Giving Up
By We passed the 1000th Iraqi casualty today, but that’s not really all that important. I, and I think most Americans, are willing to accept casualties in the service of a good cause. It’s the whole “1000 Americans dead for no good reason” that bother me. Oddly enough, I think that the crowd on the right doesn’t understand this nuance; they believe that Americans are weak, and are incapable of understanding the difference between an achievable mission and a boondoggle. Thus, they turn everything into a boondoggle. Anyway, Matt Yglesias and Bird Dog, among others, note that the US is surrendering larger and larger pieces of Iraq to insurgents:
In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein
Sadly, this has not slowed down the flow of US casualties. Sixty-six died in August, and twenty-three have died thus far in September. Most troubling, the deaths are not concentrated in one part of Iraq. Americans are dying in Shiite and Sunni areas, in the south and the Sunni Triangle. What does this tell us?
First, we’re losing. The insurgency is growing in strength, and has done so steadily over the past four months are so. The only apparent effect of the handover was an increase in deadly attacks against Americans. Second, the counter-insurgency strategy being employed by the Marines and the Army is a failure. I’m unconvinced that this is the fault of either organization, however, and I suspect that there’s meddling from the administration. The Marines seemed ready to level Falluja a few months ago, then curiously halted; given the number of air strikes launched into Falluja and insurgent attacks launched out of Falluja since that point, I’m inclined to think that seizing the city would have been a good idea. I suspect that the administration is more concerned about its electoral prospects than success in Iraq, and doesn’t want to be seen destroying the cities of the Iraqis we have supposedly been liberating. A desire to limit casualties may also have informed the pull-back, although this was clearly quite short-sighted, leading to my third point. Areas which the US does not control become havens for anti-US insurgents, who then use these safe areas to organize, build bombs, and launch attacks out of. Pulling out makes the insurgency stronger, not weaker. Finally, the notion that any sort of free elections can happen in Iraq any time soon is absurd when hostile forces control a number of key cities. Any elections held would be dreadfully unrepresentative, and would probably enhance the insurgency more than quell it.
Conclusions? I don’t know. I’m really beginning to doubt that US forces can do any good in Iraq. For the last several months, we’ve been doing nothing but killing large numbers of the people we were supposed to be liberating. It’s hard to imagine a campaign run more poorly than this. Saddest of all, I don’t think that most people have the faintest idea of what’s going on in Iraq right now. Last year, a “Ramadan Offensive” helped spur the insurgency and made some domestic supporters of the war start asking questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar happens this year.