Iraq's Double Edged Surge

With the debate heating up between Democrats and President Bush on Iraq war funding, I thought now might be a good time to take a fresh look at the situation as it stands and how we're currently trying to solve it. Things look dire, but there's cause for hope if we take the right actions now.

John McCain recently reported that Iraq has made great progress due to the surge of US troops Bush ordered last month. Mike Pence (R-IN) made the comment that moving about the Shorja market in Baghdad was like "a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime." McCain himself trumpeted his visit to the market saying Americans could move freely through some part of Baghdad. When asked later in the week about his comments, he responded, "I just came from one," he replied sharply. "Things are better and there are encouraging signs." He added, "Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today." Pence went even further, to say "the most deeply moving thing for me was to mix and mingle unfettered."

What Pence and McCain both left out was that they were wearing bullet proof vests, surrounded by 100 armed soldiers, two blackhawk helicopters, and gunships. Does that sound like a nice afternoon stroll to you? Does a company of soldiers and a couple helicopters for gunship support sound like something the average Iraqi can take advantage of to secure their safety? Local merchants were aghast when told about McCain's comments. Ali Jassim Faiyad, an electronics shop owner in Shorja said "the security procedures are abnormal!" and "they paralyzed the market when they came, this was only for the media. This will not change anything." It's a refreshingly candid appraisal to contrast against McCain's assertions of safety. Despite efforts to secure the market, including restricting car access and erecting blast walls, dozens of people have died in the market in attacks, 61 alone during a three pronged attack on February 12th. In recent weeks, snipers have taken up rooftop positions in the area to pick off people indiscriminately, and gunfights have broken out between Iraqi forces and insurgents. During McCain’s visit, he was assailed with questions by the shopkeepers over what would be done to increase their security, and to tell him how unsafe they felt. Ali Youssef, a glassmaker in the market witnessed these actions. "Everybody complained to them. We told them we were harmed,” he said. "This area here is very dangerous," continued Mr. Youssef, “They cannot secure it." Youssef lost his shop in the attack on February 12th.

After McCain left, shopkeepers expressed their discontent with his visit, saying he was only there for his own purposes, to make himself look good, and the people he visited would be left in the dust. They also feared increase risk of attack, as previous announcements from the Iraqi government of safety and progress usually just gave insurgents another item to add to their list of targets.

McCain might just be on to something though. It appears attacks and violence in general has inched lower during the month of March…in Baghdad. But what about Iraq as a whole? According to the Manilla Times, 1,869 Iraqi civilians were killed in the month of March, after the security crackdown started. To compare, the pre-crackdown death toll for the nation’s civilians, for the month of February, was 1,646. In those two months alone, Iraq has lose more citizens than the US has lost soldiers during the entire war. US military casualties for March were more than double those suffered by Iraqis, suggesting US forces were taking a much more frontline role. That tells me one important thing, that after four years of war, Iraqi forces are still not capable of launching their own missions and rooting out insurgents by themselves. So much for all those optimistic reports of Iraqi units coming online any day now.

So what exactly is going on in the rest of the country? So much of the focus for the past few months has been on Baghdad alone, as if Baghdad were the only place the war was being fought. Next week’s TIME Magazine has a four page article detailing American combat operations and the situation in Diyala Province in Iraq. In November of 2006, when US troops deployed away from Diyala, insurgents took control of the area. A line of relatively peaceful farming hamlets and religiously diverse neighborhoods became sectarian enclaves separated by violent reprisals, turning what was once a calm valley into an unraveled death knell. America struck back in Diyala in February, and at the end of March reclaimed the Qubah, a small village where insurgents lived in safety. After the attack, US troops wrote numbers on the back of men’s necks and women’s hands to track their movements after curfew. Seeing the image of them writing the numbers on their hands and necks with a Sharpie brought to mind images of number tattoos on the arms of Jews in concentration camps. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing US troops to Nazis or Iraqis to Jews. Far from it in fact, I think the US troops there are often a saving grace to the locals, but the images are hard not to connect.

It may be that the Bush Administration surge in Baghdad is doing exactly what we wanted, but it’s having an opposite effect elsewhere in the nation. Displaced insurgents fleeing a US crackdown in Baghdad are heading out into the countryside to join fights already in progress against undermanned US troops in the field. They are also turning once peaceful villages and cities into dens of sectarian hate. Wherever these insurgents go, they incite sectarian violence, killing and partisanship. In many cities, couples that don’t share Shi’a or Sunni as a religion can’t even get their parents blessing to marry anymore. Small arms attacks rose on Diyala against US troops from 33 in July to 98 in February. Last July there were three suicide bombings in Diyala, this February there were five in one week. On some streets in Buhriz, one of the more violent villages in Diyala, US troops face a hailstorm of mortars and shoulder fired rockets. A Stryker battalion commander in Buhriz said he lost 20 men and women from his unit, and more than 800 civilians have died in the fighting.

To underpin the differences between then and now, the situation in Diyala wasn’t always so bad. In November, tensions between Shiites, who make up 30% of the population, and Sunnis, were kept in check by tribal leaders. Captain Mike Few was stationed just outside Baqubah (the provincial capital) at the time, he said “it was manageable in the beginning. The sheikhs were working it out.” But when the US moved forces to Baghdad, sectarian violence exploded. Last year Prime Minister al-Maliki’s largely Shiite government choked off food supplies and fuel to the region, and as the resources dwindled, tribal violence escalated. Sunnis, who had gathered in the area to support al-Zarqawi, the now dead al Qaeda leader, launched an extermination campaign against Shiites, who replied in kind. It’s no surprise that according to a recent poll, as many as 70% of Iraqis don’t want US forces to leave. The locals want to help, in fact a local sheikh tried to help Captain Few and his troops by providing detailed maps of the area, with positions of insurgents, likely ammo storage areas and arms caches. The problem isn’t a lack of willingness from locals, it’s partly a lack of troops, partly a lack of local government, and partly a lack of support from the national government. But even if all that were solved, it would still take years to root out the deep seated rivalries and enmities that now exist all over the country. Troops alone won’t solve the problem, as Colonel Sutherland, the man tasked with clearing out Diyala said, “I can kill all day long. It will do no good.”

Diyala is a poster child of the problem in Iraq. Even a 20,000 troop surge to pacify Baghdad has met with limited success and only bolstered attacks elsewhere in the nation. Finding a station wagon riddled with bullet holes and finding a dead family inside, or a burlap bag with the decapitated head of a family member on your front door step is something every Iraqi has to worry or think about every day in Iraq. Bush’s surge should still be given some time before a judgement is passed, but early signs aren’t cause for celebration. It should be noted that McCain also said in recent speeches that he can’t guarantee success in Iraq. That is some refreshing candor from a US Presidential candidate. Perhaps even enough to offset the utter spin from his previous statements.

So what are we left with? Bush and McCain are wrong, Iraq is still a giant, deadly mess. A half trillion dollars and 3,200 US troop deaths later and I don’t think we’re any closer to a peaceful, independent Iraqi nation than we were after “major combat operations” ended. Pacifying Iraq means a massive troop influx. We need to root out the entire country of insurgents and hold every inch of ground we take, not allowing them to rush back in afterwards. There needs to be nowhere in the country they can escape to and simple wait us out. Right now Cheney and Bush accuse Democrats of setting a date for surrender, that by doing so, all insurgents will have to do is mark a date on their calendars and wait us out. But how is that any different than what they are doing under Bush’s stewardship of the war? Right now, with any number of places to hide, the insurgents have no problem whatsoever waiting us out, because they don’t really have any pressure to hurry up. They are perfectly content to seed discontent all over the country, watching us chase after them like a giant international version of whack-a-mole. Ultimately I think Bush is firing blanks with that one. What we are doing now, in concert with Iraqi governmental ineptitude isn’t working. If the Democrats can be credited with anything, it’s rocking a boat that needs some rocking. Al-Maliki needs a kick in the pants, and maybe the threat of a US troop withdrawal will do just that.

The status quo isn’t going to cut it. But I’m more convinced now than I was before that we need to fix what we broke, and I think that means a massive, massive new troop commitment to Iraq. We need to send enough troops to cover every city and village in the country, to root out arms caches, to search for guns and munitions and to capture insurgents. I refuse to settle for our current efforts. If we aren’t going to commit more troops, then I fully support efforts made by the Democrats to try and force Bush and al-Maliki’s hands. If we aren’t doing anything productive, why be there at all?

The efforts that need to be made aren’t entirely military however. We need to fix the Iraqi government and root out corruption, all things that were brought to light in the Iraq Commission Report, but have since gone ignored by the Administration. Further, we need to engage regional powers in diplomacy. I think Pelosi was right to head to Israel and Syria to open discussions over the situation with them. I find it curious, and ridiculously partisan of Bush to attack Pelosi for her Syria visit when he remained utterly silent over a Republican visit to Syria’s president the previous week. The discussion always seems to be hinged around “should we stay or should we go?” but that’s far too simple a question. We’re not asking: “What’s next?” If we stay, what’s next? If we go, what’s next? If we can’t answer the second question, then answering the first will only get us into far more trouble.

It’s time to have a serious discussion on the situation over there. Democrats would do well to poke holes in Bush’s war plan and offer their own plan for success. They need to put the discussion on equal grounds. Say what is necessary for a victory, and then we can discuss whether or not we have what it takes to win. Bush is making victory sound like something that is always just over the next hill, whereas Democrats are making it sound like victory is at the base of a rainbow. Both of them are wrong, as victory is neither that near, nor that impossible to achieve. Bush is a lame duck, he has nothing to lose by actually being honest with us. His name is political black death to his party, his legacy is currently one of blunder and error. Democrats are losing every major fight they’ve tried to pick with Republicans, who stone wall with Bush’s support, any measure they put forth. Neither of them have anything to lose by having an honest discussion. But I think neither of them realize that putting aside scoring partisan points would probably score them both a lot of points with a populace just looking for a way out of the mess over there.

Source for quotes: AOL Time Warner