Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This article is pretty good is describing the basic situation. In my book, bottom-up reconciliation is a pipe dream, and the article shows that the surge has been a failure. Spanky can now tell me that the Financial Times is every bit as much a biased lefty tool as the GAO.
- ANALYSIS: Iraq surge brings a lull in violence but no reconciliation
By Steve Negus, Iraq correspondent, Financial Times
Published: Jan 07, 2008
Already, the "surge" of US troops into Baghdad is beginning to recede, leaving behind a country where, by most accounts, levels of political violence are much reduced.
But the surge has not accomplished the goal that the administration of US President George W. Bush set when it announced the policy at the beginning of last year - to buy time for Iraqi politicians to reach compromises on the country's future that would reconcile its feuding ethnic and sectarian factions.
US officers say that such a grand compromise may not be so important. They have achieved "bottom-up" reconciliation by cementing local alliances and arranging for the amnesty of prisoners, the pensioning off of former regime officials and other measures to win Sunni acceptance for the Shia-led government.
Over the next year, as neighbourhoods, towns and districts lose the US garrisons that helped suppress sectarian militias and insurgent groups and maintain the balance of power, the ability of these improvised measures to withstand the centrifugal forces of Iraqi sectarian politics will be put to the test.
US forces numbered approximately 160,000 at the end of December, down from a high of over 170,000 in October. Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said last month that the military should be able to withdraw five brigades, or around 20,000 soldiers, by mid-2008, and hoped to take out another five by the end of this year.
British troops will also be winding down their deployment in Iraq, with numbers expected to fall from 5,000 to 2,500 in the middle of next year.
In terms of reducing violence, the strategy orchestrated by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, appears to have succeeded beyond its planners' expectations. Both US military casualties and Iraqi civilian casualties have fallen dramatically since the summer.
But many Iraqi politicians and Iraq analysts fear that unless the government can reach agreement with its political opponents, the lull in violence may not last. "If this improvement in security is not matched by improvements in political life, economy, unemployment and the services for the standard of living, [or] if there is no reconciliation, nobody can guarantee that this security would not deteriorate again," says Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish politician.
"What Petraeus has accomplished is a lull that is sustainable through the American elections [in November 2008]," says Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. "It's not indefinitely sustainable without political accommodation at the top . . . This is conventional wisdom and it makes sense."
Gen Petraeus himself said last month that, although the violence that had brought Iraq to the "brink of civil war" had receded, the progress had been "tenuous in many areas and could be reversed".
According to American officers, the surge worked by allowing the US and Iraqi governments to blanket strategic districts, in some cases placing troops in positions where they could overlook virtually every main road junction.
This allowed US forces to intercept guerrillas moving in and out - and, more importantly, to break the hold that insurgents had gained on neighbourhoods via intimidation. Fatalities suffered by the US-led coalition fell to 40 a month in October and November, and 23 in December, from well over 100 a month in each of April, May and June. Figures for civilian dead also suggest a drop of more than 50 per cent since the summer.
In addition, both Sunni and Shia armed groups appear to have suffered a significant loss of legitimacy among their support bases. Members of both sects say that the gunmen alienated the civilian population by imposing a puritan version of Islamic law or by killing locals suspected of being informants.
Iraq's al-Qaeda network, in particular, sparked a massive backlash. Over 70,000 paramilitaries, or "concerned local citizens", enlisted in neighbourhood patrols targeted mainly at the radical Sunni movement.
Shia militants also appear to have lost legitimacy. Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, continues to enforce a ban on all armed activity in areas controlled by his movement, and his deputies say that that they have formed a special "Golden Unit" to purge members suspected of criminal violence or sectarian killing.
However, the retreat of the armed movements does not appear to have been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the authority and legitimacy of the Iraqi state. Gen Petraeus has said that as al-Qaeda activity lessens in Sunni areas, "mafia-like" criminal organisations practising kidnapping and extortion expand to fill the gap. Meanwhile, the British military's recent withdrawal from Basra city stems from the realisation that it could do little to stop feuding among Islamist militia groups.
Some analysts have suggested Basra is a glimpse into Iraq's medium-term future. The violence there, which probably results in several dozen dead a month, is hardly a serious threat to the Iraqi state. But the climate of lawlessness ensures that investors steer clear of an oil-rich port city that could be Iraq's economic and commercial capital - and that the middle class, which fled en masse to neighbouring countries, does not return.
Meanwhile, Iraqi politicians have failed to deliver the hoped-for "national reconciliation" package of legislation. Parliament adjourned at the end of the year without having approved important legislation on the distribution of oil revenues and the fate of members of the former ruling Ba'ath party. Given the heated rhetoric that continues to fly between Kurds and Arabs, Sunni and Shia, it appears that the much-vaunted "consensus" may not in fact exist.
It could be the US troop presence, rather than low-profile trust-building measures, that is the crucial factor in keeping the feuding factions apart. "The Americans can [prevent local conflicts] now because they have leverage through the military," says Mr Hiltermann.
The US surge does appear to have interrupted the cycle of violence that a year ago seemed to be pushing Iraq inexorably into all-out sectarian war. But it has not bought Iraqis enough time to resolve their differences and it is unclear whether local ceasefires can last without US troops to help resolve disagreements and prevent groups from settling their disputes by force.
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Yes the GAO report was biased, but this one seems pretty erudite. However, it seems weird to me that you think this article supports your position that the surge has completely failed. As Sebby has pointed out you have completely put yourself in a corner because you predicted that the surge would not work at all, and now you have said it has completely failed. Anyone with an IQ above ten can see that both of those assertions are obviously and blatantly wrong, but some weird aspect of your ego just won't admit that.
You have defined failure as anything but a passage of all the laws which the Bush administration wanted the Iraqi parliament to pass. Following this definition you are right. The surge is a failure. But no one with a straight face could make the argument that this should be the criteria used to define whether the surge has succeeded or failed. You make that argument because you are simply incapable of admitting you were wrong when you said that nothing positive could come from the surge and that there is absolutely no reason at all to support McCain’s idea of staying in Iraq to take advantage of the opportunities the surge has presented over Obama's immediate withdrawal position.
According to your article up above, the surge has greatly reduced violence, more than the GAO report admits - fifty percent - in fact it states:
"In terms of reducing violence, the strategy orchestrated by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, appears to have succeeded beyond its planners' expectations. Both US military casualties and Iraqi civilian casualties have fallen dramatically since the summer."
It has allowed a great deal of political reconciliation at the local level, and brought a little legislative movement from the Iraqi Parliament. Again to quote from your article:
"In addition, both Sunni and Shia armed groups appear to have suffered a significant loss of legitimacy among their support bases. Members of both sects say that the gunmen alienated the civilian population by imposing a puritan version of Islamic law or by killing locals suspected of being informants.
Iraq's al-Qaeda network, in particular, sparked a massive backlash. Over 70,000 paramilitaries, or "concerned local citizens", enlisted in neighbourhood patrols targeted mainly at the radical Sunni movement.
Shia militants also appear to have lost legitimacy. Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, continues to enforce a ban on all armed activity in areas controlled by his movement, and his deputies say that that they have formed a special "Golden Unit" to purge members suspected of criminal violence or sectarian killing."
Yet even with the above successes delineated in the article you posted you insist on describing the surge as a total failure. This position would come as a surprise to all the peoples whose lives have been spared by the surge, or who have been able to move back to their homes, or have been able to get their businesses thriving again because of the surge.
Your position is that the surge is a failure because the government has not passed and will never pass those bills. Your position actually depends on the ridiculous idea that the Iraq parliament has completely disappeared off the map never to return. However, that is a "Tinker Bell" view of reality. The Iraqi parliament still exists and it still has a chance to pass the bills that would lead to reconciliation.
But you assert until all those bills are passed the surge is a failure, and like before you have predicted that those bills will never pass. There is no chance of that ever happening. Again, another stupid absolutist statement about the future. You have no idea whether the parliament will or will not pass such laws. You don't think they will, but to say you are sure there is no chance it will happen just shows how irrational you are. No one can make that kind of prediction with the utmost certainty, let alone a lawyer in Washington D.C. who does not speak Arabic, has never been to Iraq and gets all his information from second hand to third hand sources.
According to the article above the surge has produced many positive results. It also has succeeded in creating a more secure environment which was thought was needed for those bills to pass, and contrary to your belief that you can absolutely know what will happen in the future, there is still a chance that the parliament will pass all the bills laid out in the bench marks especially since the peaceful environment thought to be necessary for the passage of such bills still exists. In fact, the environment seems to be getting better all the time thereby increasing the chance that the legislation will get passed.
But to you the surge is a total failure because all those bills have not been passed, and you want to pull out now because you are sure they never will be passed. And you have to take this absurd position, because to admit to anything else, would be to admit that staying in Iraqi longer is the right call because any idiot would have to recognize that utter stupidity of not taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the successes of the surge delineated in the article you posted. All I can say is thank God you will never have any sort of influence over US foreign policy.
