This is further confirmation that the drop in violence of September 2007 was not due to the surge, but due to Sadr’s cease-fire. It is Sadr and the Mahdi army that has the power to decide what the violence levels will be in Iraq. The surge accomplished nothing whatsoever except more deaths, and that’s why what we’re seeing now is the failure of the surge: it’s confirmation that the U.S. presence does not reduce violence, it merely creates it (such as the Iraqis we’ve killed by dropping bombs in support of Maliki’s thug government).

As for the Basra situation, if Mr. Boot thinks we really have a dog in the fight between one group of Iran-backed thugs and another, that’s his affair; since Maliki’s government has no more power or legitimacy than any other group of thugs (and considerably less legitimacy and popularity than Sadr).

If we had pulled out a year ago, Iraq might now at least have a chance. Because Bush and Petraeus stayed in – knowing that we couldn’t “win” an Iraqi civil war, but knowing also that they would rather see a thousand more Americans die than admit that their policies failed – Iraq is now spiraling into a new civil war (Shi’ite thugs battling each other) to add to the Sunni-Shi’ite civil war that the surge failed to reduce below 2005 levels. In other words, the failed surge has made Iraq worse and the only thing we can do now is to get out and let the Iraqis solve this, since the U.S. presence only creates further civil war violence as we see now.

It’s funny that they only really called it a ‘civil war’ when the long dormant Shia struck back. The surge, provided a degree of security for the Shia; and assured some of the Sunnis that they wouldn’t be washed away. Basra has been in chaos at least since the British retreat if
not before. There are strong parallels with Lebanon. We flinched when our embassies were
bombed; once on the Corniche, then in the Auk and Rahde neigborhoods. In the aftermath
Hezbollah and the PLO came to blows in the Battle of the Camps, which drew in players like
the hijackers of TWA 847. We retreated and Iranian Hezbollah having coopted the majority
Shia Amal, now calls the shots in Lebanon; murdering their way to a quorum for their Iranian
& Syrian sponsors. Similarly we humored Muqtada till his attempted uprising came along, than we accomodated him; making him ‘the strong horse’ in the equations. We flinched at Fallujah
and it became a nest of Salafists and Wahhabist that were not uprooted till later in the year;
and wasn’t actually secured till last year.

Maliki is taking a risk here, but it is THE risk he has to take, and it would not be preferable for him to not take it. He is probably correct that now is the time. It’s hard to see any advantage in waiting longer, and letting the Shi’a militias make it harder for the Baghdad government to do something that is unquestionably necessary.

The best outcome will be for this effort to succeed, and to have clearly and legitimately been an Iraqi project. Sadr and his cohort will probably fight it hard for some period, recognizing the watershed significance a loss for them will have. The key will be keeping Iran out of it, when the Shi’a militias look hard-pressed. That is still a job for the US.

T.B.,

Sadr has maintained his “cease-fire,” you unmitigated idiot. The “surge” has been effective because it has been killing terrorists at an unprecedented rate and strengthening the Security Forces.

You never fail to oppose America and support its enemies with your deceitful comments here. Give it up, troll. You aren’t going to convince anybody to surrender to the terrorists with the sub-standard drivel you use to press your cause.

Your cause is to harm America. Good luck with that–LOSER.

Mr. Boot,

has Prime Minister Maliki ever lost his nerve in the past? Don’t expect him to do so now.

Rininger,

The point is that Maliki has never before had the nerve to tackle Sadre and his Madhi army.

The real question is, how good are the Iraqi Security Forces, or rather, how bad? Under Saddam it took the ruthlessness of the Republican Guard, and mass graves, to put down those Shia militias.

nacl,

the Iraqi Security forces are slaughtering Sadr’s silly thugs even as I write this.

That’s how good they are. So much for your side.

“The “surge” has been effective because it has been killing terrorists ”

the problem is the terrorists don’t come out and fight, they hide. that’s been the problem since the begining. we aren’t killing that many really relative to how many there are.

[...] optimism isn’t entirely misplaced. As Max Boot has argued, “If Maliki is now getting serious about asserting the supremacy of the Iraqi state over the [...]

[...] Max Boot on Maliki and Badr vs. Sadr. The power of militias has been one of the most corrosive features of post-2003 Iraq. No prime minister, including Maliki, has shown much willingness or ability to take on the gunmen, because successive Iraqi governments have depended for their existence on political parties closely aligned with the militias, notably the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadr trend. If Maliki is now getting serious about asserting the supremacy of the Iraqi state over the militias, that is a development to be cheered. I only hope he does not lose his nerve in this hour of crisis: if well-led, the Iraqi Security Forces have the power to defeat any militia on the battlefield. Posted in: Iraq Send to a Friend Printer Friendly comments (0)   trackbacks (0) [...]

T.B. – Yo, anybody home back at your planet? This very scenario is what was foretold when the Brits pulled back months ago and did-not-do what the Americans did, i.e., The Surge thingy, as you probably best understand it.

This very thing validates rather than indicts the surge, which really just gave the locals a chance to stand up to the very idiocy running rampart (in ever and ever fewer numbers) in and around Basra.

We don’t need to kill them all, but the more the better. What we need to do is to make it so dangerous to be of this mindset that the marginal ones just quit, exposing the hardcore leadership to be outing and killed. Head of the snake kinda thing, y’know?

Different peoples can live peacefully together in one country. (Hell, we in the South have been doing it for over a hundred years :) What it takes is for peace at 80% perfect to be a better alternative than the fight to get (how much of) the remaining 20%.

I blame the Brits in the first place. They allowed this to happen on their watch and they should fix it quick.

Lester,

the terrorists have trouble recruiting new morons because so many of them have been killed by the Coalition. Now the Iraqi Security Forces are killing armed shia thugs masquerading as a militia.

The mullahs in Iran must be crapping their robes right now.

max, you be hitting the koolaid a little too much.
Can you make a living writing opinion pieces like this?
As an historian do you see any precedent for this kind of internecine mayhem and bloodletting: sectarian, ethnic, et al?

Didn’t Cheney dismiss this predilection on the part of the Iraqis to kill each other based ethnic, sectarian grounds as the “dead enders” just behaving badly?

I am thinking you are not being intellectually honest with us here.

This “hour of crisis”? Is this from your book of trite cliches?
We’ve been in Iraq for going on 6 years. Now this is an “hour of crisis”.

The “Iraqi State”. May they should call for quorum in the Iraq Parliament and vote on this.

Well led. You mean with American soldiers and air power leading don’t you?

mickster

mickster,

have you been hitting the Irish Kool-Aid? Is America supposed to eradicate the desire for conflict in the Iraqi population?

The Iraqi government is destroying an armed force of thugs with American support. You cant spin that as a bad thing. Maliki and the Mook are both shia, by the way, so your nonsense about sectarian violence is a joke. This long overdue action by the representative Iraqi government isn’t any more sectarian than it is ethnic or a waste of U.S. effort.

“We” are not in Iraq. Trolls like you who root for a terrorist victory there are not part of America’s ALL VOLUNTEER military. Don’t pretend that you care about American lives any more than you care about Iraqi lives. You only care about opposing President Bush and the Republicans.

Thought you could slip your comment into an old thread without being called on it, didn’t you?