A Pinch of Progress. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq is a typical bit of bureaucratic obfuscation. The main claim is that there have been "measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq's security situation." Then the authors divide the security situation in half. What's "measurable" is that the "escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now and that overall attack levels in Iraq have fallen . . ."
These are two separate things. When the authors are talking about "escalation of rates of violence," they are referring primarily to violence against civilians in car bomb attacks, assassinations, death squad killings, and the like. In halting the "escalation of rates of violence," the surge has merely kept the situation in Iraq from getting progressively worse as it had in 2006. It has not made the situation better. The only sense in which there is progress is in the sense that things are "better than they could have been." In fact, violence against civilians "remains high" and I've seen other sources that indicate that violence against civilians is higher than it was last year at this time.
At the same time, the surge has resulted in declines of attack levels against American troops and that's especially in Anbar where the insurgents who had been attacking Americans have switched sides and are now fighting with Americans against al-Qaeda.
As the soldiers op-ed stressed on Sunday, conditions have not improved for Iraqis at all. But the declining attacks on Americans do represent a pinch of progress.
The Regress in the Progress. The conventional wisdom about the weakness of the surge is that the al-Maliki government has not used the supposed "breathing space" from the surge to forge compromises with Sunni politicians about re-Baathification, the distribution of oil revenue, and regional autonomy. However, both the Maliki government and its constituencies have fallen apart. The Maliki government was built primarily on the support of the Shiite religious parties, the Sadr bloc, secular Shiites like Ayad Allawi, and relatively moderate Sunni politicians. But the government has been abandoned by the Sadrists, the Allawi Party, and the Sunnis. Even worse from the American point of view is that Sadr is becoming even more popular than he was as a politician even though his militia is fragmenting into little fiefdoms.
What the conventional wisdom doesn't acknowledge is that the dramatic weakening of the al-Maliki government is a consequence of the surge. What the surge did was create a set of cross-cutting pressures that were well beyond the Maliki government's ability to cope. Given that one of the main (though unstated) goals of the surge was the destruction of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, the Sadr political party pushed against the surge within the government. Stuck between the more aggressive Americans and the more popular al-Sadr, Maliki did nothing and the Sadr bloc eventually left the governing coalition because Maliki wouldn't set a timetable for American withdrawal.
Maliki couldn't satisfy the Sunnis or secularists either. Those parties used the occasion of the surge to push al-Maliki to destroy the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias altogether. Fortunately, Maliki proved that he wasn't as stupid as the Bush administration by refusing to risk a likely Shiite insurrection. So, the Sunnis and secularists withdrew as well.
The final outcome is a very mixed bag. As a result of the pressures created by the surge, the Maliki government isn't strong enough to function effectively. However, it has avoided the major disasters of confrontation with the American military on the one hand and confrontation with the popular Shiite militias on the other. Like the surge, the Maliki government isn't making much progress, but it has prevented the worst from happening.
The Shadow of Disaster. However, things can get much worse in a hurry, something emphasized by the NIE when it says that the escalation of violence has been stopped "for now." The problem is the intense American dissatisfaction with Maliki and the Shiites. The Bush administration has never wanted Shiite majority government in Iraq because of the intense sectarianism of the Shiite community and their ties with Iran. The outcome of Iraqi elections have stuck the Bushies with governments dominated by Shiite religious parties that have been very reluctant to engage the Sunnis in the way the Bush administration wants. Now that the American military sees an opportunity to bring former Sunni insurgents into the Iraqi government structure as soldiers and policemen, Bush and his advisers are even more tempted to seek a replacement for al-Maliki than they've been before.
The conditions are right for the Bush administration to be tempted to engage in a little putsch against Maliki. Maliki's government is weak, there's general dissatisfaction with the performance of that government, Ayad Allawi is available as a substitute, and Allawi is much more pro-American than Maliki.
But Allawi would be a disaster because his "conciliatory" policies toward the Americans and Sunnis would alienate the majority Shiite population. Given that Allawi would be committed to destroying the militias, an Allawi government could be a recipe for a Shiite insurrection. In other words, blowing up the Maliki government could lead to a dramatic de-stabilization of the situation in Iraq and reverse the pinch of progress that's been associated with the surge.
There's a lobbying group in Washington promoting the installation of Allawi in Baghdad. Hopefully the Bush administration won't be so stupid that they'll listen.
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Dr. Caric, here's a fascinating link on the actual metrics on Iraq. Don't expect something so simple and profound to make through the current back-sliding and into the MSM and I can guarantee you the right-wing blogosphere, still racked by questions of manliness and which soldiers are good and which are bad (hint: the ones who like the war are good and the others are bad, even if Ari Fleischer can't remember which prop he's shilling), will never see anything or comment on anything so well-done. And, why should they, they have a domestic political movement to smear and blame for their mistakes. BRILLIANT!!
Anyway, the graph is by Kevin Drum and puts lie to the "everything is swimmingly great in Iraq" motif.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
The war in Iraq imposes an unacceptably heavy toll on our military, their families, and our national security. America is paying an enormous cost for a war we never should have fought. Never before, even in the Vietnam War, has America taken such massive military action with so little international support. The war has become a huge recruitment tool for Al Qaeda and has put them where the never were before. The disastrous consequences of our policy could have been avoided if the President and his advisors had asked the right questions before rushing headlong into an unnecessary war. St. Thomas Aquinas developed principles which guide the determination of “just war.” We should pay attention. For Aquinas, (and for me), a war must have a just cause, confronting a danger that is beyond question. It must be declared by legitimate authority acting on behalf of the people. It must be driven by the right intention, not ulterior, self-interested motives. It must be a last resort. It must be proportional, so that the harm inflicted does not outweigh the good achieved. And it must have a reasonable chance of success. the war in Iraq did not meet these criteria. Saddam did not pose the kind of threat that justified this war. But we went to war anyway, without legitimate support from the international community. The Administration was wrong to exploit the 9/11 tragedy to make war against Iraq a higher priority than the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. War with Iraq was most certainly not the last resort. The inspectors should have been given more time. It should not have been our invasion and occupation that revealed that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We have lost more than 3,600 Americans Nearly 27,000 have been wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and Iraq has descended into civil war. There are no easy options at this point but it is clear that the President’s strategy is a failure. For the sake of our men and women in uniform and our national security this must all end.
Thanks, for summing up all the Lib memes in one spot todd, and for not pasting an entire article.
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