The Tide is Turning

The surge is working! Vive le guerre! It may’ve taken four and a half years, half a trillion dollars, forty two hundred coalition soldiers, and up to twelve hundred thousand Iraqis, but at last, the tide of this glorious war to disarm Mr. Hussein of his weapons of mass terror, topple a benefactor of Osama Bin Laden (and liberate those Iraqis) is turning! Hallelujah, George W. was right; the neo-cons are vindicated!

Some of the reactions to the really quite dramatic downturn in the levels of violence going on in Iraq lead one to wonder at how much partisanship and ideology color people’s views of things, from all sides of the political spectrum, right, left, liberal, neo-conservative, paleo-conservative, secular progressive, log cabin republican, etc. etc. Some on the left, or maybe just those that oppose the war, whether or not they’re politically leftist or not, have been trying to deny in some ways that there has been a turn for the better. On the other side, those that favor the war have latched on to it with a ferocious mendacity, trumpeting it as their own personal vindication, that all was true and good.

It’s undeniable, the truly, insanely massive levels of violence that followed the bombing in February Oh-Six of the Al-Askari mosque haven’t tapered off, they’ve plummeted precipitously. That’s cause for joy, I don’t care if it makes the wackos, George W. among them, feel vindicated, that that full scale ethnic war that had been going for over a year has cooled down, and that fewer people are dying, is fantastic news.

The most complete statistics for any group in the war, foreign soldiers, show something very remarkable, even though Oh-Seven still turned out to be the best year for manufacturers of American body bags. From January through March, the monthly toll was consistently in the mid eighties, April through June saw the numbers jump up into the triple digits, the toll for both July and August was back down to the high eighties, it went down even more in September to 69, October and November both had a monthly toll of 40, which was almost cut in half to 24 in December. After August, the numbers really started to drop off, after staying consistently high throughout the year.

From August to October, the numbers were more than halved. That type of change seems like it might require an explanation other than the gradual improvements in security that could be expected from an influx of twenty or so thousand extra soldiers. If there was something else, what might it be, what could create such a massive down shift?

After a bloody fight with a rival Shia militia left fifty people dead, Moqtada Al-Sadr, the leader of the 60,000 strong Mahdi Army, declared a six month ceasefire at the very end of August; they would lay down their weapons and agree to not challenge either the occupation soldiers, or other militias.

Sixty thousand armed, relatively organized men would pose a formidable obstacle to even the most advanced of armies. The removal of that part of the equation definitely would have some effect, and the timing of it coincides with the precipice on the graphs. By no means can I say that that’s absolutely what happened, or was the only factor, as it almost absolutely wasn’t, but the timing of it seems to agree pretty well with the conclusion that it had a great deal to do with it. If that turns out to be the case, then the improvements have less to do with any changes in the Americans’ strategy, and more to do with domestic decisions made among the Iraqis, independent of foreign influences.

There have been restive periods in the war before, so there’s no real reason to expect the current lull to last, though the respite is a more than welcome one. George W. has made it clear that the war will keep on keeping on as long as he’s president, so the only thing I can hope for is that the killing doesn’t pick up its pace again, and that he takes advantage of the very relative quiet to shore up national reconciliation, and some type of a political solution. Knowing him, my pessimism wins out.

There have been so many turned corners before, optimism seems to be misplaced. That’s why so many on the anti war left are so quick to point out the caveats. The people who started this war have been so incredibly dishonest, from since before their nightmarish vision was actualized, through the past, at this point, nearly five full years, it’s to be expected for people to assume that even now, they’re cooking the books and misrepresenting reality.

To me, and it will look differently to people on the sides of all the other fences, it looks like the strategy of “The Surge” isn’t having as much of a positive impact as the political changes that are being brought about from within Iraq. The “successful” ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods also seems like it probably shares some of the responsibility. The less Sunnis are around Shias, the fewer the chances for religiously motivated acts of murder.

If peace, or even relative security, is all it will take for the belligerent to feel justified, that doesn’t seem like it’s as far away as it was a year ago. But for those who think that a price of five hundred billion dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and a confirmation of our enemies’ darkest beliefs about us is to steep a price for a war that never should’ve been, that outcome seems bittersweet.