In Iraq

Six killed in attack in Diyala province. What appears to have happened is that with surge forces concentrated in Baghdad and Anbar province, the insurgents eventually regrouped and relocated to Diyala and Ninawa provinces where we're now seeing an uptick in violence. This might nonetheless be big progress except for the fact that we need to de-surge soon, so the odds seem very good that the insurgency will re-spread as we try to return to a sustainable posture. Meanwhile, Thomas Ricks and Karen DeYoung report that "U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift. After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves."

This, I think, is what's technically known as failing and giving up and then pretending that failing and giving up are part of a brilliant new strategy. On top of that, via Spencer Ackerman I see the Defense Department growing increasingly desperate in its spin: "Recent terrorist attacks on Iraqi concerned citizens groups indicate al Qaeda in Iraq’s increasing desperation."

I got one of my early big breaks as a blogger back when Segio Vieira de Mello was killed in an early insurgent attack on a UN building. The rightwing spin was that this showed the insurgency was getting desperate. I said that was dumb. Josh Marshall linked to me. And that was in the summer of 2003. Over forty months later it's unbelievable that we're still hearing this inane line.

Comments

You'll want to close the italics on this post...

Posted by TW Andrews | January 10, 2008 9:25 AM

You should just stop using italics. Go for the old school _underscore_ for emphasis.

Posted by crack | January 10, 2008 9:26 AM

I should have put the close ital at the front, but i put it at the end.

Posted by crack | January 10, 2008 9:28 AM

In the transcript of the latest audio recording of Osama Bin Laden, "The Way to Frustrate the Conspiracies," translated by the NEFA Foundation [1/03/08] (PDF), Bin Laden talks about Diyala (go to page 7.)

The entire message is mainly about the devious and nefarious divisions that are happening in the international jihad, an attempt to make sure the recruits do not fall prey to false leaders. This includes stuff on the firing of Mansour Dadullah by Mullah Omar.

In the Diyala part, he complains about a continuous onslaught over the last 6 months by the U.S. and the traitorous Sunnis who sold out to them, the Iraqi government, the two Shiite militias. Then he places a lot of blame for all this discord on "the regime in Riyadh, their clerics and their media."

Overall, skimming the whole thing, it seemed to me that he is trying to rally bad morale among the troops, whoever they might be. On Iraq, it does sound a little desperate, I must admit. Earlier in the text he even says nice stuff about the belated Zarqawi, how trustworthy he was, as if he was wishing he had him back. I got the impression that when he was alive, they weren't as buddy buddy.

In other news, Counterterrorism Blog says the 2008 Pakistan Terror Season has begun with a pretty bad suicide bombing outside the Lahore high court.

Posted by artappraiser | January 10, 2008 10:18 AM

You should just stop using italics. Go for the old school _underscore_ for emphasis.

Is no one an HTML purist, anymore? "strong" should be the general "emphasis" tag, as HTML is a markup language, not a typesetting language.

Lately though, I've becomes partial to *asterisks* to denote emphasis.

Posted by Tyro | January 10, 2008 10:24 AM

Not to quibble, but: Don't you mean "over fifty (or _fifty_ or *fifty*) months later (four years, 48 months, plus a few more)?

Posted by Edward, the mad shirt grinder | January 10, 2008 10:39 AM

You were referencing this 2003 post, no?

And here's TPM's linkage to you.

Posted by Jon | January 10, 2008 11:03 AM

This, I think, is what's technically known as failing and giving up and then pretending that failing and giving up are part of a brilliant new strategy.

Well, I think, technically, we retreated for the most part (all of 4000 marines went to Anbar while we surrendered control of eight provinces) to Baghdad, but because we sent in extra troops, we called it The Surge, instead of The Retreat, which you've got to admit, is some pretty impressive Orwellian spin. (Substitute The Retreat, in all those announcements about how 'The Surge is succeeding!': 'The Retreat is Succeeding!' 'Congress is failing to support The Retreat!' etc.)

When you control less land area, even with more troops, that's a retreat.

So, after retreating, now we've given up on the thing the Retreat was supposed to help!

max
['Hopefully, we will have another Retreat Surge soon.']

Posted by max | January 10, 2008 11:25 AM

MY - What appears to have happened is that with surge forces concentrated in Baghdad and Anbar province, the insurgents eventually regrouped and relocated to Diyala and Ninawa provinces where we're now seeing an uptick in violence. This might nonetheless be big progress except for the fact that we need to de-surge soon, so the odds seem very good that the insurgency will re-spread as we try to return to a sustainable posture.

MY is invested in defeat and persists in calling Al Qaeda part of the "insurgency". They are not a part of any Iraqi-led insurgency anymore. They are foreign Takfiri along with some Iraqi recruits not controlled by the tribal leaders or Sunni Parties - and they are killing and mutilating mainly Iraqis - and the citizenry of Iraq are now at war with them.

More torture houses and mass grave pits have been found in Sunni towns in Dialyah.

Being kind-hearted Americans, we are gladly helping them kill Al Qaeda - and Binnie and others in the small band of senior AQ still safe from us in Pashtun territory are seeing the rout of AQ in their Central Front continue. And going nuts. The screaming about KSA is all about the Saudis, under US pressure, nailing Saudi AQ financiers, Mullahs, recruiters, and recruits we have traced back along the ratlines based on interrogations of captured Saudi AQ and what we glean from bodies and belongings of dead Saudi AQ and others in Iraq.

Lefties are wrong. Either you leave AQ alone and they grow, or you slaughter them and hound them down and interrogate the shit out of them and roll up their networks and they only grow stronger - but both Lefty claims cannot be true since they are mutually exclusive.

Assuming the theory of other actions against an enemy are correct, slaughtering them tends to shrink their numbeers...And they are getting creamed all over Iraq these days. A group of 11 on the run from Baghdad made it to a safe house in Dialyah and were fingered within an hour by Sunnis. Their last moment was hearing two Apaches drop down and pour 180 rounds of 20mm cannon fire into their safe house, shredding most of them, kiling all.
Today, we dropped 38 1,000 bombs in just 10 minutes on 3 AQ stronghold points. In just one area of Iraq part of the larger sweep (Operation Phantom Phoenix) of AQ enemy in Northern Iraq. Teams of Americans and Iraqis are locating targets, B-1B bombers and F-16s are attacking strongpoints, and infantry and Apaches are capturing or dispatching Al Qaeda survivors.

Life is good - unless you are the hated Al Qaeda - though we are taking light casualties like the 6 Americans killed in a booby trap. Time to pop a beer and salute the Iraqi and American interrogators that then get the unlawful AQ combatants and the "welcome home committees" many are sent back to in their native countries, including KSA and Egypt, if they are uncooperative. Somewhere, sometime, we might get lucky and find one of the couriers that delivers reports to al-Zawahiri in Pakistan.

Posted by chris ford | January 10, 2008 11:33 AM

Al Qaeda was decimated and rendered effectively harmless in December 2001. Were it not for a failure to go for the kill, the current War on Terror would have been over. Al Qaeda would not have regrouped and grown stronger were it not for the safe haven created in Iraq.

Posted by Kenneth | January 10, 2008 12:05 PM

The Surge was a huge success. It gave rightwing politicians and pundits like Joe Lieberman, John McCain, and Bill Kristol the cover they needed to proclaim Iraq a success. It allows them to say they are winning Iraq going into the election. If a Democrat gets elected and moves to withdraw (like 65% or so of the country wants) then they can say they were winning the war until the Democrats lost it JUST LIKE VIETNAM!

It accomplished exactly what they wanted it to do. Look at Joementum and McCain in the WSJ today. It was a huge success.

Posted by Joshua | January 10, 2008 1:14 PM

Al Qaeda was decimated and rendered effectively harmless in December 2001. Were it not for a failure to go for the kill, the current War on Terror would have been over. Al Qaeda would not have regrouped and grown stronger were it not for the safe haven created in Iraq.
Posted by Kenneth

Great regurgitation of Lefty talking points, Kenneth. Too bad nothing you regurgitated is truthful.

Posted by chris ford | January 10, 2008 7:33 PM

Ford, nothing you've said is even remotely correct.

Big surprise.

First, Al Qaeda in Iraq was never more than 7% of the insurgency, if that. And as far as how big it was with regard to Al Qaeda franchises in general, it's not clear that it was particularly important, other than the news coverage it got.

The last estimate of Al Qaeda connected organizations I read was something like 18,000. Which would make the couple of thousand in Iraq not terribly important to Al Qaeda in the overall scheme of their plans, again, aside from the press coverage of AQI.

Second, the efforts against Al Qaeda in Iraq are irrelevant to the war in Iraq overall, since Al Qaeda was never a significant issue compared to the basic split between Sunni and Shia, and the divisiveness of the Kurds.

Third, the basic fact is that there is no possible way to defeat a broadly supported, and networked insurgency like the one in Iraq with military means. This isn't Che in Bolivia, you nitwit. While it may be true that not every insurgent wants to relocate out of town whenever the US military moves in, the facts are that is exactly what takes place in all insurgencies. Hit one place, they move to another; hit that one, they move back to the first. You can play that whack-a-mole game for generations without ever winning the war.

The reality is that the Sunni insurgency is confident that they had the US military on the ropes and that's why the US military decided to try turning them into a nation-wide welfare program by paying them $300 each not to shoot at us.

The insurgency thinks this is a great idea, at least until they're ready to take up the fight against the Shia again. And once that happens, Al Qaeda will be back as well, if perhaps not to the same level they had before the Sunnis stopped allying with them.

Meanwhile, al-Sadr is rebuilding his Mehdi Army to be leaner and meaner, and he will be back trying to get rid of the US occupation as well.

Iran is arranging a deal between Hakim's crowd and al-Sadr, intending to create a new Iraqi government coalition that will be united in driving out the US occupation and may even make some small efforts at reconciliation with the Sunnis at least to the degree of assisting them in driving out the US.

Things are definitely going to get worse in Iraq by next summer at the latest.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 10, 2008 10:34 PM