It seems to me the Iraq war is won, as long as we don’t lose on purpose. Max Boot says we haven’t won. Maybe he’s saying the same thing, but he has the details.
Boot has some especially interesting observations since his return from an 11-day visit. First, sobering news from northern Iraq, the new Sunni Arab battleground:
The growing security in Baghdad allowed U.S. commanders to move a second battalion up to Mosul to address the threat. Now U.S. forces are pushing into west Mosul, a predominantly Sunni Arab area that has become an al Qaeda stronghold. (Eastern Mosul, with a heavily Kurdish population, is more peaceful.)
As we drove the streets of west Mosul in a Humvee, I saw IED-scarred roads flooded from broken water mains--something I had last seen in Ramadi in April 2007. In many areas, shops were closed and no people were visible on the streets.
While getting a briefing on the security station at Combat Outpost Eagle, a fortified building located in the heart of west Mosul and jointly manned by Iraqi and American troops, we heard an explosion in the distance. It was an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter firing a Hellfire missile at a truck that was stuffed with munitions. Five of the seven men inside the vehicle were killed in the initial strike, but two managed to get out and take refuge in a neighboring building. U.S. troops arrived on the scene, and missiles and tank shells poured into the building. One of the terrorists was shot while trying to sneak out, while the other one blew himself up with a suicide vest. ...
My bleak impressions of northern Iraq were reinforced the next day while visiting Bayji, site of an important oil refinery in Salahaddin province. There are too few American and Iraqi troops stationed here to control a city with a population of 140,000, and it shows.
12 battalions withdrawing. Boot says this about what it will take to keep the enemy from turning the tide:
[A] number of officers scattered across the country independently used the phrase "perfect storm" to describe what might happen this summer with a reduction in the CLC ranks.
This worst-case scenario centers around the planned reduction of U.S. forces from 170,000 (20 brigade combat teams) to the pre-surge level of 140,000 (15 brigade combat teams). In Baghdad this could mean a cut from 32 battalions to 20. Can the security situation continue to improve with one-fourth of the coalition force withdrawn? We will soon find out, since the drawdown will be finished by mid-July. ...
After almost two years in power, Maliki is getting poor reviews. Iraqi and American officials alike complain about his reliance on a small coterie of hardline Shiite aides with close ties to Iran. He is building up the prime minister's office into its own power center while shunning the ministries that are supposed to be in charge of governance (and that are mainly in the hands of other parties). For instance, he has created a parallel defense ministry known as the Office of the Commander in Chief that answers to him personally, and he has put Shiite sectarians in charge of the Implementation and Follow-up Committee for National Reconciliation, which vets new recruits to the security forces. ...
There is also the danger that if Maliki were toppled the Iraqi parliament would be paralyzed for months, as happened in the first half of 2006 when the previous prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was ousted. That period saw a staggering increase in violence--an experience that no one wants to repeat. For now both the Americans and the other Iraqi political parties are resigned to working with Maliki. ...
One cause for cheer is how adept American forces have become at counterinsurgency operations and how deeply they have come to understand Iraqi society. Their level of effectiveness is light years ahead of where it was when I first visited Iraq in August 2003. The senior American commanders--General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Ray Odierno (who is about to be reassigned)--are outstanding. Petraeus, in particular, should be remembered as the Matthew Ridgway of this war, rescuing a failing war effort just as Ridgway rescued the United States in the Korean War. But similar skill and even greater bravery is displayed every day by tens of thousands of lower-ranking officers and enlisted personnel who have embraced their largely "non-kinetic" counterinsurgency mission. Sergeant Adam Farmer, an 82nd Airborne soldier stationed in the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad for the past year, spoke for many grunts when he said of his soldiers, "Deep down they believe in the mission of extracting the s--heads from this area."
Bush, the hero man. Boot quotes Iraqi Colonel Abbas Fadhil, commander of the Besmaya Range Complex, an Iraqi army training center, who said:
"All soldiers say Mr. President George Bush is the hero man in the world," Abbas told us in fractured English. "He's fighting on behalf of all the world, not just Iraq. Mr. President Bush is fighting on behalf of humanity. . . . America was the only country in the world that decided to help the people of Iraq. Under Saddam we had a very black future. We had no refrigerators, no electricity. We lived like the cow. . . . Now we have a future."
Boot concludes:
By helping leaders like Abbas, the United States has a real chance to secure a historic victory in Iraq--one that would deal a heavy blow to Sunni and Shiite extremists alike. But only if we don't pull out too many forces too soon, whether motivated by the illusion that we have already won or the delusion that we can never win. The reality is that we are winning but that the war is far from over. We need to make a long-term commitment to prevent Iraq from sliding back into the kind of civil war that began to erupt in 2006.
And Boot has many more valuable insights. Check them out.
Frank Warner
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