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Um, no.

Look, there's no question that if we choose to take back a city like Fallujah, we can do it. But we don't have enough troops to hold what we take, and the insurgents are -- cleverly enough -- focusing their attacks on the Iraqi forces, such as they are. The Iraqi police and military cannot stand up to the insurgents, and so the Iraqi government is completely dependant on us. Entering Fallujah did not change this, as confirm by the insurgent activity around the rest of the country during and since then. How long have we been there, and we can't even protect traffic on the road to the airport?

Democracy is a pipe dream right now. We're not even close to that point. The problem now is establishing a government with some sort of legitimacy and authority. There is no legitimacy because Iraqis quite rightly understand that we are calling the shots (e.g., with Bush's announcement that the January elections would go forward). There is no authority because the police cannot establish rule of law, etc.

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Sullivan disagrees with you over on TNR

Bright Side
by Andrew Sullivan

Something very strange is happening in the news from Iraq: It's not all bad. Don't get me wrong. It's not all good, either--not by any means. Chances for a successful election on January 30 are decidedly iffy. The insurgency is still wreaking barbarism across the country. But in the past few weeks, the case for despair has unmistakably weakened a notch.

Take the little-heralded breakthrough the week before Thanksgiving, when Iraq's major Western creditors agreed to forgive 80 percent of Iraq's debt. Yes, that includes those prickly states in "Old Europe," like France and Germany. Imagine if a president-elect Kerry had announced such a breakthrough. It would have made headlines across the globe. But Bush consigliere James Baker pulled it off--and who wants to celebrate him?

And there was an even less-noticed development this past month: the relative silence across Iraq after the devastating coalition assault on Falluja. The military campaign led to the deaths of thousands, including civilians caught in the crossfire, and left much of the city in rubble. It included the awful imagery of a scared U.S. Marine blowing a wounded Iraqi's head off, a scene replayed endlessly on Arab television. Did the rest of Iraq rise up in protest, as happened in the spring during a similar aborted attack on Falluja? Not even close. The Kurds and the Shia understand that their interest today lies in a successful election. They're not unhappy to see Sunni and Baathist rebels get pummeled by American arms. In that, you see the beginning of the new Iraqi reality: a place where 80 percent of the country wants the democratic transition to succeed.

The coalition has learned a critical tactic in neo-imperial governance: divide and rule. From the Romans to the Brits, it has long been a useful strategy. By working with the grain of Iraqi ethnic tension, specifically the pent-up hostility of Kurds and Shia toward the Sunnis, who for decades ran the country, the United States has been able to gain leverage against the largely Sunni insurgency. So as Sunni Falluja was pummeled, the Shia were quiet and Kurdish troops actually took part in the operation. Yes, it's a potentially dangerous ploy. Pushing the division too far could lead to civil war. But there's some good news here as well: In a recent poll of 2,210 Iraqis, a full two-thirds of those surveyed said the prospect of a civil war was "not realistic."

Then came the real prize: a desperate and angry tape from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, fugitive leader of what he now calls Al Qaeda in Iraq, lashing out at Muslim clerics for not supporting the jihad. "You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy," Zarqawi vented. "You have stopped supporting the holy warriors. Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence." Those are not confident words.

It may well be that greater numbers of trained Iraqi soldiers and police, relentless military pressure on the insurgents, and the prospect of a real election have begun to turn the tide on terrorism in Iraq. Last week saw more hopeful signs. The Bush administration is increasing coalition troop strength to 150,000 before the election, several Kurdish and Sunni parties backtracked on their threat to boycott the election, and the Sunni president of the country, Ghazi al-Yawer, backed the January 30 election date. There's a sliver of democratic momentum here.

Reconstruction money is finally finding a way to make a difference in the country, after the process was stymied by endless bureaucratic logjams. Unemployment is slowly declining, and electricity production is at a postwar high. Per capita income for this year is now $780, up from around $500 in 2003. The Shia insurgent Muqtada al Sadr has joined the political system. The Iraqi government has even agreed to meet with some Sunni dissidents in Jordan to discuss how to bring them into the electoral process. Yes, the Sunnis are still dangerously alienated. But check out the enthusiasm of some for their new-found freedom. Take the intrepid bloggers at Iraq the Model, Omar and Ali. They set up their own party, the "Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party," and went to get it registered, convinced they might suffer for it:

We contacted some friends and people who believed in the same principles we believe in and we told them about our plan. Some people didn't like it but we still managed to gather more than 800 people who stated that they are not afraid of saying in public that they want to overthrow the government and do whatever it takes. We heard about other groups trying to do the same and we decide to unite our efforts with theirs but first we had to make the first step alone. The group chose me, my brother Mohammed and a friend of ours to go to the authorities and talk to them, as we were still hoping to do this peacefully without unnecessary bloodshed unless they refused. We knew of course that it might well lead to our death but then the rest of us would carry on using the hard way.

We reached the government main headquarter and entered without much difficulty. We went to one of these offices as we didn't know were to go as this was our first time there. One of the government employees asked us what was our need. We said our prayers and told him that we want to change the regime. He asked us to wait until he call for the man in charge and I said to myself, "that's it, they're calling the Mukhabarat" the guy came back with another man who, after greeting us asked about our group. We handed him a file that contained our goals and a list of the people who supported us. He took it and told us to come back in 3 days after they study it.

"Study it!?" I said to myself "they're not going to hang us? Maybe they are letting the small fish to capture the large one?" anyway we went back and spent 3 difficult nights full of worries and nightmares.

The party is now one of 156 registered for the elections. Yes, we can worry about the dangers of Sunni estrangement, the small signs of civil war, the unsecular aspirations of the Shia party slate, and so on. But then you read a story like Ali's, and you tell yourself to buck up. We saw in Afghanistan and Ukraine what an actual election process can do to awaken a democratic spirit, to convince people they truly can control their own destiny. Why should we discount the same from occurring in Iraq?

Sure, the odds for success are still long. There will never be an excuse for the Bush administration's undermanning of the occupation, or its reckless disbandment of the Iraqi army, or its being blindsided by a highly predictable insurgency. Many Sunni political parties may still boycott the election. And violence may spike as the election nears. But we are seeing signs that Bush's error-strewn perseverance is starting to pay off. The election itself will perhaps tell us more, providing the crucible in which a new Iraq can either be born or die a long and painful death. We can and should hope. The polls, after all, show that a vast majority of Iraqis intend to vote. Why discount the chances of an Afghanistan-like experience in which the silent majority finally finds a way to tell the theocrats, terrorists, and propagandists whose country Iraq truly is? Why bet against democracy? Sixty-five percent of Iraqis surveyed tell us they are optimistic about their future. Maybe it's time we joined their ranks.

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I don't think we can establish a legitimate government without holding the elections. I agree with you on authority, but for what it's worth, the Iraqi president was on MTP this week and said that the Iraqis security forces will be fully up and running within months, not years. Seems like a stretch from the reports I've read, but maybe he's right.

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Not even the commanders on the ground really expect things to improve after the elections.

• The war has become a classic test of wills. An example is the insurgents' campaign to close the capital's most important strategic artery, the road from the airport to central Baghdad and the Green Zone. When the insurgents added roving car bombs to their mix of ambushes and roadside explosives, the United States decided last week to ban official travel along the road. It was an insurgent victory, but probably a momentary one. The Americans have already decided on their response: They will take two lanes of the four-lane highway and create a dedicated road that will be open only to official traffic. Iraqis, car bombers and ordinary citizens alike, will be forced to use the other two lanes, safely across the median.
  
  Next come the Iraqi elections, scheduled for Jan. 30. U.S. officials know the process will be messy and violent, especially in areas where the Sunni Muslim insurgency is strong, but they say people who want to vote will be able to do so. Asked what life will be like the day after the election, several commanders say it probably won't be very different from the day before. The insurgency will continue, the Americans will remain, the battle will go on.
  
  Abizaid and his generals hope that there is a tipping point ahead -- a moment when Iraqis conclude that the Americans really do mean to stay the course. "They're sitting on the fence, waiting to see who's going to win this thing," says Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, who commands day-to-day military operations in Iraq. "They have to see that we're going to take this thing to the conclusion." Once people are confident the Americans have the upper hand, Metz predicts, there will be a "stampede" to support the new Iraqi government.

link

Abizaid may ultimately be right that if we convince the Iraqi populace that we will ultimately win, and we're not going anywhere, that people will rush to our side. But that's a big "if," and we're not close yet.

And if the Administration's plan is "hunt down and kill everyone of the fuckers and convince Iraq that we're here for-eva," this makes Rumsfeld's comments even more puzzling, no?

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Krauthammer:

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Why is this a breakthrough?

(1) This "relative silence" excludes what happened in, e.g., Mosul, where things have gotten worse recently, not better. And then there's the airport road, which I have to keep mentioning because none of you are willing to even acknowledge that so many months after we invaded, we are unable to secure the single most important road in the country.

(2) The Kurds want a degree of autonomy that the Shi'ites are unwilling to agree to. So it's not clear that their interests are served by an election in which Shi'ites do very well because of Sunni non-participation.

(3) 80% of the country may want the transition to succeed, but that may not be enough.

So much for democracy, eh?

This is well and truly grasping at straws. if Zarqawi is frustrated, that's wonderful, but we have a penchant for demonizing specific adversaries (Noriega, Hussein, bin Laden, etc.) rather than grappling with the sources of their power. Zarqawi is not a Sunni.

This notion that there are "greater numbers of trained Iraqi soldiers and police" is wonderful, but I have yet to hear any accounts of these Iraqis standing up in combat with the insurgents. Maybe there was one Kurdish battalion, but that's about it.

It's morning in Iraq!

So many conservatives keep coming back to resolve and optimism, as if any problem can be solved if you simply determine to think happy thoughts. Would that it were so. I don't see anything in Sullivan's account that explains why Sunnis are going to buy into elections which place them under Shi'ite government. Many of them seem to have decided that violence is more likely to protect their interests. This vote is going to change their minds?

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Elections may be necessary, but they certainly are not sufficient. And if the underlying problem is that Sunnis do not want to live in an Iraq in which the majority Shi'ites exert control commensurate with their population, holding a vote is not going to convince Sunnis to change their minds.*

Meanwhile, we've been hearing sunny reports about the Iraqi security forces for months and months, and it's all been a load of crap. But it's important that I not say this too loudly, since the insurgents might find out.


* eta: Per Slave's post above, Krauthammer says: "If Iraq's Sunni Arabs - barely 20% of the population - decide that they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, which ended with 30 years of Saddam Hussein's atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and to participate in the new Iraq." Um, wrong. The Sunnis are forfeiting their chance to shape the new Iraq -- they're doing their shaping with AK-47s and RPGs instead of ballots.

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Is this experience what gives the Red States their insight into the insurgency?

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No, it's the experience of having fought and won an insurgency (albeit, a peaceful one) over the last 60 years.

It is
 

Oh, here is the trouble with all of you.
http://www.jefflindsay.com/sclaw.shtml

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What the fuck are you talking about?

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He's likening Zarqawi to Newt Gingrich.

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I was thinking Goldwater, but you get the gist.

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Oh. In that case, excellent point, club!

eta: So the troops come home in 2063?

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Not really. Goldwater was still in the Air Force in 1944.