Early Problems for Surge

The Bush administration's surge strategy never had much chance of working and the contours of failure have already begun to emerge. Today, car bombs going off at a marketplace in a Shiite area killed 63 people and wounded more than 120.

As Matthew Yglesias notes, almost all of the recent car bombs have gone off in Shiite areas, indicating that security has decreased for Shiite residents since the Shiite militias have gone underground.

But the failure goes beyond that.

In fact, raids by American and Iraqi troops into Sunni neighborhoods have not put much of a dent into the Sunni insurgent groups which are still operating freely. Indeed, there's at least some chance that Sunni insurgent groups are operating more freely because Sunni insurgents are no longer under pressure from Shiite militia death squads.

Things aren't much better on the Shiite side of the equation. American and Iraqi troops are beginning to move closer to the Shiite slum of Sadr City but have not been able to provide security against insurgent attacks comparable to that of the militias. At the same time, the American and Iraqi troops are viewed as "outside occupiers" in an area that has been largely self-governing since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Troops are facing a hostile Shiite population with mothers beginning to slap away the candy that handed out to children. In this context, American and Iraqi operations in Sadr City have a strong likelihood of stimulating an anti-American Shiite insurgency to match the Sunni insurgency in the Sunni neighborhoods. If American troops accidentally kill innocent women and children, engage in over-zealous raiding, or bomb wedding parties, they could spark a general uprising.

This illustrates the more general weakness of the surge. We don't have enough troops to accomplish the mission. Even with 17,000 more American troops, the U. S. does not have nearly enough troops in Baghdad to suppress the Sunni insurgency. We also don't have enough troops to provide security for Shiite neighborhoods. There is a chance that we can make some kind of step-by-step progress, but it is just as likely that events will lead to big flare ups of violence. We don't have the troops needed to handle those kinds of big flare ups.

This has been the problem with the whole Iraq War. The Bush administration did not commit enough troops to stabilize Iraq when more troops could have helped. Now, the situation has become so chaotic and so inflamed that no amount of American power can get the job.

The nursery rhyme was right. "All the king's horses and all the king's men."