Cotton McCain's Truthiness Surge

By Cernig

As BJ noted yesterday, Cotton McCain's at it again - trying to back up his gaffe on the timing of his beloved Surge by pure B.S. of the kind teen boys aren't dumb enough to try with their parents or teachers.

"A surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components. ... I'm not sure people understand that `surge' is part of a counterinsurgency."

McCain's timeline is off by about half a year and there's no way around that fact. As Joe Klien notes: "Pride, though, seems to have the upper hand right now--pride that goeth before, during and after the fall of McCain's Middle East policies."

And while we're on the subject, McCain and the pony-lovin' Right's insistence that the Surge was solely or even mainly responsible for a reduction in Iraq's violence is likewise pure B.S. Again, BJ put it well yesterday: "much of the reduction of violence credited to the "surge" has in fact been due to other factors such as the Anbar Awakening, al-Sadr's cease-fire, the sectarian homogenizing of neighbourhoods and communities". Today, Blake Hounshell interviews McClatchy's Baghdad bureau chief, Nancy Youssef and asks her what Iraqis think happened, I assume on the basis that since they live there they might know a thing or two that could get missed during a heavily-protected dog-n-pony visit:

FP: There's been a debate in the media about how much credit should be given to "the surge" for what you're seeing now. Barack Obama said it was just one of several factors that helped improve the security situation. Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, didn't even credit the addition of U.S. troops in his recent interview with Der Spiegel. Meanwhile, John McCain gives the surge the lion's share of the credit. Who do you think is right?

NY: When you ask the Iraqis here, they say that the added U.S. forces were a part of it, but what really turned things around was the Sahwa movement [of former insurgents switching sides], Moqtada's ceasefires, and in their minds, Basra. Basra was the first Iraqi-led success story, and it really changed the momentum. So, the Iraqis that we talk to see it as a complex equation with the U.S. troop surge as just one factor. And frankly, the situation on the ground suggests that they're right, because the surge troops have left, and the security situation remains better.

....FP: Do you think that Maliki is overestimating his ability to keep things under control as U.S. forces draw down?

NY: When I was embedded with Iraqi troops in Amarah, in the south, they didn't fire one shot. They made maybe a handful of arrests. They didn't find any real Mahdi Army leaders. They're knocking down open doors, so it's not surprising that things are going well. The Mahdi Army has fled.

What happens when they come back? Can the Iraqi Army take charge? And the truth is right now, nobody knows. But I tell you, having embedded with the Iraqi Army, they are worried about it. They know that the wins in Basra and Sadr City and in Amarah did not happen because they were outfighting the militiamen. It was because Moqtada al-Sadr said "Don't fight," and most of those militiamen fled. What happens when they inevitably come back? How confident can we be that the security gains are sustainable when the Iraqi Army has to face a real fight? And nobody knows the answer.

Those last are, as Kevin Drum points out, damn good questions. My own guess is that Iran will prove, as everyone except the Right seems to know, the main puppeteer behind Maliki and his allies, break-off factions from the Mahdi militia and to a far lesser extent Sadr himself. Sadr's co-operation remains the main deal maker or breaker for the Shiite Green-Zoners and Iran. Meanwhile, I also expect far more unwelcome attention to be directed at the Awakening movement by Maliki and his allies, attempting to reduce its influence or dismantle it altogether, and whether or not that situation turns violent is almost entirely down to the Awakening people. A civil-war policeman's US soldier's prospective lot is still not a happy one.