Redstate

By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Now is the time to change the Conventional Wisdom and acknowledge the new reality. For about eleven months, from the time of the Golden Mosque bombing in February 2006 to January 2007, central Iraq was in a state of civil war. Since January, most of the violence has come from al Qaeda. Engram at Backtalk has put numbers to the trend here. An excerpt:

These foreign fighters are not "insurgents." Instead, they the al Qaeda terrorists who have been drawn to Iraq like flies. Al Qaeda uses precisely that method (suicide bombings), it is a terrorist organization (i.e., they indiscriminately target civilians), they have stated their intention to slaughter Shiites, they claim many of these spectacular bombings, and the U.S. military attributes almost all of them to al Qaeda. By contrast, there is not one shred of evidence that I have encountered to suggest that these mass-casualty suicide bombings are being carried out by Sunni Baathist insurgents as part of a civil war. Al Qaeda terrorists target Shiite civilians for indiscriminate slaughter because their whole plan to provoke civil war in Iraq, not because they are fighting in that civil war to defeat the Shiites. It's a good plan, not foreseen by anyone, and it has been working fairly well.

All of this brings me to the important point I'd like to re-emphasize today because of a new article that just came out in the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine (which I'll get to shortly). What is critical to understand, and what even prominent thinkers cannot seem to assimilate, is that there is a distinction between two kinds of violence in Iraq:

1. Sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis as they seek to defeat each other (which can be reasonably construed as being part of a civil war)

2. The indiscriminate slaughter of Shiite civilians by al Qaeda suicide bombers as they seek to provoke Shiite-vs.-Sunni conflict (which cannot be reasonably construed as being part of a civil war)

As violence of the first kind has decreased of late (i.e., as the civil war has abated), violence of the second kind has increased significantly (i.e., efforts to re-ignite the civil war have ramped up). That's what the evidence shows, and those who are paying attention to the details know that. Those who aren't paying close attention, such as Harry Reid, just see confirmation that Iraq has descended into civil war. Yet Reid, who has never shown the slightest understanding of the role played by al Qaeda in Iraq, has the audacity to claim that Bush is in a state of denial.

Idiots like Harry Reid are failing to see that al Qaeda has a specific plan to (1) provoke a civil war and (2) convince Americans that we've already lost. Reid and Pelosi are buying what al Qaeda is selling.

Read on . . .

In the last three to four months, the Mahdi militias have stood down for the most part. A civil war can start up again tomorrow, but Iraq is not in one today and it hasn't been in one for several months. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are stupidly calling for unilateral withdrawal when the prime purveyor of violence is al Qaeda, our sworn enemy. Al Qaeda's first step toward victory, according to al Zawahiri in his letter to al Zarqawi, is to "expel the Americans". Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their supporters want exactly what al Qaeda wants. Americans expelled.

Amidst the clamor for timetables and funding squabbles, Sunnis are starting to reject al Qaeda and are joining the coalition. Kurdistan is stable. Anbar is improving. The south is Britain's problem, but the violence there is mostly Shiite-on-Shiite. Baghdad is showing small signs of improvement. It really makes me wonder if Reid, Pelosi & Co. are prioritizing partisan politics over the War Against Militant Islamism. It makes me wonder if they're so invested in defeatism that they're not willing to accept new facts or to consider that the environment is changing. To me, it looks like their minds are made up. It's a civil war, so let's just throw up our hands, get out of Dodge, and let them sort it out for themselves. Never mind that al Qaeda is the major player in this. It also makes me wonder if they want defeat in Iraq in order to gain political victory in the White House for a Democrat. It worked in '76.

The Petraeus plan won't be fully employed until this June, and it's going to take some time before we know whether the plan will work. Max Boot has an excellent update here, and it's worth a full read. A small excerpt:

The stakes couldn't be higher. U.S. commanders report that, whatever the case before the war, Iraq has now become the central front of al Qaeda operations, drawing jihadists from all over the world. It is also a central front in Iran's offensive to become the dominant player in the region. American generals say they have been "shocked" to discover the level of Iranian influence in Iraq. The Iranians are supporting not only the Mahdi Army, Badr Brigades, and other Shiite militias, but also, the generals believe, al Qaeda--the very group killing Shiites en masse.

For me, if there's no discernible progress by the end of the year, we may very well have lost, but we will hurt ourselves tremendously if we fail to try, especially now that there's a fair plan for success. Unfortunately, partisan liberal Democrats in Congress seem unwilling to give the plan a chance. Why? Because in their world, defeat has already happened.

Update: Reuel Marc Gerecht summarizes the political calculus here:

Honest Democrats should admit that they are in a predicament: The electoral interests of their party are at odds with the interests of the country in Iraq. If the surge fails, the Democrats stand to gain enormously in 2008. A Republican could try to depict himself as the candidate best able to manage retreat from Mesopotamia, but such a Nixonian approach, given how lamely the Bush administration has handled much of the war, doesn't seem compelling. On the other hand, if the surge works, and the Sunni insurgency and sectarian strife no longer convulse Iraqi society, the odds of Senator John McCain--or another Republican--succeeding George W. Bush go up considerably. The entire Democratic field, however, could end up looking wrong, faint-hearted, and politically reckless.

We highlight this Democratic contradiction since the party's character is being put to the test, as we see whether General David Petraeus's counterinsurgency tactics, which will seriously kick into gear in June, can rescue Baghdad and Anbar and Diyala provinces from the precipice. We don't know if General Petraeus at this late date can reverse the bloody dynamic that has developed in the Iraqi Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish communities. But militarily the United States is finally waging a counterinsurgency that makes sense: We are focusing our efforts on securing Iraqi lives and property. Incrementally, in many quarters of Baghdad, daily life for Iraqis appears to be getting better.

And politically, Iraq is coming alive again. A Shiite-led Iraqi democracy is taking root--an astonishing achievement given the concerted efforts of the Iraqi Sunnis, and the surrounding Sunni Arab states, to attack and delegitimize the new Iraq. The country's obstreperous, stubborn, highly nationalist, Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, appears increasingly to be a man of mettle and courage. Slowly but surely, he is distancing himself from the clerical scion, Moktada al-Sadr, the overlord of the Sunni-shooting Mahdi Army. Maliki is so far holding his ground after the resignation of Sadr's men in his government.

As long as Sadr is hiding behind the mullahs' skirts in Iran, his message will be diluted, and his Mahdi militias are showing signs of fraying.