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Iraq Progress Retort. A knowledgeable correspondent writes:
This week started off strong for the administration, with both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker presenting the best case for modest security (and minor political) gains in Iraq, leading up to Thursday’s Presidential address and the release on Friday of the official White House “progress” report on the surge giving Iraq passing marks on 9 of 18 Congressionally-mandated benchmarks. However, a closer look at some of the claims advanced by Petraeus, Crocker, and the administration generates serious doubts, and a spate of bad news this week on the ground in Iraq suggests—surprise, surprise—that we are a long way from genuine progress.
Body count. Several discussions of Iraqi civilian casualties suggest that security gains are far less dramatic than the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker indicated (see here and here). And those familiar with the method of collection used by the U.S. military suggest that they are probably underestimating total deaths. We also have to keep all these recent numbers in perspective. When compared with levels of violence since the beginning of the war, the present situation still looks quite bleak. Check out the tables presented in this Economist piece. Last, but not least, amazing street-level analysis of Baghdad neighborhoods by the NYT provides reason to be skeptical of administration claims of dramatic security gains.
Anbar anomalies. Much has been made of the Anbar awakening by proponents of the surge, but the revolt of Sunni sheiks against al Qaeda in Iraq pre-dated the surge, is by and large not a byproduct of the surge, and has done little to advance Sunni-Shia reconciliation. It will be difficult to import the model successfully to less homogenous areas of Iraq, and the experiment could easily backfire by exacerbating Shia fears (thereby derailing national compromise) or empowering groups that escalate the civil war (see also here). As if this wasn’t challenging enough, there are now signs that Sunni tribal groups may be turning on each other. Exhibit A: the murder this week of Abu Risha, the head of the Anbar Salvation Council and the man Bush shook hands with in Anbar the week before the Petraeus testimony, which may have been carried out by tribal competitors. There is no firm evidence for tribal involvement yet—and Abu Risha’s rivals publicly lamented his death and alternated between blaming the Iraq government and calling for revenge against al Qaeda in Iraq, which has claimed credit for the attack—but if it turns out to have been an inside job, the tribal alliance could implode.JAM on it. Surprisingly little was said about Moqtada al-Sadr during this week’s hearings and the presidential address, even though Sadr sits atop the most powerful political movement and largest Shia militia in Iraq. News that U.S. forces have been negotiating with elements of the Sadrist movement behind the scenes is a welcome sign. But like outreach to Sunni tribes, the full implications of these negotiations are as of yet unknown. Indeed, this smells like an effort by Sadr to get us to help him purge forces he can’t control. This is a good way to eliminate “extremists,” but we should not assume that Sadr and what is left of the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) will be “cooperative” once this process is complete. After all, these guys are not pro-American nor fans of continuing occupation.
Oil spill. As Iraq rapidly devolves into a highly decentralized state, there is no hope for stability without a deal on oil that makes Sunni areas economically viable. This makes oil legislation among the most important benchmarks. Yet in another sign that national reconciliation is going nowhere, the oil law drafted in February is unraveling over the fundamental clash between those parties that want regional control over oil resources (the Kurds, the Shia south) and those who don’t (Sunnis).
So, where are we? Not the happy place the administration claims. We’ve seen very limited and incredibly fragile progress in the security arena, and we have an administration going full steam ahead with a strategy that banks everything on gaining and maintaining cooperation from a series of actors that hate us and hate each other. Given the stakes, I hope they pull it off, but if Iraq has taught us anything, hope is not a plan and hope is usually dashed. And the longer we stay in Iraq, the higher the costs in blood and treasure, the greater the strains on the military, and the more difficult it becomes to address contingencies elsewhere. This may explain why so many other senior military officers favor a faster draw down than either the President or General Petraeus, and why relations between Petraeus and his superiors are not as rosy as his testimony suggested (see here and here).