Pushing Fighters

Here's a telling bit from The Washington Post's account of yesterday's bombings in Iraq: "U.S. military commanders have said that major military efforts in and around Baghdad have pushed fighters to the areas north of the capital, often to rural or mountainous hideouts, where there are fewer troops pursuing them."

Two morals from this story. One is that aside from the "surge" -- the temporary increase in the overall number of American forces in Iraq -- we've seen a surge-within-the-surge, an increase in the Baghdad-centricity of our deployments. The other is that outside of this surged areas, there haven't been any security gains. There's no change, in short, in the nationwide dynamic.

So what happens when we start de-surging?

Well, things will just get worse again. After all, when the goal of the surge was outlines as creating space and time for national political reconciliation, that wasn't something Bush and Petraeus just pulled out of their asses. A temporary increase in force levels aimed at creating a temporary increase in security doesn't, after all, sound like much of a strategy. So they said that the temporary increase in troops would lead to a temporary increase in security which would lead to political reconciliation which, in turn, would lead to sustainable security gains. But it hasn't happened. So when we start desurging, we're just going to find that nothing's changed and nothing's been accomplished.

U.S. Army photo by Spc. Angelica Golindano

Comments

This is not quite true -- at current levels of violence enough people will be killed, maimed or relocated to reduce the violence within the time period envisioned by current war planners(decades).

Posted by theCoach | December 26, 2007 1:06 PM

"So when we start desurging, we're just going to find that nothing's changed."

I wouldn't say that. There's what? Several hundred dead guys whose families pretty clearly perceive a change.

Posted by Junius Brutus | December 26, 2007 1:12 PM

So you're complaining that the surge is working and violence has decreased in Baghdad. This just means our troops have done their job and can leave Baghdad and fight the terrorists elsewhere in Iraq.

And when the terrorists and militia members return to Baghdad, it'll be because they're emboldened by the prospect of a capitulating peacenik Democrat getting elected president and defunding the war.

Thus we must elect a psycho warmongering Republican who'll start another surge, preferably against the terrorists' puppetmasters in Iran.

/snark ... for now.

Posted by Visceral | December 26, 2007 1:17 PM

Therefore, there are obviously going to be people who say that we shouldn't de-surge- if you want to reduce troop levels you must want to throw away all the gains we've made in the past few months. I've heard that maintaining the surge troop levels is impossible with current rotations, but I also heard something about the army breaking in 2007 and no one did anything about it.
I think the Ratchet is a better name than the Surge or escalation- it only goes one way. If you want to increase troops you're Very Serious, if you ever want to decrease them (even to levels that used to be considered Serious) then you hate America.

Posted by SP | December 26, 2007 1:28 PM

MY - The other is that outside of this surged areas, there haven't been any security gains. There's no change, in short, in the nationwide dynamic.

Bullcrap.

Violence is down by a factor of 10. Neighborhoods have been completely reclaimed from the radicals not just in the Tal Afar region, but in most provinences. AQ forces have been slaughtered as the Surge continues - nearly 4,000 by US and Iraqi forces, with another 2,000 captured. (Unless you believe the Lefty drivel that the more Al Qaeda you kill or capture - like Nazis - the stronger you make them)

So when we start desurging, we're just going to find that nothing's changed and nothing's been accomplished.

4,000 more terrorists are in their final dirt nap. Their names and personal effects are being backtracked. 2,000 others are squealing like pigs to their kindly captors about what Saudi or Algerian or Belgian village they came from, others who signed up, who the recruiters and financiers of their Jihad were. Freed Sunni villagers are now talking to consternated Egyptian, Yemeni, Pak, Indian, Indonesian, and Turk TV crews and journalists about just how horrific life under Al Qaeda was as they show graves, multilations, and chambers where REAL TORTURE was inflicted on Sunni Arabs by the Takfirs of bin Laden. How no sane Arab should wish to live life under Al Qaeda's precepts....

Yeah, sure, nothings changed, nothings accomplished. The war is lost. We are doomed, doomed! We should run as fast as we can...

Posted by Chris Ford | December 26, 2007 1:46 PM

The basic assumption that the lower of violence is in directly correlated to the number of soldiers we have on the ground. This assumption is based on the state of Iraq now. It ignores the simple explanation that a change in US military tactics in Iraq have caused a wait and see attitude by the insurgents. Once the insurgents realize who is the new enemy they will, by all likelihood increase their activity.

Posted by Koshembos | December 26, 2007 2:03 PM

Speaking as someone who is on the ground, I think that your assessment is premature. Because the insurgents have been pushed out of major urban areas like Baghdad and Baquba, it has given the Iraqi security forces an opportunity to take the fight to them. I won't suggest that they will certainly succeed, but after having watched them for six months, I think that it is unlikely the situation will devolve to the same point as it was pre-surge, although I may well be proven wrong. Still, one of the basic tenets of COIN is providing security while local forces gain the ability to maintain security, and while it's likely we haven't provided them with enough time to become as effective as they should be, I think it's likely we'll see them do better than you seem to expect.

This is not in any way intended to argue that the invasion was a good idea or anything else. Only that the surge may have better effects than you appear to believe. Thanks.

Posted by G'Kar | December 26, 2007 2:44 PM

There's actually a good chance violence won't return precisely to pre-surge levels, given that the ethnic cleansing and Balkanization (or Belfastization) that a good bit of the pre-surge violence was aimed at accomplishing is now a fait accompli. It moves Iraq not one inch closer to long-term stability, but it probably will provide a post-surge lull sufficient to cover Bush-Cheney's exit from office.

Posted by urbino | December 26, 2007 2:49 PM

Your pining for defeat is becoming absurdly comical. Just as the war was not as simple as early advocates thought it would be, it has not turned out to be the epic disaster that people like you think it is, either.

Perhaps it's time for you to be nuanced...

Posted by James Robertson | December 26, 2007 5:13 PM

Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused;
behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge ....

From Henry V (3/1)
(Dedicated to Larry Summers)

Posted by Comment | December 26, 2007 5:32 PM

"Freed Sunni villagers are now talking to consternated Egyptian, Yemeni, Pak, Indian, Indonesian, and Turk TV crews and journalists about just how horrific life under Al Qaeda was as they show graves, multilations, and chambers where REAL TORTURE was inflicted on Sunni Arabs by the Takfirs of bin Laden. How no sane Arab should wish to live life under Al Qaeda's precepts...."

This discrediting of Al Qaeda and the Salafist ideology in the Arab world is an underreported consequence of our recent success in Iraq. It's worth connecting the dots from this post to the one about sovereign wealth funds, because the SWFs are an aspect of an alternative to the Salafist vision for the Arab world. In the last few years, key Arab countries have embraced elements of modern capitalism (and modernity in general):

Dubai is transforming itself into the Singapore of the Middle East, importing a British legal structure for foreign business, demonstrating its leaders' understanding of the importance of rule of law and property rights.

SWFs from the Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have invested in Egyptian industries, leading to an economic boom in the most populous Arab country.

Egypt itself has liberalized regulations and privatized some state-owned businesses.

Saudi Arabia is investing in industries besides oil in Saudi Arabia itself, to create jobs for its people.

American universities have been asked to build campuses in Dubai, Qatar, and elsewhere in the Arab world.



Arabs can compare the gleaming sky-scrapers built by the pro-Western capitalists of Dubai with the mosques turned to rubble by Al Qaeda and draw their own conclusions.

Posted by Fred | December 26, 2007 6:41 PM

Once again, everybody points to "Al Qaeda in Iraq" as the main issue - which it never was.

The maximum figure for AQI was something like 7% of the insurgents. This is known.

The main issue was not even the "ethnic cleansing" - although the right wing nuts were claiming we had to be there to prevent it, it happened anyway.

The "ethnic cleansing" merely redrew the demographic map of Iraq. The two million external refugees and two million internally displaced are more important than the simple movement of neighborhoods from one place to another. That was some 20% of the Iraqi population displaced (if you add in the one million actually killed since 2003)!

The real problem is the continued power imbalance between the Sunni and the Shia. Until this is redressed - which is what "reconciliation" MEANS - there will be no change in the underlying problem and the violence will flare up again and probably get worse.

Right now, all accounts indicate that the Sunni insurgents are "resting and rearming" - with US military dollars - in preparation for further attempts to regain power in Iraq. Almost all of the groups still firmly believe that they can regain power in Iraq from the Shia.

The same applies to al-Sadr's Medhi Army. al-Sadr still firmly intends to drive out the US occupation - and that includes the US Embassy, the US "permanent bases" and the rest of US forces in Iraq.

Most of the Iraqi population are behind that goal.

Nothing is going to get better and any predictions that the violence will not resume at the same or higher levels than before are just speculative.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 26, 2007 7:16 PM

Once again, everybody points to "Al Qaeda in Iraq" as the main issue

I'm not sure what "everybody" you're referring to. Before your comment, AQI had been mentioned only twice, and both of those by long-established trolls.

Posted by urbino | December 26, 2007 10:46 PM

I'd like to see a little perspective in the comments from people who are not in, and have never been to, Iraq; don't speak Arabic or Kurdish; don't know any Iraqis; and have a significant and easily identified political bias. The assumption that you "know" the operative power dynamics in places like Al Anbar, Diyala, or even Kurdistan and Basra, much less Baghdad, is a pretty amazing stretch.

Since 1991 there have been a large number of situations in which totalitarian systems either part of or allied with the Soviet Union have collapsed. In most cases this was followed by a bloody power struggle, often one characterized by the manipulation of ethnic/religious identities submerged under the old system. In none of them have the stakes for the larger world been greater than in Iraq. In my view it would make sense to plan on exercising a reasonable amount of influence as the situation evolves.

We've made an awful lot of mistakes, but should be learning from them and adapting rather than trying to run away and hide. To the extent that "the surge" has shown some success, it's because of what the troops have been tasked with doing more than the simple number of them. Dems who want to demonstrate a reasonable level of national security competence need to be prepared to take "yes" for an answer in Iraq.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 27, 2007 3:10 AM

If McCain is the nominee, on the strength of his authorship of the Surge, an uptick in violence of any magnitude will probably kill him off for good.

Posted by bob h | December 27, 2007 7:59 AM