Progressive World Review

Updated below

        The violence escalated in Iraq today as the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) launched an assault on the southern Iraq city of Basra against al-Sadr’s Mahdi army.  Violence also erupted elsewhere in Iraq including Baghdad and Sadr City.  The administration tried to put a positive spin on these events by claiming that having the ISF conduct military operations is “what critics have wanted to see.”  But as The Washington Post The New York Times reported,

An assault by thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to regain control of the southern port city of Basra stalled Wednesday as Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army fought daylong hit-and-run battles and refused to withdraw from the neighborhoods that form their base of power there.

American officials have presented the Iraqi Army’s attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against the insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government and for the army, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own. (emphasis added)

         Can we finally dispense with the notion that the “surge” has worked or as McCain likes to put it, that we’re actually “winning.”  While the recent “surge” of violence in Iraq doesn’t mean conditions will necessarily revert to the all out chaos of 2007 and earlier, what has become crystal clear is that the downturn in violence had little or nothing to do with the surge.  The reduction of fighting in Baghdad for example, was due mostly to the fact that the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis has largely been completed.  Sunnis make up only about twenty percent of the population in Baghdad, the rest having been killed or fled the city.  Even that doesn’t guarantee the fighting is over as the Shites have recently taken to fighting each other.

        But even more significant is the fragility of the cease fire called by al-Sadr approximately one year ago, an event that’s far more responsible for the reduction in violence than anything we Americans have done.  If the cease fire does break down we could easily see the fighting return to pre-surge levels,

But if the Mahdi Army breaks completely with the cease-fire that has helped to tamp down attacks in Iraq during the past year, there is a risk of replaying 2004, when the militia fought intense battles with American forces that destabilized the entire country and ushered in years of escalating violence. Renewed attacks, in turn, would make it more difficult to begin sending home large numbers of American troops.

And that’s all without even mentioning the problems in once peaceful northern Iraq between the Kurds and Turkey.

        None of this is to say that conditions in Iraq will break down, just that they couldbreak down.  And that all it would take is one word from al-Sadr to completely erase all of the supposed gains made from the surge.  In that light, it’s positively ludicrous for war hawks like Bush and McCain to credit the “surge” for bringing “peace” to Iraq.

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UPDATE:        In comments it was suggested that whatever else, progress has been made and it would be wrong to pull the troops out now.  I actually disagree with both of these opinions but the point I was trying to make with my post was that the assertion that the surge is working is in fact, simply not true.  Whatever else may happen to be true, we cannot as a nation, have a meaningful debate over serious issues such as the war, until we stop buying into the propaganda spewed forth buy the endless warmongering political elites.  It has been the very same people claiming that the surge is working that have been completely wrong about everything else in Iraq.  Whether it’s WMDs, being welcome with open arms, bringing democracy to the region, or the insurgency is “in its last throes,” these people have been wrong or have just flat out lied on every issue of consequence, and now it’s the very same people claiming that the surge is working.  Why anyone still listens to these people is completely beyond me but that is in fact, what has been going on and it needs to end now.

–Paul Wilden 

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