Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Kansas City Star
June 8, 2008
Pg. 1
By Scott Canon, The Kansas City Star
No, this war didn't go the way its advocates promised.
It didn't turn up hellish weapons cached by Saddam Hussein, stir a Mideastern dash to democracy, instantly pay for itself with Iraqi oil.
Yet the news spilling from Iraq recently - with a few bloody exceptions - has been undeniably good.
Violence: down. Oil production: at a post-invasion high. U.S. troop casualties: the lowest in years.
So is the war now being won?
"The Iraq war is over," said Charles Hill, a Yale University lecturer and veteran of the State Department and U.N. "Wars don't end the way they used to with signing ceremonies in Tokyo Bay. The success comes on gradually."
Success? Seen from across a philosophical void, "Whether we're winning now isn't the right question," said Phyllis Bennis, author of the upcoming Ending the Iraq War: A Primer. "The issue is the unacceptability of a permanent occupation.
"The violence is down now. But that won't last."
Consensus on progress in Iraq remains elusive. But as last year's troop surge shifts toward a gradual drawdown, upbeat voices speak with new confidence.
They are among a group that sees the Iraq glass half-full and rising - moving to the brim of peace. They cite a strengthening of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, Sunni revolt against the insurgency, a drop-off in sectarian killings, and gains in reining in Shiite and Kurdish militias.
The war has turned, they say. Extremists are on the run. Iraqis now have the security to rebuild their country.
Others see the same Iraq glass as perhaps not half-empty, but on the verge of shattering into a thousand nasty shards.
"Compare the situation now to six months or a year ago, and it is much better now," said Nabil Younis, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "But most people feel the progress is not real progress. They expect something to happen any day, any hour, any minute and everything will collapse."
Younis and others welcome the drop in violence that followed the 30,000-troop surge last year and the shift to the hearts-and-minds counterinsurgency of Army Gen. David Petraeus.
But they don't have great confidence in the new security. After all, the surge aimed to improve security so that political reconciliation could be possible. The coming together of Sunni, Shiite and Kurd has yet to materialize.
If anything, they say, peace has been achieved precisely by a new post-Hussein segregation of religious and ethnic groups - often reinforced by Iraq's ubiquitous concrete blast walls and endless checkpoints.
U.S. troop levels this summer will hit pre-surge levels. Shortly afterward, U.S. commanders will deliver another progress report. But even Petraeus has called for the drawdown to stop out of fear that security gains could collapse.
Still, optimists insist fresh evidence backs their side. Start with Anbar province. For much of the war, it marked the deadliest spot for U.S. troops and the gravest threat to a unified Iraq. But 2007 saw a pivotal reversal. Pentagon-funded Sunni "awakening councils" leveraged American military might and money to exploit local fatigue with insurgent violence.
Sunni tribes stopped helping al-Qaida. Instead, they became "Sons of Iraq" citizen groups turned against foreign terrorists, an alliance of convenience with U.S. forces.
"Now you see blast walls being taken down and Marines and local Iraqis able to run in a 5K run with minimal security," said Eric Davis, the author of Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq.
The Rutgers University professor, who has consulted with provincial reconstruction teams in the country, said, "There really has been a change in the political landscape."
For instance, Davis said, the anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has long posed an imminent threat. At the start of the occupation, U.S. leaders dismissed him as a thug riding on the reputation of his much-revered father. But the junior al-Sadr emerged as a potent force channeling street-level frustration in Iraq's grimmest slums and acting as a Mafia-like protector of Shiites in sectarian bloodlettings. His Mahdi Army militia, and the disparate gangs that fly its banner, have been operating under a series of tenuous cease-fires.
Al-Sadr's latest extension of a cease-fire can be seen as his effort to play a role in the new Iraq government rather than be a violent spoiler. Hill, the Yale analyst, said recent marches by Sadrists opposing an extension of the U.N. mandate allowing U.S. troops in Iraq embraced a new language.
"Now people are doing politics," Hill said. "They were talking about, 'We are Arabs,' rather than, 'We are Shiites.' Sadr is staking himself out as a nationalist Arab who wants the Americans to leave. The important part is the Arab and the nationalist."
Likewise in the Kurdish north, analysts say, there is a new dynamic of cooperation. After coming under attack by Turkish forces and Iran (whose leaders, in turn, are anxious that an autonomous Kurdistan would embolden their own Kurdish minorities), leaders in the region have taken a more conciliatory tone toward the Baghdad government.
So leaders have inched toward deals to share northern Iraq's rich oil reserves, to fund the Kurdish peshmerga militia and to determine the governance of Kirkuk province.
Then there is the government crackdown on militias that fell into sharp relief in late March with an offensive in the southern city of Basra. Al-Maliki's decision to go after the Mahdi Army and other armed groups there initially prompted wide criticism. Hundreds died. Scores of government soldiers bailed out. The fighting ended in deadlock.
Yet that confrontation has been followed by relative calm, and now stands as evidence that al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government is willing to take on rogue Shiite forces.
"The ultimate outcome was a huge gain for the Iraqi government - not just in security terms, but in political terms," said James Phillips, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "(Al-Maliki) bolstered his standing among Sunnis because he was willing to take on Iranian-backed militias."
In mid-May, Shiite groups brokered a cease-fire with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces in the Sadr City slum of Baghdad. While the truce came with the walling off of yet another part of Sadr City, it brought new calm to the area. And analysts said it was further proof that ordinary Iraqis were siding with the government rather than Shiite strongmen.
The Sadr City cease-fire also freed up forces to fight in Mosul, al-Qaida's last bastion.
Moving on Mosul, Sadr City or Basra wouldn't have been impossible without U.S. support, but the offensives were remarkable in the ways that long-derided Iraqi security forces took the lead.
"The Iraqis are putting more boots on the ground," said Michael Noonan, research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an Army Reserve captain who finished a tour of active duty in Iraq in 2007.
"You've got another year with them developing soldiers, another year with them developing noncommissioned officers and another year of them developing commanders," he said. "Things can go south pretty fast - all bets are off if the wrong mosque gets blown up - but there's progress."
A little commerce helps.
Oil production is at a post-invasion high, at more than 2 million barrels a day and rising. With oil prices nearing $140 a barrel, it has helped the economy grow at a clip of 7 percent, and allowed the paying off of a $470 million International Monetary Fund debt.
Skeptics don't so much challenge the good news as put it in a different context. They note that Iraq remains among the most dangerous places in the world. And even as many credit the troop surge and more nuanced tactics with lowering violence, they say that sectarian killings have also dropped off because Shiites and Sunnis have been so thoroughly walled off from each other.
Without reconciliation - Shiite government sharing power with Sunnis - many fear progress is too easily reversed.
"The purpose has not been to 'win the war' in a traditional sense - defined as imposing your will. The purpose has been to create conditions that will see the Iraqis coming up with their own political settlement," said Andrew Bacevich, a former Army officer and a professor of international relations at Boston University.
The recent showdowns between al-Maliki and Sadrists, he and others say, may have strengthened the prime minister only in the short run. They may also have elevated the status of al-Sadr.
"If you look at the political side of things, we're still not in a position to win this war," said Bacevich, who opposed the war even before his son was killed in action. "I don't think we have the ability to engineer that political settlement."
Both sides are looking to fall provincial elections for signs of cooperation with the al-Maliki regime. The government wants a treaty that would allow U.S. troops to stay beyond the U.N. mandate expiring Dec. 31. Polls show most Iraqis support attacks on occupation troops.
"The challenges are still overwhelming," said Mohammed Hafez, a political scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School. "This will take time and tremendous resources."
June 8, 2008
Pg. 1
By Scott Canon, The Kansas City Star
No, this war didn't go the way its advocates promised.
It didn't turn up hellish weapons cached by Saddam Hussein, stir a Mideastern dash to democracy, instantly pay for itself with Iraqi oil.
Yet the news spilling from Iraq recently - with a few bloody exceptions - has been undeniably good.
Violence: down. Oil production: at a post-invasion high. U.S. troop casualties: the lowest in years.
So is the war now being won?
"The Iraq war is over," said Charles Hill, a Yale University lecturer and veteran of the State Department and U.N. "Wars don't end the way they used to with signing ceremonies in Tokyo Bay. The success comes on gradually."
Success? Seen from across a philosophical void, "Whether we're winning now isn't the right question," said Phyllis Bennis, author of the upcoming Ending the Iraq War: A Primer. "The issue is the unacceptability of a permanent occupation.
"The violence is down now. But that won't last."
Consensus on progress in Iraq remains elusive. But as last year's troop surge shifts toward a gradual drawdown, upbeat voices speak with new confidence.
They are among a group that sees the Iraq glass half-full and rising - moving to the brim of peace. They cite a strengthening of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, Sunni revolt against the insurgency, a drop-off in sectarian killings, and gains in reining in Shiite and Kurdish militias.
The war has turned, they say. Extremists are on the run. Iraqis now have the security to rebuild their country.
Others see the same Iraq glass as perhaps not half-empty, but on the verge of shattering into a thousand nasty shards.
"Compare the situation now to six months or a year ago, and it is much better now," said Nabil Younis, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "But most people feel the progress is not real progress. They expect something to happen any day, any hour, any minute and everything will collapse."
Younis and others welcome the drop in violence that followed the 30,000-troop surge last year and the shift to the hearts-and-minds counterinsurgency of Army Gen. David Petraeus.
But they don't have great confidence in the new security. After all, the surge aimed to improve security so that political reconciliation could be possible. The coming together of Sunni, Shiite and Kurd has yet to materialize.
If anything, they say, peace has been achieved precisely by a new post-Hussein segregation of religious and ethnic groups - often reinforced by Iraq's ubiquitous concrete blast walls and endless checkpoints.
U.S. troop levels this summer will hit pre-surge levels. Shortly afterward, U.S. commanders will deliver another progress report. But even Petraeus has called for the drawdown to stop out of fear that security gains could collapse.
Still, optimists insist fresh evidence backs their side. Start with Anbar province. For much of the war, it marked the deadliest spot for U.S. troops and the gravest threat to a unified Iraq. But 2007 saw a pivotal reversal. Pentagon-funded Sunni "awakening councils" leveraged American military might and money to exploit local fatigue with insurgent violence.
Sunni tribes stopped helping al-Qaida. Instead, they became "Sons of Iraq" citizen groups turned against foreign terrorists, an alliance of convenience with U.S. forces.
"Now you see blast walls being taken down and Marines and local Iraqis able to run in a 5K run with minimal security," said Eric Davis, the author of Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq.
The Rutgers University professor, who has consulted with provincial reconstruction teams in the country, said, "There really has been a change in the political landscape."
For instance, Davis said, the anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has long posed an imminent threat. At the start of the occupation, U.S. leaders dismissed him as a thug riding on the reputation of his much-revered father. But the junior al-Sadr emerged as a potent force channeling street-level frustration in Iraq's grimmest slums and acting as a Mafia-like protector of Shiites in sectarian bloodlettings. His Mahdi Army militia, and the disparate gangs that fly its banner, have been operating under a series of tenuous cease-fires.
Al-Sadr's latest extension of a cease-fire can be seen as his effort to play a role in the new Iraq government rather than be a violent spoiler. Hill, the Yale analyst, said recent marches by Sadrists opposing an extension of the U.N. mandate allowing U.S. troops in Iraq embraced a new language.
"Now people are doing politics," Hill said. "They were talking about, 'We are Arabs,' rather than, 'We are Shiites.' Sadr is staking himself out as a nationalist Arab who wants the Americans to leave. The important part is the Arab and the nationalist."
Likewise in the Kurdish north, analysts say, there is a new dynamic of cooperation. After coming under attack by Turkish forces and Iran (whose leaders, in turn, are anxious that an autonomous Kurdistan would embolden their own Kurdish minorities), leaders in the region have taken a more conciliatory tone toward the Baghdad government.
So leaders have inched toward deals to share northern Iraq's rich oil reserves, to fund the Kurdish peshmerga militia and to determine the governance of Kirkuk province.
Then there is the government crackdown on militias that fell into sharp relief in late March with an offensive in the southern city of Basra. Al-Maliki's decision to go after the Mahdi Army and other armed groups there initially prompted wide criticism. Hundreds died. Scores of government soldiers bailed out. The fighting ended in deadlock.
Yet that confrontation has been followed by relative calm, and now stands as evidence that al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government is willing to take on rogue Shiite forces.
"The ultimate outcome was a huge gain for the Iraqi government - not just in security terms, but in political terms," said James Phillips, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "(Al-Maliki) bolstered his standing among Sunnis because he was willing to take on Iranian-backed militias."
In mid-May, Shiite groups brokered a cease-fire with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces in the Sadr City slum of Baghdad. While the truce came with the walling off of yet another part of Sadr City, it brought new calm to the area. And analysts said it was further proof that ordinary Iraqis were siding with the government rather than Shiite strongmen.
The Sadr City cease-fire also freed up forces to fight in Mosul, al-Qaida's last bastion.
Moving on Mosul, Sadr City or Basra wouldn't have been impossible without U.S. support, but the offensives were remarkable in the ways that long-derided Iraqi security forces took the lead.
"The Iraqis are putting more boots on the ground," said Michael Noonan, research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an Army Reserve captain who finished a tour of active duty in Iraq in 2007.
"You've got another year with them developing soldiers, another year with them developing noncommissioned officers and another year of them developing commanders," he said. "Things can go south pretty fast - all bets are off if the wrong mosque gets blown up - but there's progress."
A little commerce helps.
Oil production is at a post-invasion high, at more than 2 million barrels a day and rising. With oil prices nearing $140 a barrel, it has helped the economy grow at a clip of 7 percent, and allowed the paying off of a $470 million International Monetary Fund debt.
Skeptics don't so much challenge the good news as put it in a different context. They note that Iraq remains among the most dangerous places in the world. And even as many credit the troop surge and more nuanced tactics with lowering violence, they say that sectarian killings have also dropped off because Shiites and Sunnis have been so thoroughly walled off from each other.
Without reconciliation - Shiite government sharing power with Sunnis - many fear progress is too easily reversed.
"The purpose has not been to 'win the war' in a traditional sense - defined as imposing your will. The purpose has been to create conditions that will see the Iraqis coming up with their own political settlement," said Andrew Bacevich, a former Army officer and a professor of international relations at Boston University.
The recent showdowns between al-Maliki and Sadrists, he and others say, may have strengthened the prime minister only in the short run. They may also have elevated the status of al-Sadr.
"If you look at the political side of things, we're still not in a position to win this war," said Bacevich, who opposed the war even before his son was killed in action. "I don't think we have the ability to engineer that political settlement."
Both sides are looking to fall provincial elections for signs of cooperation with the al-Maliki regime. The government wants a treaty that would allow U.S. troops to stay beyond the U.N. mandate expiring Dec. 31. Polls show most Iraqis support attacks on occupation troops.
"The challenges are still overwhelming," said Mohammed Hafez, a political scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School. "This will take time and tremendous resources."