Like It Or Not, Its Working
Just a few days ago was the first anniversary of the “surge” into Iraq. I can quote more people than I have time who received the surge with disgruntlement. However, with what I’m reading, I just can’t argue any other way, the surge is working.The difference between now and before the surge is absolutely prodigious. According to USA Today, the military has control of 75% of Baghdad, the target of the surge and Al Qaeda. And this says nothing of the dramatic improvement in Anbar, which is the governorate to the West of Baghdad. A region that had no trace of civilization intact before the surge is now ready, according to Major General Gaskin, to be turned over to the Iraqis. My hat is off to General Petraeus.All of these charts can be found at globalsecurity.org.
It is indeed a shame that someone like General Petraeus couldn’t have been commander of the United States Central Command at the beginning of the war, absent Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer.
I suppose the real challenge is how to fix the hollowness of a sold-away country, an impoverished population, and a frail central government. Not to mention restore some semblance of a balance of power in the region.
S.C. Denney
19 Jan 08 at 3:52 am
By the way, here’s an article rebutting the claims by the generals.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/what_they_call_progress_in_ira.html
I think the author’s primary fallacy is that he is mistaking progress for winning. And by the way, the Bush administration makes that mistake as well, though our generals are less likely. I certainly don’t think we have won in Iraq by any means. The level of violence is still such that we can’t leave. However, I just don’t think I could even pretend that the surge hasn’t had a significant positive effect.
Chris McNeal
19 Jan 08 at 4:08 am
I don’t think many would disagree, either.
S.C. Denney
19 Jan 08 at 4:12 am
“Like it or not, it’s working.”
I guess that is an example of how you can always acheive success if you set your goals low enough, or are willing to redefine them along the way somehow.
I know I haven’t written the book on counterinsurgency or on nation-building, but there are some things that I would include in my requirements for declaring any Iraq strategy to be “successful,” like increased political cooperation and decreased corruption and decreased American involvement as the Iraqis take more ownership of their own country.
That being said, nobody can argue that fewer people are getting killed in Iraq these days than in previous days and that is absolutely a good thing. Now if we could really make some progress that isn’t just a decreased death toll… (because we didn’t invade Iraq just so we could have fewer people dying after 58 months of occupation than there were after 50 months of occupation. What would the point of that be?)
David M Manes
19 Jan 08 at 4:21 am
US General Says Draw Down of American Troops Depends on the Iraqi Army
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jymdImqWvOft7N2y-QkniB19NVYw
Iraqi General Says That Iraq Will Not Be Able to Defend Itself Until 2018 and that US troops will need to stay in Iraq until then.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011701406.html?hpid=moreheadlines
I’ll be 60; you guys will be about 32.
Mark Elrod
19 Jan 08 at 5:01 am
60 is still a viable age for military office work, right?
I’ll be huge when I’m 32 (having acquired my “old man/maturation strength”) so I’ll surely be able to whip up on some US haters.
S.C. Denney
19 Jan 08 at 5:15 am
David: I agree with your definition of real progress. On the same token, I don’t believe you can have real progress until the violence goes down. Dramatically reduced violence is a stepping-stone to real progress. Also, by us staying there through the hardest times, we are building up trust among the Iraqi people. The violence going down is a vindication. When the Iraqis trust us more, Al Qaeda’s greatest weapon, propaganda, is severely crippled. I would argue that in the Anbar province, that is already taking effect.
Dr. Elrod: That “military support” does not necessarily mean that they will require 100,000 of our troops for 10 years. It just means that we would have to provide help with military infrastructure. That is even spelled out in the article.
Chris McNeal
19 Jan 08 at 6:12 am
Al Qaeda was never even close to being our biggest threat in Iraq, so don’t go spreading around more false insinuations. :-p
The biggest threat always has been and continues to be the deep ethnic and religious divides between the three main sections of the nation. If anybody thinks that those thousand-year-old divisions are going away anytime soon, they should have their brain examined.
If the Iraqi army “isn’t able to defend itself” then it may require more than just a token cheerleading regiment of US soldiers to keep the peace.
David M Manes
19 Jan 08 at 6:37 am
1,300 year old. :-P
Al Qaeda is the biggest immediate threat.
And what does that have to do with the fact that the surge has had a positive effect on Iraq? Once again, we are avoiding what this post is actually about.
Chris McNeal
19 Jan 08 at 6:49 am
Is the reason you say “Al Qaeda is the biggest immediate threat” because George Bush told you so? Because not many of the professional observers of the conflict think that Al Qaeda is the biggest threat to Iraq.
For one thing, Al Qaeda is largely a foreign organization to Iraq, and its members do not get along well with the Iraqis.
For another, the number of Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq is estimated to be extremely low, especially when compared with the incredible numbers of random insurgents and the various militias.
Finally, Al Qaeda is not the biggest immediate threat because of its apparant goals in the region. Al Qaeda is primarily an anti-US organization, and it is responsible for numerous attacks on US troops. What threatens to really pull the country apart and destroy what little political progress has actually been made, though, is the huge and violent chasm between the varius ethnic groups in Iraq. Until they can learn to cooperate under the rule of law, they will never have a stable democracy.
David M Manes
20 Jan 08 at 11:43 pm
By the way, I am extremely skeptical of Iraq’s ability to peacefully unite the disparate ethnic groups under a liberal democracy. If Iraq stays unified long-term, it won’t be peaceful and it won’t be democratic.
David M Manes
20 Jan 08 at 11:44 pm