THE surge of extra American troops into Iraq’s battered capital, which began in mid-February, is at last complete. An extra 21,000 of them are now there, bringing their tally in Baghdad up to 31,000-plus and nationwide to 155,000, the highest troop level since late 2005. Senior American officers say that a third of Baghdad now has a degree of “normalcy”; a third, especially those districts with a sectarian fault-line running through them, is still very violent; and a third is in flux.
Once the Americans have secured Baghdad, so the theory goes, they hope to tackle the so-called “belts” just outside Baghdad, in particular the nearby mainly Sunni towns to the south””Mahmudiya, Latifiya and Yusufiya””encompassing a “triangle of death” where al-Qaeda has been active in an area straddling a blurred line between Sunnis and Shias. By stemming the tide of a sectarian war, the Americans still hope to buttress Iraq’s Shia-led government while giving it a last chance to co-opt a serious Sunni component.
The top American general in Iraq, David Petraeus, who is to report on progress to the American Congress in mid-September, cautions against impatient expectations. He is likely to ask for more time. The commonest guess is that the surge will last at least until next spring and perhaps into the early summer. This week General Petraeus said that counter-insurgency operations sometimes last “nine or ten years” before they bring success””yet it is highly unlikely that a new American administration would consider such a timescale.
In any event, though it is still too early to make firm predictions about the surge, the overall level of violence in Iraq has so far not abated.
A somewhat schizophrenic article; I think it was edited poorly and the editor stuck in dissonant conclusions. Some observations:
1. most of the facts and policy descriptions appear to be well described. If you read the article and come up with differing conclusions, that is probably because reasonable readers will differ on this type of subject.
2. Where I have issues with the article is in sections like this:
“Moreover, if the Americans eventually agreed to a multilateral framework to help them disentangle themselves from Iraq, be it under the aegis of the UN or through a regional “contact group†made up of all Iraq’s neighbours, Mr Maliki would probably have to resign, for Sunni leaders outside Iraq denounce him as a sectarian bigot.”
That multilateral framework under the aegis of the UN or through a regional “contact group†must be some favorite of the writer’s, as it springs at the reader from out of nowhere. Moreover, in calling Maliki a bigot fails to recognize that any regional group of leaders are almost all going to be bigots as well. In the mideast, that issue is just a question of degree. And where did the UN creep into this issue? The UN has minimized its role in Iraq ever since its mission got destroyed in 2003 and Bush told Annan to mind his own business. This UN concept must be some sort of editorial interjection of personal hopes which really isn’t justified by recent events.
3. The headline presumes that violent conflicts can succeed. Well, perhaps, if “success” is defined narrowly enough. But this article’s conclusions are not supported by any such definition or a reference to what the US government might define success to be. So the first 5 paragraphs rigorously lead nowhere, as the goal of the whole operation is not compared to its actual results. If “success” is elusive to define, then a logical “failure” is certain. Ergo, the headline becomes a self fulfilling conclusion. Now this might be a pretty accurate description of what Iraq is all about today, but coming to that realisation through a lack of journalistic coherence isn’t the way to present it properly.
Some thoughts on guerrilla warfare (from the PME course at the Army War College) and (my thoughts on) the surge:
1. Guerrilla warfare has never won a war. It is a psychological ploy to bring attention, create havoc and stress, and put pressure on a government to ‘do something,’ usually oppressive to its own people. In order to achieve its ultimate goals, a guerrilla force must eventually morph into a conventional force.
2. Guerrillas are most easily defeated by removing their support base and sanctuary areas. Contrary to the romantic notion of Che Guevara or Ho Chi Min (or David as he fled Saul), guerrillas gain this support by intimidation, murder and public violence. Most ‘supporters’ are happy to have the guerrillas go. Their concerns are two-fold: will there be a police force able to keep the guerrillas away and will that police force treat them better then the guerrillas. If the answers are ‘yes,’ then the locals will gladly help kick out the guerrillas.
3. Because it is a psychological ploy, guerrillas need to aggressively and/or passively control media. So do the anti-guerrilla forces.
In these senses, the surge recognizes the first point, is addressing the second point, and real struggle may come down to the third, the media fight. Allied forces have largely pushed the insurgents to the outskirts of Baghdad – it is much harder for them to stage an attack downtown – because troops are remaining in each cleared neighborhood.
The ultimate question may be how the media ‘plays’ it.
The writer stated, “the overall level of violence in Iraq has so far not abated.”
The very nature of an offensive surge is that the violence will increase – at least in the immediate time-frame – until the insurgents are pushed from their hiding areas. The writer demonstrates very little understanding of warfare in general and guerrilla warfare specifically.
#2 RevK The media will continue its support of pulling out. This has been consistant since Viet Nam.
Civil wars are rarely “solved” by military force, certainly not by a Iraq govt that is mostly make believe and an Iraqi military that is not bought in.
#5 Bob Carlton – I think you need to define what you mean by ‘solved’ – it seems to me that ultimately, all civil wars come down to military (or para-military) force.
And most are solved — one way or another — based on which side has superior military advantage. The U.S. “civil war” was decided thusly.
Can anyone tell me what is the awful scenario that is supposed to unfold if the US leaves Iraq?
If we have not prepared the Iraqi’s to govern and defend themselves, Iran and Syria will send in their troops and take over, killing anyone who does not meet their definition of a follower of ‘true Islam’. In other words, a blood-bath similar in scope to the (forgive the spelling) khaimer rouge in Vietnam.
I don’t even know where to begin. Is this from Hal Lindsey’s website?
Why would the Sunni Syrians, governed by the Assad family which has made a point of killing members of the Muslim Brotherhood, ally with theocratic Iranian Shi’ites to slaughter Iraqis, most of whom are also theocratic Shi’ites strongly sympathetic to Iran?
#10 Reactionary.
Actually, the Assads are Alawi’s, not Sunni’s. The Alawi’s are related to the Shi’a in their theology (they are both followers of ‘Ali’). Since the death of Hafez Assad, Iran and Syria have been cooperating more, particularly in Iraq, the Arabian Gulf and Lebanon. But the bottom line for both Iran and Syria is power – and that includes excluding the U.S. from the Middle East by whatever practical means they can come up with.
Please excuse the smiley of the previous post. I used an unknown and magic combination of punctuation.
I’m all for excluding the US from the Middle East. I’m also in favor of excluding the Middle East from the US.
#13
I don’t agree with your sentiments but you made me smile.
I believe that the surge is working. However, MSM would have us believe otherwise, as usual. This reminded me of an excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson recently:
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson061107.html
Here are examples of extremely biased reporting:
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2006/01/cnn_despicable_.html
And from http://www.blackfive.net/…………..
And there’s probably quite a bit that you didn’t know about – and should know about – detailed in “War Crimes”. Por ejemplo, the Boston Globe took the extreme step to carelessly publish completely fraudulent photos showing U.S. troops gang-raping Iraqi women. Guess what? The photos were discovered to be phony and had been surreptitiously submitted by a Nation of Islam representative.
As for organizations, you probably know about International Answer, but did you know about Code Pink sending over $600,000 in supplies and cash to terrorists while our Marines fought with them during the Battle of Fallujah. Did you know that Congressman Henry Waxman facilitated the delivery of supplies through another country to get them into Fallujah? It is all documented in “War Crimes.”
And finally:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor—he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation—he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city—he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.” – Cicero, 42 B.C.
Sounds a bit like the decline of a certain denomination……………
Keep in mind that Cicero was writing at the final death throes of the Republic, where two thirds of the Senate on any one day probably fit his definition of Traitor.