Iraq Continues to Improve - But Why?

The success of the surge cannot be denied - only spun now. With security improving and with U.S. deaths now decreasing to their lowest monthly total since the war began, President Bush has announced that he is reducing the length of combat tours for soldiers deploying to Iraq from 15 months to 12 months. He also indicated that, as security conditions improves, he will begin drawing down more units. All of the additional combat brigades sent over as part of the surge have now redeployed from Iraq, leaving 140,000 soldiers in country, 10,000 more than prior to the surge. These additional forces are logistics.

July was the lowest month for casualties - 5 combat deaths and 8 non-combat deaths - recorded in Iraq since the start of the war. This tracks with ever reducing violence throughout Iraq that has fallen to levels not seen since 2004. To their credit, both the Washington Post and the NYT run their stories on this on page 1. Unfortunately, WaPo also takes the line that the security improvements are due in part to events unrelated to the surge - i.e., the good will of Sadr and the Awakening movements. To call that partisan and demonstrably false is an understatement.
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This from the Washington Post:

Five American troops died in July as a result of combat in Iraq, by far the lowest monthly U.S. death toll of the five-year war.

The number of Iraq-related American troop fatalities in July -- a total of 13 when noncombat deaths and the discovered bodies of two missing soldiers are included -- is a dramatic drop from just over a year ago, when more than 100 troops a month were confirmed dead for several months in a row.

In a brief statement at the White House early Thursday, President Bush suggested that the decreasing violence in Iraq would allow him to withdraw additional U.S. troops before he leaves office. He said that the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would make recommendations in September for "future reductions in our combat forces, as conditions permit."

"The progress is still reversible," Bush said he was told by top U.S. officials in Iraq. "But they report that there now appears to be a degree of durability to the gains we have made."

Bush struck a delicate rhetorical balance between asserting his view that sending additional troops to Iraq has been a success, while at the same time cautioning that withdrawing troops too rapidly could jeopardize security improvements.

. . . Starting Friday, Bush said, troop deployments in Iraq will shorten from 15 months to 12. The policy, first announced in April, applies to troops heading to Iraq but not those already stationed there.

The decline in American deaths highlights improvements in security that are widely attributed to three factors: a cease-fire by the country's largest Shiite militia, the decision of former Sunni insurgents to join with U.S. troops and the buildup of American forces. [emphasis added]

"It just feels so much safer than I ever thought it would," said Sgt. Daniel Ochoa, 26, of Highland Park, Calif., who is based in southern Baghdad. "We don't really go out anymore looking to go and fight the enemy. Things are stabilized, so now we're working more on helping the economy and getting people on their feet."

Despite the increased sense of security, deep-rooted tensions remain that continue to provoke violence. This week, more than 50 people were killed in a series of attacks related to a power struggle over control of the oil-rich and ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

The situation grew more tense on Thursday when the Kurdish majority on the council of Tamim province, which includes Kirkuk, voted to join the neighboring Kurdish regional government.

The move is largely symbolic, because the Iraqi parliament would have to approve it, but it provoked denunciations by representatives of rival ethnic communities, who said they would fight to prevent the Kurds from taking over the city.

"The fires of Kirkuk will eat all Iraq's cities and even the Americans," said Hussein Ali al-Jubouri, the head of the largest Sunni Arab political bloc in Kirkuk.

. . . At military bases across Iraq, American soldiers have been paying close attention to the security situation and what it might mean for the timing of their return home.

"My soldiers ask me that every day: I heard a rumor they're reducing our deployment! Is it true?" said 1st Lt. Matthew Linton, 24, of Florida, N.Y., a platoon leader based in the once volatile Sadr City district of Baghdad. "Everybody wants to come home early."

Linton's troops spent Thursday distributing $2,500 grants to merchants in Sadr City's Jamila Market and chatting with the owner of a candy store.

"When we used to walk the streets in April, they were empty and we would be destroying buildings used by enemy positions," he said. "Now we walk the same streets that were covered in sewage and rubble and utter destruction, and they are vibrant and full of people.

"As the situation improves, it feels more like the race is almost finished," Linton said, "compared to you're in the middle of the race and you have a long way to go."

Read the entire article. As to the WaPo author's gratuitous attribution of the success in Iraq to events other than the surge, I would suggest reading Michael O'Hanlon's articulate assessment. That is the WaPo author inserting a pro-Obama political opinion into what is supposed to be a news article. I do hope Petraeus or some of our soldiers who have fought in Iraq so valiantly weigh in on this before the left can repeat their new myth so often it becomes accepted as reality. It is a tremendous disservice to our soldiers.

As to Kirkuk, I've written many times before that Kurdish seperatism and adventurism could well be the flashpoint for a true civil war in Iraq. The U.S. weighed in on this issue by supporting Turkey's incursions into the Kurdish north. That seemed to cow the Kurds somewhat, though clearly the underlying issues are divisive and still extant.

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Michael O'Hanlon - Assessing Success In Iraq

At the American Prospect, the editors ask "how important was the surge?" This after Obama who, in order to suggest that his judgement in opposing the surge was not as grossly poor as in reality it was, has shown the even worse judgment in denigrating the importance of the surge, crediting the lions share of the success to the Anbar Awakening and Sadr's cease fire, as if both were unrelated to the surge. I've answered this question several times, but Michael O'Hanlon has the most articulate and accurate answer to date.

What was the most important factor in the dramatic turnaround in Iraq over the past year or so (a period during which violence rates have declined by at least 75 percent and about half of key legislative goals have been partially or fully satisfied, even if much remains to be done?) There is room for some debate in this matter, to be sure, but only so much. It seems incontrovertible to me that several major factors, including certainly the surge, were hugely important--and also synergistically important, in that the sum of effects was much greater than the sum of the parts.

Certainly the Sunni Anbar Awakening gets high marks. It was the first thing to happen in the last two years of major note. It brought much of the core of the insurgency into alliance with the United States and Iraqi government, and over time it spread to the Baghdad belts and increasingly to the north of Iraq.

However, it was the United States that organized the Awakening tribes into a coherent military and policing effort.

It was the United States, with Iraqi Security Forces, that cleared cities like Ramadi -- and unlike in past efforts, kept forces there afterwards to preserve the stability and keep extremists like al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the places from which they had been driven. It was the United States that sufficiently intimidated Muqtada al-Sadr into realizing a ceasefire better served his interests than would a renewal of battle. It was American and Iraqi security forces that, in larger numbers than before and with new operational guidelines and tactics, built blast barriers near markets, put up concrete dividers along sectarian fault lines in Baghdad, created joint security stations and started walking the streets to protect the Iraqi population, and conducted raids on insurgent safehouses and weapons caches at two to three times the rate of previous years (largely due to improved intelligence made possible by a safer, friendler, better protected population). And through all these combined efforts, it was largely the United States that was able to figure out which Iraqi commanders needed to be purged -- and that then put pressure on the Iraqi government to replace them.

On balance, many things were important, but the surge and the associated emphasis on better protection for the Iraqi population were crucial -- and absolutely necessary to the huge progress that has been made.

Yeah. What he said.

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McCain, The Anbar Awakening, & Intellectual Honesty At MSNBC

McCain, in a statement yesterday, stated that the surge was responsible for the Anbar Awakening. Though the Anbar Awakening was solicited by the U.S. - and indeed, soliticing popular support is at the heart of counterinsurgency strategy - it actually got its start in September, 2006, three months before the formal adoption of the counterinsurgency strategy. In any event, the Anbar Awakening was fully supported by the surge and was, as part of the counterinsurgency, used as the model to spread throughout the rest of Iraq.

The left has been swarming on this one, claiming McCain does not know what he is talking about because the Awakening technically started before the surge. Joe Scarborough and former Democratic Senatorial candidate Harold Ford Jr. put this one in brutal perspective.



I may have to start watching Mr. Scarborough. (Video from Olbermann Watch)

Below

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Iraq Speech Part II: Obama Tosses Sunnis Under The Bus

Obama sipped tea in Anbar (because of the surge), listening to the Sunni leadership explain that they did not want to see the U.S. withdraw from Iraq in the foreseeable future. The Sunni Awakening Councils are at the top of al Qaeda's hit list and the Sunnis were, prior to 2007, suffering from constant militia attacks. They fear these will be repeated if the U.S. cuts and runs from Iraq. Obama essentially told them "too bad" - which is in keeping with his comments in 2007 that preventing genocide was not a sufficient justification to remain in Iraq.



You have to love Obama's facile non-sequiters. We can't stay in Iraq forever to protect the Sunnis so it is sufficient if we leave completely in 16 months. Mention of security conditions - the logical binder - is simply dropped from the equation.

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Judgment To Lead?

Stuttering Baracky - and he stutters a lot today - can't even exercise sound judgment with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Asked if he knew in 2007 what he knows now, would he still have been against the surge, he answers that yes, he would.



What kind of a BS answer is that?

After stuttering for 30 seconds, he says he was correct to vote against the surge because he disagreed with the Bush Administration. That is meaningless. He came out against the surge in 2007 because he claimed it would backfire, worsening security. There is no logic whatsoever to his answer, though he tries to leave the impression that his vote was based on some higher ethical principle. This guy is the penultimate con-man.

There is much, much more.

There is an additional interview on ABC and Nightline still to come, though not yet available. There is this report in advance of the showing of the Nightline interview from Marc Ambinder blogging at the Atlantic (H/T Gateway Pundit):

Sen. Barack Obama said it was "fair" to notice that he did not anticipate that the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq would be coincident with the so-called Sunni Awakening and the decisions of Shia militias to reduce their footprints, the combination of which led to measurable declines in violence.

In an interview with ABC's Terry Moran, Obama said that he "did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct."

This is a complete twisting and rewrite of history.

The Sunni Awakening Movement was well underway by September 2006 - four months before the surge was announced and Obama took his stand against it. And it was a movement that was begun by the U.S. forces soliciting a partnership. Here is a short history of the movement from the Washington Post:

In November 2005, American commanders held a breakthrough meeting with top Sunni chiefs in Ramadi, hoping to lure them away from the insurgents' fold. The sheiks responded positively, promising cooperation and men for a police force that was then virtually nonexistent.

But in January 2006 a suicide bomber attacked a police recruiting drive, killing 70 people. Insurgents killed at least four sheiks for cooperating with the Americans, and many others fled.

The killings left the effort in limbo, until a turning point; insurgents killed a prominent sheik last year and refused to let family members bury the body for four days, enraging Sunni tribesmen, said U.S. Lt. Col. Miciotto Johnson, who heads the 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment and visits al-Rishawi frequently in western Ramadi.

Al-Rishawi, whose father and three brothers were killed by al-Qaida assassins, said insurgents were "killing innocent people, anyone suspected of opposing them. They brought us nothing but destruction and we finally said, enough is enough."

Al-Rishawi founded the Anbar Salvation Council in September [2006] with dozens of Sunni tribes. Many of the new newly friendly leaders are believed to have at least tacitly supported the insurgency in the past, though al-Rishawi said he never did. . . .

Read the entire article. [emphasis added]

How could Obama claim that he did not anticipate something that was already well known and in full swing by the time the surge was announced in January, 2007? And he damn well knew about by July, 2007 when he was calling for a withdraw from Iraq, explicitly saying he did not care if doing so would lead to genocide.

As to Sadr, Obama's claim is ridiculous. Sadr's forces had twice been mauled by the U.S. and when the U.S. announced the surge, Sadr's forces were dead in the cross-hairs. That was WHY Sadr ordered a pull back - to preserve his Mahdi Army against U.S. forces. Does Obama lack the judgment to see the relationship between cause and effect?

And Obama fails to even acknowledge the role Iran has played. Looking at Obama objectively, one wonders if he believes reality is whatever he wants it be.

To continue:

Moran noted that Obama had claimed that the surge "would not make a significant dent in the violence."

Responded Obama: "In the violence in Iraq overall, right. So the point that I was making at the time was that the political dynamic was the driving force between that sectarian violence. And we could try to keep a lid on it, but if these underlining dynamic continued to bubble up and explode the way they were, then we would be in a difficult situation. I am glad that in fact those political dynamic shifted at the same time that our troops did outstanding work."

"But," asked Moran,"if the country had pursued your policy of withdrawing in the face of this horrific violence, what do you think Iraq would look like now?"

Obama said it would be hard to speculate. . . .

Let me help Mr. Obama. Speculation is guessing among equally possible conclusions. One speculates when there are insufficient facts to make a reasonable projection. But if the facts clearly preponderate in one direction, you are making reasonable estimates. So . . .

In 2007, Iran was deeply involved in dominating the Shia south and al Qaeda had a stranglehold on the Sunni population that the U.S. - supported by and supporting the Awakening movements - was just starting to unravel. Had we drawn back from that, Iraq today would be divided between al Qaeda, Iran and possibly Turkey. Further, al Qaeda, which is now suffering throughout the Middle East because of its complete failure in Iraq, would be in a far stronger position internationally and global Sunni terrorism would not be falling.

See, no speculation needed.

Obama also told Moran that there were circumstances under which he could revise his instruction to U.S. generals to begin withdrawing combat brigades at the pace of one-to-two per month.

"I've always reserved the right, uh, to say---let's say that ethnic, uh, ethnic fighting broke out once again---I've reserved the right to say---I don't--I'm not going to stand idly by if genocide is occurring. . . .

Is there anything that Obama will not lie about? Obama specifically justified surrendering in Iraq irrespective of whether it would lead to genocide. Let's take a trip down memory lane to July 20, 2007:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said it’s likely there would be increased bloodshed if U.S. forces left Iraq. . . .

Read the entire article. This is a man willing to say anything to get elected. He is as intellectually a dishonest person as I can ever recall taking the public stage - and that includes the last Democrat to hold the Presidency. Indeed, Obama puts slick Willie to shame.

Bottom line - Obama's judgment is not just suspect, but nearly nonexistent. He may have some small iota of judgement to lead, but it is utterly clear that it would be in a direction no one would want to follow.

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Assessing Ayman

Ayman al Zawahiri is al Qaedas’s second in command. He gave an interview to al Sahab in December, 2007, and, most recently, answered written questions in a kind of jihadi talk radio show. Both provide a wealth of information and insight into the mind of a man who is in equal measure a religious fanatic and psychopath.
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I've been going through Zawahiri's most recent communiques as time has allowed over the past week. They are worthwhile for spelling out the goals and intentions of al Qaeda, as well as for giving a window into the logic of a true Salafist:

1. Iraq remains al Qaeda’s central front:

As-Sahab: And what is the most important field in which this Mujahid vanguard is wrestling with the enemies of Islam?

Zawahiri: Iraq is the most important of these fields.

2. One of the points I have repeatedly made is that pulling out of Iraq would have dire long term consequences for our ability to conduct foreign policy and gather allies, particularly among nations threatened by radicals. Zawahiri thinks so too. He fully expects the U.S. to retreat from Iraq, repeatedly referring to Vietnam. He later explains that he forsees al Qaeda reasserting itself after America leaves Iraq and that the Anbar Awakening cannot keep al Qaeda out of Iraq without American support:

Zawahiri: And I also call on all Muslims to stop supporting the armed groups which have cooperated with the Americans against the Muslims and mujahideen. And I warn those individuals from among the armed factions who have been involved in cooperating with the occupation against the mujahideen that history is recording everything, and that they will lose both their religion and life, and that the Americans will soon be departing - Allah permitting - and won't keep defending them forever. And let them look at the fate of America's agents in Vietnam and the fate of the Shah of Iran, and intelligent is he who learns from other's mistakes.
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That is why those who conspire against the Jihad and Mujahideen in Lebanon with American weapons, Zionist collusion and Saudi money must know that they are digging their graves with their own hands, and that the Americans and Jews will not defend them, because they are looking for those who will defend them, and whoever doubts this should remember Vietnam and look at Iraq and Afghanistan."
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I expect the Jihadi influence to spread after the Americans’ exit from Iraq, and to move towards Jerusalem (with Allah’s permission). As for the militias mentioned, they have failed to eliminate the Jihad with the help of what is called the strongest power in the history of mankind, so will they succeed by themselves or with the help of Iran?

3. Zawahiri, whose al Qaeda organization that regularly slaughters women and children of whatever faith, has the same difficulty with veracity that our own politicians seem to have. When confronted with some very angry questions as to why al Qaeda was slaughtering Muslims in Algeria and in Iraqi marketplaces, Zawahiri claims that al Qaeda kills no "innocents" while, at the same time, accusing the U.S. of taking human shields.

1/1: The questioner Mudarris Jughrafiya [Geography Teacher] asks, "Excuse me, Mr. Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency’s blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria? Do you consider the killing of women and children to be Jihad? I challenge you and your organization to do that in Tel Aviv. Why have you – to this day – not carried out any strike in Israel? Or is it easier to kill Muslims in the markets? Maybe it is necessary [for you] to take some geography lessons, because your maps only show the Muslims’ states."

My reply to Mudarris Jughrafiya is that we haven’t killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else. And if there is any innocent who was killed in the Mujahideen’s operations, then it was either an unintentional error, or out of necessity as in cases of al-Tatarrus [taking of human shields by the enemy]. . . .

I would like to clarify to the brother questioner that we don’t kill innocents: in fact, we fight those who kill innocents. Those who kill innocents are the Americans, the Jews, the Russians and the French and their agents. Were we insane killers of innocents as the questioner claims, it would be possible for us to kill thousands of them in the crowded markets, but we are confronting the enemies of the Muslim Ummah . . .

The scale of untruth on this one is amazing, and it is obviously not lost on Muslims in the Middle East - a reason why al Qaeda's popularity is in a tail spin in the Middle East. As a side note, what appears to be going on here is actually pretty typical among Salafists like Zawahiri. They routinely engage in Koranic linguistic contortions to justify their actions. And in that vein, the word "innocent" has been so interpreted as to mean anything the Salafist’s want it to mean. A little later on, Zawahiri adds:

"It is not hidden from you that the enemy intentionally takes up positions in the midst of the Muslims, for them to be human shields for him. And here I emphasize to my brothers the Mujahideen to beware of expanding the issue of al-Tatarrus, and to make sure that their operations targeting the enemies are regulated by the regulations of the Shari’ah and as far as possible from the Muslims.

Evidently, U.S. soldiers handing out candy and the like to Iraqi children classifies the children as human shields during the seconds in which that occurs. Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah regularly make use of human shields. Zawahiri does not not address that practice, but I assume that it is justified both on some passage in the Koran that likewise has been interpreted beyond the bounds of any reasonable logic.

4. One of the Muslim traditions has been that if you are allowed to live in a foreign land, there is a covenant of security and that no Muslim should carry out attacks in the country in which they are guests. This was the deal with the devil that kept Britian, home to the world's most radical Islamists, free of major terrorism through 7/7. Whatever the tradition may have been, Zawahiri no longer honors it:

I don’t believe that the entry visa of the infidels is a security contract, . . .

Later, Zawahiri goes beyond that, noting that such a visa is no excuse for refraining from "obligatory jihad against them."

5. Zawahiri is wholly opposed to democratic rule, seeing a theocracy as the only legitimate form of government. He is sharply critical of Hamas for taking part in the democracy in Gaza as well for the Muslim Brotherhood for their choice of attempting to gain power through existing political systems:

[T]he methodologies of the jihad movements must be founded on the rule of the Sharia, not on the rule of the majority. . . .

First: HAMAS abandoned the right of the Shari’ah to rule because it – contrary to the slogan "the Quran is our constitution" – agreed to enter the elections, then come to power on the basis of the secular basic law which does not rule according to the Shari’ah. This is one of the disasters of the Muslim Brothers. . . .

6. Zawahiri’s views of Moqtada al Sadr:

Muqtada al-Sadr is one of Iran's lieutenants in Iraq. . . . And the skirmishes which take place between him and the Americans are American-Iranian disputes over expansion of influence.

7. Jihad is an individual obligation so long as any piece of land once ruled by Islamists during the course of history is occupied and/or ruled by non-Muslims. And it should be noted that this includes much of Spain. Zawahiri takes the UN to task and deems it a legitimate target because it considers Andalusia – conquered in 718 by Muslim invaders, reconquered by Christians in 1248 – a part of Spain.

. . . [J]ihad in Iraq and the rest of the Islamic lands is obligatory against the invaders and Crusaders and their agents so everyone who is hostile to Islam and Muslims and allies himself with the Crusader invaders against the Muslims whether Iraqi or non-Iraqi must be confronted and jihad waged against him. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), (who) fought his polytheistic people, was hostile to them and invoked Allah against them as did the Companions (with whom Allah is pleased) and when the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) chose to ransom the prisoners of Badr, Allah sent down on him a verse of the Koran, in which he reproached him (peace and prayers of Allah be upon him), 'It is not for a Prophet to have captives until he inflicts great slaughter (or is empowered) in the land. You (O Muslims) desire the goods of this world while Allah desires for you the hereafter. And Allah is Mighty and Wise' (8:67) (Qu’ran verses; Al-Anfal 8:67).

. . . The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims’ lands. It is the one which considers . . . Ceuta and Melilla inseparable parts of Crusader Spain.

8. And lastly, Zawahiri clearly spells out al Qaeda's intentions for jihad, quoting Osama bin Laden:

"I also reassure our people in Palestine in particular that we will expand our Jihad – Allah permitting – and will neither recognize the borders of Sykes-Picot nor the rulers whom colonialism put in place. We – by Allah – haven’t forgotten you after the events of the 11th, for can the man forget his family? But following those blessed raids which struck the head and heart of global unbelief and the biggest ally of the Zionist entity, America, we are today occupied with attacking and fighting it and its agents, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Islamic Maghreb and Somalia. And if it and its agents are defeated in Iraq – Allah permitting – then it won’t be long before the armies of the Mujahideen set out, brigades followed by brigades, from Baghdad, al-Anbar, Mosul, Diyala and Salahuddin to bring back to us Hittin, Allah permitting.

"And we won’t recognize any state for the Jews, even if on one hand span of the land of Palestine, the way all the Arab rulers did when they adopted the governor of Riyadh’s initiative a few years ago. And it wasn’t enough for them to commit that major catastrophe until the people recently saw the shepherdess of surrender herd them in flocks to Annapolis, doing with them what the Americans did with their forefathers before, but not for them to be sold: no, for them to sell, and sell what? Sell Jerusalem, al-Aqsa Mosque and the blood of the martyrs, and there is neither power nor strength except with Allah. May Allah do to them as they deserve. . . .

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