Forget the Surge -- Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Forget the Surge -- Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective

By Juan Cole, JuanCole.com. Posted July 29, 2008.

The bloodbath in Baghdad has resulted in fewer ethnically mixed neighborhoods, leading to the recent drop in violence.




Editor's note: John McCain's latest stumble in discussing Iraq -- in which he muddled the timeline of the so-called "surge" -- was treated by most of the press as an unfortunate gaffe, rather than further proof that the aspiring commander in chief does not know what he's talking about when it comes to the war and occupation. (One CNN report actually ran the headline: "McCain Broadens Definition of the Surge.") Meanwhile, the Republican nominee's recent attacks on Barack Obama for failing to admit the success of the "surge" was widely reported by the same members of the media, whose dominant and uncritical narrative has long been that, as McCain and Bush contend, the "surge" has been an unqualified success. "Why can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics thought that it would?" a USA Today editorial asked last week.

In the article below, Juan Cole takes a closer look at the "surge," weighing the troop increase alongside the numerous other contributing factors to the decline in violence. At the same time, he reminds us that, regardless of the relative decrease in bloodshed -- and what may be behind it -- the country is still a frightfully unstable place for Iraqis. "Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of violence remain," he writes. Few people would consider Afghanistan, where last year an average of 550 people were killed per month, a safe place. Yet, "that is about the rate recently (in Iraq), according to official statistics." -- AlterNet War on Iraq editor Liliana Segura

***

I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the "surge" "worked." The New York Times reports:

Mr. McCain bristled in an interview with the CBS Evening News on (July 22) when asked about Mr. Obama's contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had helped, including the Sunni Awakening movement, in which thousands of Sunnis were enlisted to patrol neighborhoods and fight the insurgency, and the Iraqi government's crackdown on Shiite militias.

"I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened," Mr. McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.

"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others," Mr. McCain said. "And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."

The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge.

And Democrats noted that the sheik who helped form the Awakening, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was assassinated in September 2007, after the troop escalation began.

But several foreign policy analysts said that if Mr. McCain got the chronology wrong, his broader point -- that the troop escalation was crucial for the Awakening movement to succeed and spread -- was right. "I would say McCain is three-quarters right in this debate," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The problem with this debate is that it has few Iraqis in it. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/93081/forget_the_surge_--_violence_is_down_in_iraq_because_ethnic_cleansing_was_brutally_effective/

[mwb970]

1. It's too bad that reasoned analysis no longer has any effect in America.

If it did, this would end the debate right here. But it doesn't, so the truth will continue to be ignored. What a great country we have!

[Botany]

2. A must read:

"The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war
waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms."

Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has given numerous media and press interviews on the War on Terrorism since September 11, 2001, as well as concerning the Iraq War and the building conflict with Iran from 2003. He has a regular column at Salon.com. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam, and lived in a number of places in the Muslim world for extended periods of time. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context, and his most recent book is Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He also writes on current events, and his articles on contemporary Sunni radicalism include "Muslim Religious Extremism in Egypt" in Middle East Historiographies (University of Washington Press, 2006) and "The Taliban, Women, and the Hegelian Private Sphere," Social Research (Fall 2003). He has authored several recent journal articles on Shi`ite movements in present-day Iraq, as well as an extended essay, "The Ayatollahs and Democracy in Iraq." (Amsterdam University Press, 2006). These works were foreshadowed by an earlier book, Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam (IB Tauris 2002), as well as in his monographs, edited books and articles of the 1980s and 1990s.

[babylonsister]

3. Rec'd - with sadness. nt

[Bragi]

4. This is an important article

Juan Cole really knows of what he writes.

Turns out that what reduced the violence was allowing the Shiites in Baghdad to relieve Sunni's of their houses. Once the neighbourhoods were resettled, violence went down.

I wonder if Obama will say this to undercut McCain's claim that the surge worked? This sure would reframe discussion of the surge.

- B

[leveymg]

5. "The Surge Worked" is merely a term for declaring victory after losing the war.

What have we gained,other than splitting Iraq up into three ethnic enclaves?