More Maps

The main point of my maps post from yesterday evening turns out to have been substantially anticipated by Smintheus at Unbossed and also this McClatchey report that I missed when it came out on Tuesday.

I'll also add that the maps, even with the additional detail provided in General Jones' graphic, are still a bit hard to interpret. The color-coding of the density of violent incidents doesn't give us any actual quantities. And perhaps most important, I don't know anything about the population density of Baghdad or the disposition of American forces and other things. It's also worth saying that whether or not reductions in sectarian violence in Baghdad are due primarily to ethnic cleansing is a somewhat academic point at the moment (though it would be nice if the administration could be honest about it) -- the real issue is whether or not a politically stable new equilibrium emerges along post-cleansing borders or whether we just go to neighborhood-versus-neighborhood violence without endless American efforts to divide the parties.

Comments

Thanks for the hat-tip, Matt.

I think this falsification of maps goes right to the core of Petraeus' credibility.

Posted by smintheus | September 14, 2007 9:50 AM

This map is pretty good as as far as showing the sectarian makeup of Baghdad:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/20070907_BUILDUP_MAIN_GRAPHIC.html#

Posted by RC | September 14, 2007 10:22 AM

A question coming from my own ignorance, based on the 'good fences make good neighbors' construct: regardless of how we got here, does a period of decreased violence (say 6 months, 1 year, whatever) eventually increase the possibility of negotiated peace? Or will the mistrust over 40 years dwarf a short period of time and doom these people to eventual competitive annihilation?

Posted by Adi Nadimpalli | September 14, 2007 1:31 PM

@Adi: It's not the distrust over 40 years, it's the death squad killings over the last four.

And, no, I'd doubt that being trapped to a single neighborhood by U.S.-constructed fences and walls, and hemmed in by that neighborhood's reigning militia, increases the possibility of negotiated peace until there's been a much longer period of lowered violence than six months or a year. And even the evidence for that lowered violence is iffy.

Posted by Nell | September 14, 2007 3:19 PM