forces in a way it did not just a few months ago.

The plan is to trap us there for another five to ten years.

Put aside for a moment the human lives that will be lost and blighted. Will we withstand the downing of a helicopter a week for the next year? The next five years?