Austin Bay sees some encouraging signs in the latest offensive, while the (mostly) Democrats try to pull the rug out from under the effort.
The relentless, focused targeting of Shia and Sunni extremist organizations is a far more important feature of what Iraqis are calling “the new security plan” than more U.S. troops. The coalition’s effort to better integrate the economic and political development “lines of operation” with security operations could have greater long-term effects.
Attacks on Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army have been the most public examples of “focused targeting.” Though Sadr’s allies deny it, Iraqi and U.S. government spokesmen still claim that Sadr has left Iraq for Iran. Sadr bolted because the new offensive is indeed striking his militia.
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Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the new security plan is the increased aggressiveness of the Iraqi Army as it conducts counterinsurgent operations. The Iraqi military defeat of the cultist “Soldiers of Heaven” planned attack on Najaf in late January provides a dramatic example. With coalition backup, Iraqi forces launched a spoiling attack and killed or captured several hundred militants.
Maliki’s national reconciliation program remains the key Iraqi political endeavor. That program began well before “the new security plan,” but no security plan will succeed unless reconciliation occurs.
The Office of National Reconciliation conducts “engagements” with the entire spectrum of ethnic, religious and political groups. Last week, in a phone interview with journalists and commentators, coalition spokesman U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell discussed how his Strategic Effects Office works with the Iraqi government on this issue.
“In the last three months on any given day of week we’re doing (numerous reconciliation) engagements,” Caldwell said. His office has helped coordinate the meetings. Caldwell said that the reconciliation office had also been “talking to insurgent groups.”
That makes sense. Maliki’s “new security plan” includes a reformed “de-Baathification” program designed to permit former members of the Baath Party, on an individual basis, to integrate into the new, democratic Iraq.
Former Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi advocated a similar program in 2004, but Allawi’s government was appointed, not elected. Saddam Hussein was also still alive. Maliki is an elected prime minister, and his government carried out Saddam’s court-ordered death sentence. Maliki has the political capital to implement the program.
While it is still early in this effort, these are encouraging signs.
I keep coming back to this analogy, and I still think it fits. Imagine teaching a young kid how to ride a bike. You start out in your driveway, with a small bike, and training wheels. You carefully measure progress and maybe even steer for the kid. Eventually, it is time to take the training wheels off. You still jog along beside them, to give a steadying hand now and then. You don’t point them down the driveway and push them into traffic.
We are at the point where Iraqi security forces are taking the lead more and more in operations. The political leaders now seem to have the will to pursue everyone not operating within the law. So, now that Iraq has the will and the means to enforce security, do we just abandon them, or do we stay and keep them steady for a time?
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the Times thinks that things are too quiet in Baghdad…
The silence is eerie. After opening the U.S. Army’s first combat outpost (COP) in Baghdad last month the men of Charlie Company, 2-12 Cavalry, had gotten used to gunfights raging nearby, the crack of bullets passing overhead, and the explosion of rocket-propelled grenades. After all, this was Ghazaliyah, where Sunni insurgents and Shi’a militiamen have battled each other, the Iraqi army and police, and the Americans for months.
In the past week, though, the men have been unnerved by absence of the sounds of war. “It’s been quiet — really, really, quiet,” said Sgt. Sergej Michaud, 24. Michaud has cropped his dark hair nearly to the scalp, and he has a tattoo of a helmeted skull on his left forearm with TANKER printed below. Like many other soldiers at the COP he relishes the chance to drive towards gunfire and separate the combatants in Iraq’s sectarian war. That was routine for his platoon until a few days ago, when the violence suddenly dropped almost to nothing. One soldier said he used to doze off at night by imagining the gunfire was the sound of rain on a tin roof. Now the nights are virtually silent. That’s unusual for any Baghdad neighborhood, and eerie for a notoriously violent place like Ghazaliyah. Gunfights with insurgents and militiamen worry Sgt. Michaud less than figuring out where those enemies have gone. “I have no idea,” he said. “It’s kind of scary. It’s kind of scary.”