Victory! Can the Troops Come Home Now?

By Cernig

Marie Colvin of the London Times has two linked reports today about how swimmingly things are going for the Iraqi army in Mosul, the offensive that wasn't. American pro-occupation pundits are ready to declare victory all over again (and again, and again) of course - with one even uncritically acclaiming Nour al-Napoleon's grandiose claim that "we have defeated terrorism".

Colvin is a veteran war correspondent and a very brave lady, but she tends to be biased in her reporting. Just like her puff-pieces on the Iraqi army's success against an opposition that faded away of its own accord filed from Basra, she's now being given the dog-n-pony show in Mosul and apparently falling for it entirely. What she neglects to mention is that the Mosul operation was telegraphed by two months and even the US military admits that most of the AQI bad guys melted away before it began. She also neglects to mention that US military estimates put AQI numbers in Mosul before Operation Lion's Roar (a reference to the Persian lion) at around 600 and that reports from other correspondents in Mosul say that most of the 1,000+ detained are simply non-violent Sunni critics of Maliki's government.

Moderate conservative James Joyner looks at how such reports might play in the US prersiudential race and asks, if we take Colvin and Maliki at face value, while the US is still there.

One could argue that this is good news for John McCain, one of the earliest and staunchest advocates of the Surge.  His argument that the war would have been far more successful if his calls for a larger force had been heeded years ago are buttressed. At the same time, however,Barack Obama can reasonably argue that, if AQI is defeated, the already tenuous relationship between the Iraq War and the global war on terrorism is ended.  These positive developments actually undermine the argument that his calls for rapid withdrawal amount to surrender to the terrorists and acceptance of American defeat.  If AQI is no more, then we’re left with a simple “nation building” operation.

There's considerable doubt over whether the Surge was the primary driving force in reducing levels of violence in Iraq to merely what was sufficient to cause the breakdown of what was left of society's fabric after the US invasion in 2003. However, I'd agree that there's no threat of AQI taking over Iraq - but then again, there never was. The idea that we couldn't leave Iraq in case Al Qaida took over, even in Sunni areas, was always ridiculous. The danger was that they could help heat up the simmering civil war between the various Iraqi factions scrabbling for power under cover of the US "nation building" exercize, but there's also ample evidence that the Iraqi factions are capable of doing that on their own. Meanwhile, Al Qaida continues to gain in strength in its original stronghold along the Afghan/Pakistan border and in Africa, all the while the US is distracted by the Iraqi occupation.

Right now, Iraq wonks are watching deep disagreements between the Awakening and the members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which show signs they might flare into violence akin to the feud between the Sadrists and ISCI/Dawa Shiite factions. There are reports that the Islamic Party are pre-conditioning their long-promised return to Maliki's fold on his formaly dissolving the Sons of Iraq, declaring any holdouts to be illegal militias unable to participate in provincial elections and even using the armed forces to crack down on them if they object too strenuously. Kirkuk, a powderkeg issue for Sunni/Kurd confrontation, also bears watching. And anyone writing off the Sadrists ability to create trouble for Maliki's elite is living in cloud cuckoo land.

If "victory" was ensuring AQI wouldn't control even Anbar, then it was accomplished a long time ago - even before the Surge. If "victory" is policing a multi-sided simmering civil conflict with the objective of keeping the current green Zone elite of exiles in power, then I'm not at all sure that mission can ever be accomplished. Either way, withdrawal is indicated.

Comments

[Michael]

How can it ever be any kind of "victory" to be fighting with AQI, an organization that did not even exist before the US occupation of Iraq.